Distance in Space and Time: Issues with a Mortuary Database of the First Farmers in the Southern Southwest

Author(s): James Watson

Year: 2011

Summary

This paper describes issues associated with the construction of a biocultural database from samples of the earliest farmers from the southern Southwest and northwest Mexico. Currently over a dozen archaeological sites dating to the Early Agricultural period (circa 1,600 B.C.-A.D. 150) have produced a large sample of mortuary features (n = 431). These samples, and thereby the data, face unique challenges in interpretation compared to similar large data sets in that the materials (sites, features, and individuals) are geographically and temporally distant from each other; they are separated by over 150 linear miles and span almost 2,000 years of cultural development.

INTRODUCTION

Cite this Record

Distance in Space and Time: Issues with a Mortuary Database of the First Farmers in the Southern Southwest. James Watson. Presented at 76th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Sacramento. 2011 ( tDAR id: 5952) ; doi:10.6067/XCV8PN94H1

Keywords

Culture
Early Agricultural

Material
Ceramic • Chipped Stone • Ground Stone • Human Remains • Shell

Site Name
Clearwater • Coffee Camp • Donaldson • La Playa • Las Capas • Los Ojitos • Los Pozos • Pantano • Rillito Fan • Santa Cruz Bend • Stone Pipe • Valley Farms • Wetlands

Site Type
Agricultural Field or Field Feature • Agricultural or Herding • Canal or Canal Feature • Domestic Structure or Architectural Complex • Funerary and Burial Structures or Features • Pit House / Earth Lodge • Settlements • Water Control Feature

Investigation Types
Bioarchaeological Research • Collections Research • Methodology, Theory, or Synthesis

Geographic Keywords
Cienaga Creek • northern Sonora • Sonoran Desert • southeastern Arizona • Tucson Basin

Temporal Keywords
Cienaga phase • Early Agricultural period • San Pedro phase

Temporal Coverage

Calendar Date: -1600 to 150

Spatial Coverage

min long: -111.709; min lat: 29.573 ; max long: -109.182; max lat: 32.408 ;

File Information

  Name Size Creation Date Date Uploaded Access
watson_early-ag-period-in-sonoran-desert_distance-in-space-and... 262.15kb Mar 13, 2011 8:03:06 PM Public