The Origins of Agriculture and Neolithic in the American Southwest: The View from Western Europe

Summary

The transition from foraging to farming is certainly one of the most dramatic processes in human history. The use of domesticated plants spread widely across Western Europe from the Near East, and across the American Southwest from Mexico. Research in Western Europe has traditionally focused on the movement of farming communities across the region which displaced or subsumed local foragers. Recently various aspects of this process have been discussed including climate change, the expansion of farming populations, the integration of cultigens into local foraging economies, the coexistence of foragers and farmers, language dispersal, sedentism, diet breadth, the effects of a farming economy on fertility and health, and the importance of social or communal activities. This paper will take the lessons learned from this research in Western Europe and see how they can be used to help understand a similar process in the American Southwest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Papers in Honor of Lawrence Guy Straus

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