In Hinterlands to Cities, Matthew C. Pailes and Michael T. Searcy offer an accessible and up-to-date overview of the archaeology of northwest Mexico: Sonora, Chihuahua, and the northern portions of Sinaloa and Durango. They explicitly approach the region as an entity unto itself, rather than one defined in comparison to the adjacent and much more intensively studied southwestern United States to the north and Mesoamerica to the south. A brief introduction is followed by chapters that focus on different intervals, beginning with one addressing the Paleoindian period and one devoted to both the Archaic and Early Agricultural periods. The authors then examine the archaeology of the precolonial Ceramic period in three chapters. The first of these focuses on the origins and development of the major regional traditions. In the second, the authors discuss research on exchange and warfare. In the third, they consider models of religious ideology. These two thematic chapters focus on the period after AD 1000 and before the coming of Spaniards to Mexico. The book's final chapter covers the archaeology of the colonial period. This is followed by references cited (this section itself is an excellent resource) and an index.
In their introductory chapter, the authors review the history and current status of research in their study area, including its intellectual traditions, and present basic information on its ecology, topography, and cultural geography. They make the important point that long-held conceptions of the Mexican Northwest as a “borderland” and other factors have led to a lack of research, and they underscore the critical importance of developing the basic culture histories that underlie higher-level inferences. At the same time, they rightly point to “an intellectual dynamism [in the Mexican Northwest] lacking in many parts of North America” (p. 10).
In each of the temporally focused chapters that follow, the authors provide a brief synopsis of current knowledge and highlight key sites and relevant research programs. Most chapters also include discussions of data strengths and weaknesses at both the regional and subregional levels, prevailing thought about important topics, and controversies. The two chapters focused on the preceramic occupation end with astute considerations of priorities for future research, as does the final chapter, which addresses the colonial period.
In Chapter 4, the first of the triad devoted to the precolonial Ceramic period, Pailes and Searcy describe seven “cultural areas”—Trincheras, Comca'ac, Huatabampo, Serrana, Río Sonora, Casas Grandes, and Loma San Gabriel—and briefly mention the Aztatlán phenomenon, which they define as “a suite of material cultural traditions associated with the northernmost Mesoamerican groups in West Mexico” (p. 76). Each cultural area is characterized in terms of subsistence and settlement patterns, domestic and ceremonial architecture, ceramics, and burial traditions, where available data allow. This chapter also includes an important treatment of models connecting ancient groups in the study area with modern ethnolinguistic communities, a theme revisited in the book's final chapter.
Chapter 5, which focuses on exchange and warfare, and Chapter 6, which addresses religious ideology, both include brief but adept discussions of the theory and method underpinning studies of these topics. As noted by the authors, theoretical foci differ over time and across space among researchers, and this is reflected in an emphasis on recently generated data from the west side of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Chapter 5 and recently generated data from the east side of the mountains in Chapter 6. Both chapters, however, include substantial treatments of Paquimé and the Casas Grandes world. A key strength of this book is the authors’ critical analyses of models of Paquimé's rise to prominence.
In Chapter 7, Pailes and Searcy present a brief sketch of the region's colonial period archaeological resources, including missions, presidios, mines and mining camps, and the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. They identify two dominant research foci associated with this interval: reconstructing aspects of the colonial economy in the larger context of Spanish hegemony and attempts to identify places, the remains of individual people (e.g., Padre Eusebio Kino), and ethnolinguistic groups mentioned in early colonial period documents.
The authors of Hinterlands to Cities are to be commended for producing a book of such impressive scope, in terms of time and space, that is both authoritative and approachable. They strike the right balance between generalization and detail, deftly shifting scale when necessary and accomplishing their goals with only 172 pages of text. I enthusiastically recommend this volume to all researchers working in the southwestern United States, the Mexican Northwest, and adjacent regions.
