Abstract
Were Early Agricultural period (2100 B.C.-A.D. 50) maize cultivators in Southern Arizona sedentary farmers or seasonally mobile forager-farmers? Ethnographic analogs and ethnographically derived middle range theory support both claims. One argument for sedentism has been the abundance of large subterranean storage pits. These are often presumed to have been used for long-term food storage. This study of wetlands-indicator spores recovered from those pits indicates that the pits were often saturated and could not have been used for long-term food storage; these findings support the general contention that Early Agricultural period maize cultivators were seasonally mobile and tried to fit early agriculture into a subsistence regime focused on wild foods.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 333-344 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | American Antiquity |
Volume | 81 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2016 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- History
- Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
- Archaeology
- Museology