Regional to International Collaborations in American Archaeology: The Legacy of Suzanne Fish and Paul Fish
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)
During the course of five decades, Paul Fish and Suzanne Fish have instigated and nurtured a series of innovative archaeological research and educational partnerships with their numerous colleagues and students in the Americas. These collaborations have established highly productive linkages among groups and individuals from a diverse range of institutions including universities, national and international government agencies, non-profit research foundations, and other stakeholders. Consistent and crosscutting themes of their research collaborations include (but are not limited to) traditional agriculture and water management, social organization and craft economies, and coastal foraging adaptations. Mentoring students and engaging in community outreach are also central to the initiatives that Suzanne Fish and Paul Fish have developed and supported during their professional careers. These activities include numerous archaeological field schools as well as laboratory training programs at the Arizona State Museum and the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Their former students are now practicing archaeology throughout the Americas and beyond. This session features presentations by a small sample of their many colleagues in the Greater Southwest, Mesoamerica, and South America.
Other Keywords
Northwest Mexico •
Geoarchaeology •
Irrigation •
Social Organization •
Paleoethnobotany •
Geographic Information Systems •
Formation Processes •
Community •
Shell Mounds •
Platform Mounds
Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) •
New Mexico (State / Territory) •
Arizona (State / Territory) •
United States of America (Country) •
Colorado (State / Territory) •
Utah (State / Territory) •
North America - Southwest •
USA (Country) •
Republic of El Salvador (Country) •
Belize (Country)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-15 of 15)
- Documents (15)
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Applied Ethnobotany in Arid Lands: The Importance of Time, context and Collaboration (2017)
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This paper contributes to the field of applied ethnobotany, which focuses on the role that knowledge, institutions and cultural perspectives play in resource management and conservation (based on Cunningham). Through different case studies to understand people and their use of wild desert plants, this paper stresses the importance of collaboration between disciplines, principally among biological and social sciences; and secondly between formally trained researchers, and local people and...
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A Brief Introduction to the Sonoran Desert Fish (2017)
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While Suzanne and Paul Fish are endemic to the Sonoran Desert, they have been invasive in other regions of the World. The hybrid vigor from combining Paul's Michigan foundation with Suzy's Texas background added to their wide spread geographic range of experiences. As well, an enduring monogamy, a not well know known for this species, contributes to their impressive contributions in archaeology. Here, we briefly explore the natural history of this unique team.
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Carrying on the Tradition: University of Arizona Fieldschool Excavations at University Indian Ruin (2017)
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Recent fieldschool excavations at University Indian Ruin, under the direction of Drs. Paul and Suzanne Fish, have uncovered a wealth of new data. University Indian Ruin is a large Classic period Hohokam village situated in the eastern Tucson Basin. The site likely contains hundreds of adobe rooms and at least two platform mounds, a form of monumental architecture built by or for elites. In the late 1930s, such archaeological luminaries as Byron Cummings and Emil Haury investigated the site and...
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Community, Territory, and Polity in Postclassic Highland Oaxaca (2017)
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In late prehispanic Oaxaca, Mexico, the community was a territorial polity cross-culturally comparable to the city-state. Sixteenth-century native and Spanish sources describe aspects of these communities. Full-coverage archaeological surveys have mapped dozens of cases, providing information on size and internal structure not available in the documents. This study compiled evidence regarding population, territory size, boundary marking, internal complexity, political status, languages,...
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Comparing and Contrasting Community Structure across the Northwest/Southwest (2017)
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One of the most enduring contributions made by Suzy and Paul Fish was their elucidation of the role played by multi-settlement communities in structuring socio-political organization. The community concept, initially elaborated in the Hohokam region, now fulfills a central interpretive role in many regions of Northwest Mexico. In this paper, I compare characteristics of communities across several regions of the Northwest/Southwest to demonstrate qualitatively different organizational precepts....
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Dirt, Rocks, and Water: Irrigation Here, There, Then, and Now (2017)
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Regional specialists spend most of their time studying many topics in one area. Indeed, it would be next to impossible to be an authority on a region and its complexities if one did otherwise. Topical specialists, travel widely and study numerous variations on a single theme. Each of these specializations has its pros and cons. Neither is superior to the other. They are complementary. This presentation focuses on ancient irrigation in the American Southwest and present-day parallels from other...
