Our understanding of the initial period of agriculture in the southwestern United States has been transformed by recent discoveries that establish the presence of maize there by 2100 cal. B.C. (calibrated calendrical years before the Christian era) and document the processes by which it was integrated into local foraging economies. Here we review archaeological, paleoecological, linguistic, and genetic data to evaluate the hypothesis that Proto-Uto-Aztecan (PUA) farmers migrating from a homeland in Mesoamerica introduced maize agriculture to the region. We conclude that this hypothesis is untenable and that the available data indicate instead a Great Basin homeland for the PUA, the breakup of this speech community into northern and southern divisions Ϸ6900 cal. B.C. and the dispersal of maize agriculture from Mesoamerica to the US Southwest via group-to-group diffusion across a Southern UtoAztecan linguistic continuum.early agriculture ͉ migration ͉ US Southwest ͉ Mesoamerica ͉ Uto-Aztecan

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Hard, Robert J.; Fox, Anne A.; Cox, I. Waynne; Gross, Kevin J.; Meissner, Barbara A.; Mendez, Guillermo I.; Tennis, Cynthia L.; and

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A truism in anthropology is that hunters and gatherers are mobile and agriculturalists are sedentary. Factors affecting residential mobility are examined using data from a Rarámuri (Tarahumara) community of residentially mobile agriculturalists in northern Mexico who move among principal residences, growing‐season residences associated with distant fields, winter locations, and a ceremonial center. This case indicates that the unilineal model from mobile hunting and gathering to sedentary agriculture must be broadened and that economic factors alone do not totally determine settlement patterns. Explanatory models related to the causes of sedentism are considered.