Early Farmers of the Sonoran Desert

A collection of scholarly papers tells the story of the Sonoran Desert's earliest farmers through archaeological evidence gained at the Houghton Road site, located in the eastern Tucson Basin of southern Arizona. The unusual architecture, material culture, mortuary practices, and subsistence remains are used to explore the little known Early Formative period, and the data indicates an indigenous farming culture that was fundamentally distinct from the later and better known Hohokam culture that has dominated archaeological thought about the desert Southwest.