Traditional Arid Lands Agriculture

Understanding the Past for the Future
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8165-4244-4
Verlag: University of Arizona Press

Buch, Englisch, 392 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 513 g

Traditional Arid Lands Agriculture is the first of its kind. Each chapter considers four questions: what we don't know about specific aspects of traditional agriculture, why we need to know more, how we can know more, and what research questions can be pursued to know more. What is known is presented to provide context for what is unknown.

Traditional agriculture, nonindustrial plant cultivation for human use, is practiced worldwide by millions of smallholder farmers in arid lands. Advancing an understanding of traditional agriculture can improve its practice and contribute to understanding the past. Traditional agriculture has been practiced in the U.S. Southwest and northwest Mexico for at least four thousand years and intensely studied for at least one hundred years. What is not known or well-understood about traditional arid lands agriculture in this region has broad application for research, policy, and agricultural practices in arid lands worldwide.

The authors represent the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology, agronomy, art, botany, geomorphology, paleoclimatology, and pedology. This multidisciplinary book will engage students, practitioners, scholars, and any interested in understanding and advancing traditional agriculture.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ingram, Scott E

Hunt, Robert C

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie des Brauchtums und der Traditionen
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Trockengebiete und Wüsten
• Naturwissenschaften Agrarwissenschaften Agrarwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction. Traditional Arid Lands Agriculture: Known Unknowns, Scott E. Ingram and Robert C. Hunt
- 1. The Archaeology and Agronomy of Ancient Maize (Zea mays L.), Karen R. Adams
- 2. Agricultural Soils of the Prehistoric Southwest: Known Unknowns, Jonathan Sandor and Jeffrey A. Homburg
- 3. Defining the Environmental Context of Indigenous Agriculture in the Southwest: What We Don't Know about Middle to Late Holocene Climate Change and Floodplain Dynamics, Gary Huckleberry
- 4. Human Vulnerability to Dry Periods, Scott E. Ingram
- 5. Estimates of Prehistoric Irrigated Field Crop Productivity: Sonoran Desert, Robert C. Hunt
- 6. The Impact of Flooding on Hohokam Canal Irrigation Agriculture, Kyle Woodson
- 7. Water Fight: Archaeology, Litigation, and the Assessment of Precontact Canal Irrigation Technologies in the Northern Rio Grande Region, Michael Adler
- 8. Rain-Fed Farming and Settlement Aggregation: Reflections from Chihuahua, Mexico, Robert J. Hard, William L. Merrill, A. C. MacWilliams, John R. Roney, Jacob C. Freeman, and Karen R. Adams
- 9. The Archaeology of Ruderal Agriculture, Alan P. Sullivan III
- 10. Understanding the Agricultural Consequences of Aggregation, Suzanne K. Fish and Paul R. Fish
- 11. Precontact Agriculture in Northern New Mexico, Richard I. Ford and Roxanne Swentzell
- 12. What More We Need to Know about 'Southwestern' Agriculture, Paul E. Minnis
- Contributors
- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Scott E. Ingram is a senior lecturer of anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he investigates human vulnerability to climate change, social and ecological sustainability, and long-term human and environmental interactions. 
 
Robert C. Hunt is a professor emeritus of anthropology at Brandeis University, where he researches economic and social structure and dynamics in human societies, with an emphasis on agriculture, irrigation, and systems of exchange.