The Origin of the Sonoyta Townsite, Sonora, Mexico

Ives, Ronald

Archaeological investigation in the vicinity of Sonoyta, Sonora, Mexico, an oasis and crossroads settlement on the south bank of th Sonoyta River, a spring-fed desert stream that parallels the Arizona-Sonora boundary for some mile, discloses plentiful evidence of a lengthy and probably continuous occupation of the area by a tool-using agricultural people. The first serious studies of artifacts, gathered during the last thiry years, were almost entirely of the so called Hohokam type, and mostly of local material, such as greenstone, were made by Lumholtz whoe extensive collection from the Sonoyta Valley in now in the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. Recently, fragments of several human skeletons have been found in adobe pits near the town. These bones, unfossilized and less well preserved than some known to have been buried in 1751, tell little per se, but their stratigraphic location indicates that they are of no great antiquity, and that a dating of pre-1698, the date of the founding of the San Marzelo Sonoitac Mission by Fr. Eusebio Kino, and not pre-Hohokam, is within reason. Physiographic, paleoclimatic, and archaeologic evidence all indicate that the thick deposit of artifact-bearing sediments, here named the Sonoyta Formation, is of no great antiquity. Paleoclimatic evidence indicates that the absolute maximum age of the formation is of the order of 4000 years.

The Origin of the Sonoyta Townsite, Sonora, Mexico

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