Los Morteros Conservation Area

Los Morteros Conservation Area

9901 North El Uno Minor Tucson, Arizona 85743

Official Website

About this Location

The Trincheras of Los Morteros Site, The Dairy Site, and The Barchas Site are three important sites, located near Tuscon Az, now saved by the Archeological Conservancy which will help preserve the evidence of the gardens and farming practices of the Hohokam. The Conservancy’s Tuscon Arizona preserves are especially significant in light of the notorious destruction of the Hokokam site.

An additional 17 acres containing more than 100 trincheras features associated with the Los Morteros Site were donated by Kenneth and Deborah Ryan and James and Jacquelynn Yeager. They lie immediately adjacent to another 36 acres of trincheras above the Los Morteros community donated to the Conservancy in 1986 by developer Gary Lovelace. Los Morteros, or “the mortars”, is a large Colonial-Classic period Hohokam community, dating between A.D. 500 to 1450. Features at the site include an intact ball court, an irrigation canal system, numerous other intact features, and trincheras. Trincheras are enigmatic structures of dry-laid rock alignments located on volcanic hillsides above Hohokam villages throughout southern Arizona and northern Mexico. Researchers studying the trincheras as Los Morteros have identified more than 200 of the features above the site. The construction and use of the trincheras appear to have been largely confined to the Early Classic period between A.D. 1100 and 1300. Some trincheras appear to have functioned as water control devices, channeling run-off water into agricultural areas. Others have flat-soil areas behind them, which would have allowed for their use as agricultural terraces. But trincheras might have had several uses for the Hohokam; additional uses hypothesized by research have also included habitation, defense, and ceremonial. In 1997 The Conservancy, Pima County, the town of Marana, and the University entered into a discussion about the possibility of creating a public park around Los Morteros and its adjacent trincheras features. Now, the site and area are a 120-acre Pima County natural and cultural resources park, which is located near the north end of the Tucson Mountains.

Content from Official Website