La Playa in the Broader Early Agricultural Period

Summary

This is an abstract from the "13,000 Years of Adaptation in the Sonoran Desert at La Playa, Sonora" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This presentation will situate La Playa site within a broader narrative of the development of the Early Agricultural period (EAP). We review evidence for the obvious parallels of technological development that occurred at La Playa and other EAP sites in both Northwest Mexico and the US Southwest. These changes are then placed in an updated reconstruction of the transmission of agricultural lifeways from Mesoamerica to the North American Southwest. We infer environmental changes during the Middle Holocene Climatic Optimum concentrated populations in the more humid uplands and margins of the North American Southwest, including a southern zone where maize cultivation was acquired. Subsequently, viable cultivation localities were occupied by the spread of proto-southern-Uto-Aztecans who eventually introduced agriculture across the North American Southwest through a combination of migration and diffusion events.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• 13,000 Years of Adaptation in the Sonoran Desert at La Playa, Sonora   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38773.0