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. 2009 Dec 15;106(50):21019-26.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.0906075106. Epub 2009 Dec 7.

The diffusion of maize to the southwestern United States and its impact

William L Merrill  1 , Robert J Hard, Jonathan B Mabry, Gayle J Fritz, Karen R Adams, John R Roney, A C MacWilliams
Affiliations

The diffusion of maize to the southwestern United States and its impact

William L Merrill et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

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 approximately 6900 cal. B.C. and the dispersal of maize agriculture from Mesoamerica to the US Southwest via group-to-group diffusion across a Southern Uto-Aztecan linguistic continuum.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Principal early maize sites and proposed Proto-Uto-Aztecan homeland before breakup.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

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