13,000 Years of Adaptation in the Sonoran Desert at La Playa, Sonora

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "13,000 Years of Adaptation in the Sonoran Desert at La Playa, Sonora" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The La Playa archaeological site of northwest Sonora, Mexico, presents a well-preserved record of human land use from the Pleistocene to the historic period. The Early Agricultural period San Pedro and Cienega (1200 BCE–150 CE) phases are particularly well represented by burial, canal, and roasting pit features. These and other features have been the target of over two decades of research by transnational teams from the United States and Mexico. This session presents a cultural-historical account of the longue durée of human occupation at La Playa and the varied adaptations represented in the archaeological record. Issues of broad theoretical significance include human responses to climate change from the Pleistocene to Late Holocene, the emergence of sedentism and farming, the development of ritual and religious systems, the prevalence of violence, technological change, mobility and migration, and the formation of regional identities.