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El Corrido de Pablo y Suzy Pescado: Inspiring Archaeological Investigations in Northwest Mexico (2017)
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We discuss Paul and Suzy Fish´s integral role in archaeological research in northwest Mexico, an important region that has been little studied by relatively few archaeologists to date. Over more than 25 years, along with our colleagues and many students, our archaeological investigations have included a reanalysis of the funerary mound at Guasave, Sinaloa and an evaluation of the relationship between Mesoamerica and Northwestern Mexico, the Pleistocene people of Sonora and Mexico, the Early...
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Fishes Swimming in the Magdalena River. Villages and Summit Features in the Middle Magdalena Valley, Northwest Sonora (2017)
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At the end of the 1990s, Suzanne and Paul Fish conducted a full coverage survey around the regional center Cerro de Trincheras in the middle Magdalena Valley "to clarify the role of the many smaller or secondary trincheras sites within territorial organization" (Fish and Fish 2007:168). Early Ceramic trincheras sites were located 2.5 to 4 kilometers from its nearest neighbor; all suggest multifunctional and residential occupations in the Magdalena valley, and most of them continued in use in the...
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From Southern Brazil and Northwest Mexico: Swimming across Landscapes with the Fishes (2017)
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Prehistoric societies included multidimensional natural, economic, social, political, and ritual landscapes. In this paper we briefly describe landscapes from the southwestern coast of Brazil during the Archaic period and from the Casas Grandes Medio period (A.D. 1200-1450) in northwest Chihuahua, Mexico. More specifically, we address ritual landscapes from shell mounds to hilltops. These components of landscapes are highlighted in honor of research conducted by Paul Fish and Suzanne Fish that...
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Full-Coverage Regional Surveys:Insights Gained about Hohokam, Akimel O'odham (Pima) and Pee Posh (Maricopa) Landscape Use (2017)
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Full-coverage regional archaeological surveys conducted throughout the world in diverse environmental contexts have demonstrated the advantages of this methodology for addressing a broad range of anthropological issues. The Northern Tucson Basin Survey (1980-1987) directed by Suzanne and Paul Fish represents the first application of this methodology to document prehistoric Hohokam settlement and land-use. Contiguous survey blocks centered on three Classic Period platform mounds and their...
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New Approaches to Sambaqui Archaeology in Brazil (2017)
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MaDu Gaspar and Paulo DeBlasis Sambaquis (shellmounds) have attracted attention since colonial times due to their monumentality, and to the presence of human burials and stone sculptures. Discussions on their natural or human origin dominated up to the 1960s, when debate shifted to cultural history and diet, and moundbuilders were taken as nomadic bands with shellfish-based subsistence. The 1990s, a time of changing paradigms in sambaqui archaeology, coincides with the coming of Suzy and Paul...
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The Perkinsville Valley: The Fishes Enter the Uncharted Waters of the Upper Verde Valley (2017)
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In the 1960s, a group of students at Arizona State University organized a multi-year program of archaeological survey and excavations in the Perkinsville Valley, an archaeologically unknown region briefly visited by Jesse Walter Fewkes in 1906. Starting with a wide-ranging reconnaissance, a survey identified 21 sites, indicating a long-term occupation throughout the entire cultural sequence of the Verde Valley, from the Early Archaic through the terminal A.D. 1300-1400 periods. A number of sites...
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Settlement Ecology in the Tula Region of Mesoamerica: A Local Landscape Perspective (2017)
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Based on seminal contributions by Suzy and Paul Fish associated with full-coverage surveys and agave cultivation, this paper explores changes in regional settlement patterns in relation to land-surface morphology in the Tula region in Mesoamerica during the Classic to Postclassic periods (200 CE–1500 CE). Drawing on our field surveys, independent settlement data from the Tula Region, and landform segmentation and classification in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this paper illustrates that...
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Taming Wild Plants: How Hard (or Easy) Can It Be? (2017)
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Ancient diets in the Hohokam area of central and southern Arizona included indigenous domesticates. Evidence for domesticated Little Barley (Hordeum pusillum), Mexican crucillo (Condalia warnockii), and amaranth (Amaranthus) rests on morphological changes. Range extensions into higher/lower areas are cited for management of agaves (Agave) and cholla (Opuntia) plants. Here I consider the process of domestication, and suggest that one or more mutations in nature plus one observant human may be all...
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Vision and Action: Suzanne Fish and Paul Fish and the Hohokam World (2017)
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Throughout their careers, Paul Fish and Suzanne Fish cast a wide net in their studies of the American Southwest, and the Hohokam region of southern Arizona in particular. This powerhouse duo vigorously applied their intellectual breadth and energy throughout their long productive careers to ferret out the complexities of the ancient past. Their team approach and complementary skill sets include regional archaeology; method and theory; settlement structure and social organization; field survey...