Perhaps one of the most important changes that occured in the history of humankind was the shift from hunting and gathering to farming. With agriculture populations dramatically expanded and cities, states and empires emerged. Over the millennia this pattern repeatedly occurred around the world. However, this sequence is not invariably the case. Learning how and why farming began, spread, and why many cultures began to farm, but others did not, remains one of archaeology and anthropology's major research priorities.
Scientists worked for decades in southern Mexico to learn when, where, and how some of the world's most important crops, including maize, beans, and squash were domesticated. In the American Southwest archaeologists have long known that these crops diffused northward to become the economic mainstay of hundreds of Southwestern Native American cultures. However, archaeologists have almost no information about the spread of crops across the intervening hundreds of thousands of square miles. This project seeks to begin to fill this void by searching for archaeological sites that contain remains of these ancient crops that can begin to tell the story of how agriculture spread from Mexico to the Southwest, a topic of active debate but with little solid data.
Archaeologists have argued that about 3000 years ago, either the crops spread northward with migrating Mexican Indians, or was passed along between successive groups of hunter-gatherers across northern Mexico. With NSF support, a team of five experienced scholars will search southwestern Chihuahua, about 300 miles south of the border for locations that may yield significant answers concerning these questions. This project is suitable for NSF's High Risk Projects in Anthropology program as the goal is to discover previously unknown sites of the appropriate age that contain maize. Yet they must search in the vast expanses of verdant river valleys, deep canyons and the uplands of southwest Chihuahua. All are potential routes for the spread of agriculture but have received little archaeological attention.
The major river valleys of western Chihuahua are likely places to search as team members Robert Hard, John Roney, Karen Adams, and Art MacWilliams have been involved in excavating, with previous NSF support, the dramatic remains of large, 3000 year old, farming settlements built on hilltops above a major floodplain in the northwest corner of Chihuahua, only about 30 miles south of the border. Team member Art MacWilliams and colleagues have also previously found evidence that adjacent regions in central Chihuahua were occupied 4000 to 3000 years ago. Innumerable dry caves, ideal locations for preserved plant remains, in the Sierra Madre Occidental, current home of the Tarahumara Indians, of western Chihuahua may also contain key evidence of early agriculture. This mountain range, which extends from Mesoamerica north to the international border, is another previously suggested route for the advancement of agriculture. Project ethnobotanist Karen Adams, will work with plant remains recovered from these caves. The Tarahumara Indians, long studied by project member William Merrill, continue to practice corn farming in small, dispersed fields, using techniques and knowledge that may have extraordinary time-depth. We expect to obtain new information about strategies of subsistence farming in southwest Chihuahua. This NSF-supported project will provide new information about how and when agriculture spread from Mexico to the Southwest and contribute to the global questions of how farming spread around the world.
