Negotiating community and household interests in early irrigation communities of the Sonoran Desert
Keywords:
Early Agricultural period, mortuary feature, irrigation communities.Abstract
Early Agricultural period (circa 2100 B.C.-A.D. 50) archaeological sites embody the transition from foraging to the establishment of permanent, irrigation-based agricultural villages in the Sonoran Desert region of the southwest US/northwest Mexico. Developing concepts of corporate organization would have created a need for mediating social identities and interests between lineages and the community, and mortuary practices provide one mechanism likely employed to mitigate social tensions among households. Early Agricultural period normative mortuary practices are largely characterized by single, flexed primary inhumation with limited funerary objects and little apparent expression of social di?erentiation. The performance of mortuary rituals contributing to these material patterns likely functioned to incorporate a shared community identity, while placement within sites legitimized household interests through descent and inheritance. However, some variability is also observed throughout the period, including numerous body configurations, multiple burials, and cremation and could reflect the expression of personal social identities and/or di?erent cosmological dogma.
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