Fishes Swimming in the Magdalena River. Villages and Summit Features in the Middle Magdalena Valley, Northwest Sonora

Summary

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 El Cerro Phase (A.D. 1300-1450). Summit rock rings are the main architectural feature. El Cerro Phase in the middle Magdalena Valley is marked by the occupancy of Cerro de Trincheras; trincheras sites are more numerous and widespread than Early Ceramic sites. El Cerro Phase sites had corrales with a standardized form which denotes replication and institutionalization of specialized functions, creating a network of integrative trincheras nodes that increasingly interlinked populations. The Fishes interpret summit compounds at Sonora and Arizona as ideologically significant features and move into ethnography for plausible frameworks for testing interpretations. I will discuss if summit structures are a trans-regional phenomenon that include concepts taken by Northwest/Southwest societies who incorporate them in their own traditions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Regional to International Collaborations in American Archaeology: The Legacy of Suzanne Fish and Paul Fish

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14633