In the Spirit of Sauer and Brand: Geographic Reflections on the RSV Project

Summary

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 continued to work in the area nearly annually for the next 30 years, I share my personal insights on the long-term positive aspects that remain unappreciated. The project was not only important in terms of archaeology, but it contributed to the intellectual development of scholars who specialize in other topics. It also raised some intriguing questions that beg to be addressed, hopefully in the near future. A few of these are reiterated in this paper.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• The legacy of the Río Sonora Project and other early research in Sonora, Mexico

Keywords

Spatial Coverage