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This study concentrates upon the distribution and possible developmental sequence of maize agriculture in the northern Southwest, and its significance for Fremont cultural dynamics. Attention is focused upon the corn known as Fremont Dent, which was one of the main forms of maize raised by the peoples of the Fremont culture. Of particular interest is maize material from the Evans Mound, Grantsville, and Nine Mile Canyon Fremont sites, which demonstrates a pattern of regional distribution within the Fremont culture area. Also of importance is the corn from Clydes Cavern, a well-stratified dry cave in east-central Utah. A large collection of corn was recovered from this site which broadens our knowledge of the forms, origins, and economic relations of the Fremont corn complex.

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Dietary and paleoecological data from the Clydes Cavern site has provided information concerning man's adaptations in a desert environment. Moreover, this information reveals certain of the processes involved in the Archaic-Fremont transition in Utah, especially as this transition relates to the utilization of wild grass seeds and the introduction and development of maize horticulture. Although horticulture and wild plant collecting were practiced during the Archaic inhabitation of the site, the coprolite sequence and the alluvial chronology suggest that a greater dependence upon these subsystems developed in a Fremont context, possibly in association with a period of improving alluvial conditions. During the Fremont occupation, the site seems to have functioned as a farming and collecting station within a larger system of regional adaptation.

Dietary, paleoclimatic, and ethnohistoric evidence indicates that alterations in regional systems of exploitation and selective pressures were associated with the diffusion of farming in unrelated periods of Southwestern and Great Basin cultural development. Artifacts and coprolite/macrofloral remains from the Clydes Cavern and Hogup Cave Fremont sites suggest that the spread of maize farming coincided with: (a) the development of grass collecting; (bj the expansion of a grassland environment; (c) outside cultural contacts; and (dj genetic modifications in corn. Ethnohistoric evidence indicates that the diffusion ofNuma horticulture in the early historic period also occurred in a context of environmental change. However, unlike the Fremont example in which natural environmental modifications were present, the spread of Numa farming occurred as a result of disruptions to the native plant communities and the seed gathering cycle caused by external cultural pressures. Both examples demonstrate that while the specific reasons for the adoption and growth of farming differed depending upon the regional situation, the overall pattern of horticultural diffusion in the Southwest and Great Basin may have been favored by selective pressures involving environmental alteration, population expansion and contact influences.