Trading, Borrowing, Stealing, Fighting, Collaborating and Sharing: Comcáac Social Interactions with their Neighbors

Summary

The Comcáac (Seri) indigenous community provides a unique opportunity for community-based research in archaeological endeavors. Through a joint effort with several members from different families and of different age, the project constructed methodologies that integrate archaeological data with oral tradition and ethnographic information. In specific, we propose a distinct survey method with the recording of oral histories from landscape segments. This paper presents relevant results from this archaeological research and its associated historical and contemporary notions of past objects and places. With an emphasis on their relationship among agriculturalist neighbors (present day North Mexico and the US Southwest) as evidenced materially mainly by the presence of Trincheras pottery, Olivella shell beads, Glycimeris shell bracelets manufacture and landscape features; as well as by oral tradition evidence about territorial boundaries and relationships with Yaquis, Papagos and Apaches. Among important issues for collaboration endeavors, it also contributes to the general understanding of the region’s history, the historic social interactions between coastal hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists, and the socioeconomics of raw material acquisition, manufacturing, and exchange.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Examining Webs of Social Relations: New Research in West Mexican Archaeology and West Mexico-U.S. Southwest Connections   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage