Gradual Change in a Transitional Time: Comparing Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Households in Sonora’s Altar Valley

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Trincheras tradition spanned north-central Sonora and extreme southern Arizona from approximately 400 to 1450 CE. Since the 1970s, archaeologists have argued that dramatic transformations around 1300 CE impacted the Trincheras heartland. This transformation, known as the Realito phase, included the migration of Papaguerían Hohokam into the region, the adoption of new cultural practices and trade networks, and an end to local decorated ceramic manufacture. This poster compares ceramic, paleoethnobotanical, and ground and flaked stone tool data from dated pithouses at two Altar Valley sites, El Poporo and La Potranca. We use this data to argue that migrations into the Altar Valley occurred gradually over multiple generations. The late thirteenth to early fourteenth century was also a dynamic period for experimentation with new foods and cultural practices. This study contributes to the growing literature on migration studies across the late precolonial Southwest/Northwest. Furthermore, this household-scale comparison offers a much-needed, nuanced, perspective into daily life within the Trincheras heartland.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51180