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Before Prescott: What Fitzmaurice Ruin Left Behind

  • Writer: MIP Author
    MIP Author
  • Mar 20, 2020
  • 5 min read
“The past is never dead. It is not even past.” – William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
Black and white archaeological plan of Fitzmaurice Ruin showing three rows of stone rooms labeled with excavation numbers, along with hearths, storage pits and wall features.
Architectural plan of the 27 room main pueblo at Fitzmaurice Ruin near Prescott Valley, Arizona. The drawing identifies rooms constructed during several building phases, areas excavated beginning in 1933, and interior features including hearths, firepits, post holes, wall niches and storage pits.

In 1215, King John issued the Magna Carta in England. At roughly the same time, Genghis Khan was expanding the Mongol Empire across Asia. Here in central Arizona, another community was living on a hill above Lynx Creek in a stone pueblo with 27 rooms.


Prescott did not yet exist. Neither did Prescott Valley. The people who lived at what is now called Fitzmaurice Ruin built homes, cultivated food, made pottery, worked stone and bone, traded across long distances and adapted to the high desert environment around them.


Some of the cultural resource materials connected to this history are preserved at the Museum of Indigenous People. Together, the site and the museum’s collections offer a view into a much older chapter of the Prescott area.



Fitzmaurice Ruin A Pueblo Above Lynx Creek


Fitzmaurice Ruin stands on a prominent mesa in what is now Prescott Valley. Archaeological dating indicates that the main pueblo was occupied from approximately 1140 to 1300 CE. It contained three rows of rooms, with additional structures and agricultural features extending into the surrounding landscape.


The location appears to have been carefully chosen. The hill provided broad views across the surrounding countryside, access to water from Lynx Creek and nearby granite for construction. Archaeologists also documented several small masonry structures on nearby high points that may have served as lookout stations.


The pueblo was not an isolated cluster of rooms. It was part of a larger community landscape that included gardens, work areas, outlying buildings and places where people gathered resources.



Gardens That Were Once Visible


Stone outlined garden plots and terraces were recorded around the settlement. Some were positioned along slopes where runoff could be directed toward cultivated areas. As recently as the early twentieth century, portions of these terraces could still be seen without excavation.


By the 1970s, erosion, cattle and changes to the land had obscured much of this evidence. Earlier records nevertheless show that the people at Fitzmaurice were actively shaping the landscape to support agriculture in a region where water could never be taken for granted.


Corn was grown near the pueblo, and hunting also contributed to the community’s food supply. Rather than surviving passively in a difficult environment, the residents combined farming, resource management and knowledge of the surrounding land.


Archaeological plan of the main pueblo at Fitzmaurice Ruin, showing connected masonry rooms and documented interior features.
Remnants of masonry walls at Fitzmaurice Ruin near Prescott Valley, Arizona. From ground level, the pueblo can appear to be a field of scattered stone, but archaeological investigation revealed a large community containing a 27 room main structure and numerous outlying spaces.

What the Rooms Reveal


The plan of the main pueblo shows a long structure divided into connected rooms. Some rooms contained clay lined hearths, fire pits, storage pits and wall niches. Outer rooms may have been entered through openings in the roof, while some interior rooms were connected by doorways.


The walls were built primarily from local granite, earth and clay. Roofs were constructed with logs, brush and layers of mud. Traces of blue, green, red, orange, ochre, white and brown red pigments suggest that portions of the building were painted.


Evidence of burning was found during excavation. Fire affected at least part of the pueblo near the end of its occupation, but archaeology does not provide a simple explanation for why the community left. Drought, changes in local resources, movement between communities and other social factors may all have played a role. The evidence should not be reduced to a single dramatic event.



Pottery, Tools and Distant Connections


Documented excavations recovered an enormous quantity of cultural material. Pottery included storage vessels, bowls, small containers and painted ceramics. Later work at the site recorded tens of thousands of ceramic fragments, along with vessels that could be restored.


Stone tools provide evidence of many different kinds of labor. Axes, grinders, drills, knives, polishers, hammerstones and paint palettes reveal people building homes, preparing food, shaping materials and making other tools.

Worked bone objects included awls, punches, beads, ornaments and an object interpreted as a whistle or bird call. Marine shells found at the site indicate that materials moved through trade networks extending far beyond the mountains of central Arizona. The residents of Fitzmaurice were connected to a wider Indigenous world through exchange, travel and relationships.


These materials should not be seen as isolated curiosities. A pottery fragment came from a vessel someone formed, fired and used. A stone grinder was held in someone’s hands. A shell ornament reached this place through a chain of human relationships.



An Archaeological Name, Not a People’s Name


Archaeologists have often used the term Prescott Culture to classify communities that lived in west central Arizona during this period. That term is a modern archaeological category. It is not necessarily the name the people used for themselves, and it cannot fully describe their identities, languages or relationships.


The people who lived at Fitzmaurice were not simply a vanished archaeological population. Their history belongs within a much longer Indigenous history of central Arizona, a history that did not end when the pueblo was no longer occupied.


Recognizing the limits of archaeological terminology is important. Objects and architectural remains can reveal how people lived, but they cannot tell us everything about how those people understood themselves.



Excavation, Removal and Preservation


Fitzmaurice Ruin was known to non Native settlers by the nineteenth century and was named for a later landowner, G. S. Fitzmaurice. Historical accounts report that objects were removed from the site during the mining era. The National Register documentation also records damage caused by unauthorized digging.


Documented archaeological excavation began in 1933 with Edward Spicer and Louis Caywood. Franklin and Joan Barnett conducted additional work beginning in 1968, followed by further excavation during the 1970s. The land containing the site was eventually deeded for use as a town park.


Today, access to the archaeological area is restricted except for authorized programs and occasional guided visits. Keeping the site protected helps prevent further disturbance and preserves information that may still remain in the ground.



The Past Inside the Museum


The Museum of Indigenous People preserves cultural resource materials that help visitors understand Indigenous life throughout the Southwest, including the much older history of the Prescott area.


Within the museum, pottery, tools and other materials are more than evidence of a distant time. They are connections to human decisions, technical knowledge, artistic choices and daily responsibilities. They remind visitors that Indigenous history in central Arizona began long before the founding of its modern towns.


The Fitzmaurice Ruin cannot tell its story through walls alone. The cultural materials preserved in museum collections help restore the human scale of the site. They allow visitors to look beyond an archaeological map and imagine the people who cooked beside its hearths, worked in its rooms, cultivated the surrounding land and watched the horizon from the hill above Lynx Creek.


The past is not somewhere else. It is beneath the streets, preserved in the landscape and present inside the museum.


Sources


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