Sonora (Other Keyword)
1-9 (9 Records)
Our work conducted in 2009 and 2010 in Batacosa, an archaeological site first recorded in 1967 by William Wasley, and later visited by Victoria Dirst, allowed us to determine their full extent and material culture, in addition to date this site to the Batacosa (200 -700 AD) and early Cuchujaqui phases of the south branch of what Richard Pailes defined in 1973 as Río Sonora culture, geographically located in the Sonoran lower foothills. In this paper we present the results obtained by Proyecto...
The Clovis Lithic Component of Fin del Mundo, Sonora, Mexico. (2016)
Fin del Mundo is a Clovis site located in the north-central portion of the state of Sonora, northwestern Mexico. The site comprises multiple localities including a buried kill of two gomphotheres (cuvieronius sp.), a Clovis camp and raw material procurement areas. The Clovis lithic component at the site consists of Clovis points, Clovis point preforms, bifaces, unifacial tools and a blade industry. The tool types suggest that Fin del Mundo was occupied for a long time span, possibly during...
In the Spirit of Sauer and Brand: Geographic Reflections on the RSV Project (2015)
The Rio Sonora Valley Project directed by Richard A. Pailes in the late 1970s was pivotal in contributing to our understanding of northwest Mexico. It was the first systematic archaeological research conducted in eastern Sonora since Carl Sauer and Donald Brand in the 1930s, and it precipitated later research by John Douglas, Emiliano Gallaga, Elizabeth Bagwell, and most recently Matthew Pailes. The project was not without problems, and critics. As a member of the RSV Project, and one who...
Las puntas de proyectil de las planicies costeras de Sonora, del desierto al bosque espinoso. (2017)
Durante los trabajos de excavación y recorrido de superficie en el Proyecto de Salvamento Arqueológico Gasoducto Puerto Libertad-Frontera Estatal, llevado a cabo en Sonora, México, se ha recuperado una numerosa muestra de puntas de proyectil sobre un área que cubre cerca de 600 kilómetros lineales, desde Puerto Libertad, en la costa noroeste del estado, hasta el límite con Sinaloa. Éstas puntas están afiliadas a determinados contextos en diferentes periodos, como el arcaico, el de agricultura...
Materiality of Death at Cerro de Trincheras, Sonora: A Comparison of Ceramic Urn Funerary Practice in a Macro Regional Scale (2015)
Funerary vessel urns represent a unique variety among other manners of treatment of the dead in the North American Southwest (SW) and Northwest Mexico (NW). The ritual practice of packing human remains in ceramic vessels is considered as a well-defined cultural accomplishment. Particularly, the urn funerary practice, although with local variation in time and space, represents a wider social action that reflects a particular worldview in the conception of death. Depositing human remains in...
Pochtecas and Pilgrims: Models for Elite and Commoner Exchange in the Río Sonora (2015)
The potential for the river valleys of eastern Sonora to serve as conduits for long distance trade between Mesoamerica and the U.S. Southwest was one of the original impetuses for research in the region. Researchers of the U.S. Southwest, using the same basic data sets, have come to drastically different conclusions regarding the frequency and overall importance of such long distance connections. Previous research in eastern Sonora has produced minimal direct evidence of long distance trade, but...
Research and curatorial work on the archeological collections recovered in Sonora by Dr. Richard A. Pailes (2015)
Since 2009, following Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) implementation of new public registration protocols for the cultural material heritage, we started an intense work of inventorying, cataloging and registration of the archaeological artifacts recovered during the Sonora –Sinaloa Project/1967 and the project Economic Networks: Mesoamerica and the American Southwest between 1975 – 1978, both conducted by Dr. Richard Pailes. These studies provided the foundations for new...
What’s Really Important in the Ethnohistory of Sonora? (2018)
Analysis of Contact Era ethno-historical accounts has played an outsized role in the interpretation of protohistoric Sonora, Mexico. Controversy surrounds interpretations, owing to incongruities between archaeological and textual data as well as disagreements over how to weight the disparate observations made in these documents. Modern researchers variably evaluate the biases, motives, and the overall truthfulness of the authors of these documents. Another issue is the general subjectivity...
When the desert meets the sea: the annual journey of quitovaquenses to the San Jorge beach as a community of practice (2017)
This paper presents an ethnographic account of the people of Quitovac, Sonoras yearly journey to the sea. The village is set amidst the Altar desert. Every year the people of this town take a trip to the Sea of Cortés and make the shore a very special place. I present this account from the perspective of communities of practice emphasizing how the activities they undertake are the result of a continual interaction between people and places and between the distinct actors present. I also take...