Agriculture in the prehistoric Southwest

Agriculture in the prehistoric Southwest describes the agricultural practices of the Native Americans inhabiting the American Southwest, which includes the states of Arizona and New Mexico plus portions of surrounding states and neighboring Mexico. Maize (corn) was the dominant crop. Introduced from Mesoamerica, it was first cultivated in the Southwest about 2100 BCE. Sedentary cultures based on farming developed afterwards including the Hohokam, Mogollon, Ancestral Puebloans, and Patayan. Due to a deficiency in precipitation throughout the region, irrigation and several techniques of water harvesting and conservation were essential for successful agriculture.

Although it is possible that Indians grew several native plants such as gourds and chenopods at very early dates, the first evidence of maize cultivation in the Southwest dates from about 2100 BCE. Small, primitive maize cobs have been found at five different sites in New Mexico and Arizona. The climatic range of the sites is wide as they range from the Tucson basin in the Arizona desert, at an elevation of 700 m (2300 ft), to a rocky cave on the Colorado plateau at 2200 m (7200 ft). That suggests that the primitive maize they grew was already adapted to being grown in both hot and dry and short-season climates.

Maize reached the Southwest via an unknown route from Mexico. Its diffusion was relatively rapid. One theory is that the maize cultivation was carried northward from central Mexico by migrating farmers, most likely speakers of a Uto-Aztecan language. Another theory, more accepted among scholars, is that maize was diffused northward from group to group rather than migrants. The first cultivation of maize in the Southwest came during a climatic period when precipitation was relatively high. Although maize cultivation spread rapidly in the Southwest, the hunter-gatherers living in the region did not immediately adopt it as their primary source of nutrition, but rather integrated maize cultivation as one element, initially a minor element, in their foraging strategy. Hunter-gatherers usually exploit a broad spectrum of food sources to minimize risk in the event that one or more of their principal sources of food fails.

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