Landscape and Agriculture in the Bears Ears Formative

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For non-industrial communities, subsistence strategies are tightly constrained by ecological factors. Prehistoric peoples in the Bears Ears area were entirely dependent upon maize—a cultivar adapted to low-altitude, subtropical conditions in Mesoamerica—by at least 400 BC. Given the differences in altitude and aridity compared with its point of origin, successful maize farming in southeast Utah relied heavily on detailed and thorough knowledge of the local environment. Ongoing research in settlement patterns and water chemistry throughout the Bears Ears area has revealed shifting strategies by Ancestral Pueblo maize farmers that demonstrate precise articulation with shifting climatic factors through time across the landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23628