Because of the relatively hard conditions, the pre-Columbian people in this region developed distinct cultures and subsistence farming patterns. The region has only 120mm (4.7in) to 160mm (6.3in) of annual precipitation. The sparse rainfall feeds seasonal creeks and waterholes.[3]
The term was introduced by American anthropologist Gary Paul Nabhan in 1985,[4] building on prior work by anthropologists A. L. Kroeber and Paul Kirchhoff to identify a "true cultural entity" for the desert region. Kirchhoff first introduced the term 'Arid America' in 1954, and wrote: "I propose for that of the gatherers the name 'Arid America' and 'Arid American Culture,' and for that of the farmers 'Oasis America' and 'American Oasis Culture'".[5]
Mexican anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla notes that although the distinction between Aridoamerica and Mesoamerica is "useful for understanding the general history of precolonial Mexico," that the boundary between the two should not be conceptualized as "a barrier that separated two radically different worlds, but, rather, as a variable limit between climatic regions." The inhabitants of Aridoamerica lived on "an unstable and fluctuating frontier" and were in "constant relations with the civilizations to the south."[6]
Subsistence
Distribution of tribes called Chichimeca, ca. 1550Aridoamerica
Despite dry conditions, Aridoamerica boasts the greatest diversity of wild and domesticated tepary beans (Phaseolus acutifolius) and is a possible site of their domestication.[1]Maize cultivation reached Aridoamerica by about 2100 BCE.[8] Archaeologists disagree whether the plant was introduced by Uto-Aztecan migrants from Mesoamerica or spread either northward or southward from other groups by cultural borrowing.[8]
In Baja California, fishing and hunting provided food, as did harvesting acorns, nopal, pine nuts, and other native plants.[9]
Historically, people of Aridoamerica coppiced willows, that is, tree trunks were cut to a stump to encourage the growth of slender shoots. These willow shoots were woven tightly to produce waterproof, cooking baskets. Fire-heated rocks were plunged into a gruel in the baskets to cook.[3]
Deserts
The Chihuahuan desert terrain mainly consists of basins broken by numerous small mountain ranges.
The elevation in the Chihuahuan Desert varies from 1970 to 5500 feet, as there are several smaller mountain ranges contained in the area, namely the San Andres, Doña Anas, and Franklin Mountains. The Chihuahuan is a "rain shadow" desert, formed between two mountain ranges (the Sierra Madre Occidental on the west and the Sierra Madre Oriental on the east) which block oceanic precipitation from reaching the area.[10] The Chihuahuan Desert is considered the "most biologically diverse desert in the Western Hemisphere and one of the most diverse in the world", and includes more species of cacti than any other desert in the world.[11] The most prolific plants in this region are agave, yucca, and creosote bushes,[12] in addition to the ubiquitous presence of various cacti species.
Saguaro cactus in the Sonoran Desert.
When people think of the desert southwest, the landscape of the Sonoran Desert is what mostly comes to mind.[12] The Sonoran Desert makes up the southwestern portion of the Southwest. Rainfall averages between 4–12 inches per year, and the desert's most widely known inhabitant is the saguaro cactus, which is unique to the desert.[13][14] It is bounded on the northwest by the Mojave Desert, to the north by the Colorado Plateau and to the east by the Arizona Mountains forests and the Chihuahuan Desert.[15] Aside from the trademark saguaro, the desert has the most diverse plant life of any desert in the world,[13] and includes many other species of cacti, including the organ-pipe, senita, prickly pear, barrel, fishhook, hedgehog, cholla, silver dollar, and jojoba.[13][14]
The most northwest portion of Aridoamerica is covered by the Mojave Desert. In terms of topography, the Mojave is very similar to the Great Basin Desert, which lies just to its north.[12] The Mojave gets less than six inches of rain annually, and its elevation ranges from 3000 to 6000 feet above sea level.[16] The most prolific vegetation is the tall Joshua tree, which grow as tall as 40 feet, and are thought to live almost 1000 years.[14] Other major vegetation includes the Parry saltbush and the Mojave sage, both only found in the Mojave, as well as the creosote bush.[17]
Other reptiles in the region include lizards and turtles. Lizards are highly represented in the region, the most distinctive denizen being the Gila monster, native only to the American Southwest and the state of Sonora in Mexico. Other lizards include: Sonoran collared lizard (Crotaphytus nebrius); several types of geckos, including western banded gecko (Coleonyx variegatus), the barefoot banded gecko (Coleonyx switaki), and the Mediterranean house gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus), the latter species being non-native to the region and confined to developed areas; the desert iguana (Dipsosaurus dorsalis); the chuckwalla (Sauromalus ater); the greater earless lizard (Cophosaurus texanus scitulus); several sub-species of horned lizards (Phrynosoma); numerous species of spiny lizards (Sceloporus); Gilbert's skink (Plestiodon gilberti); the western skink (Plestiodon skiltonianus); Trans-Pecos striped whiptail (Aspidoscelis inornata heptagrammus); and the Arizona night lizard (Xantusia arizonae).[35] Turtles are less numerous than their other reptilian counterparts, but several are found in the region, including: the western painted turtle (Chrysemys picta bellii); the Rio Grande cooter (Pseudemys gorzugi); the desert box turtle (Terrapene ornata luteola); the Big Bend slider (Trachemys gaigeae gaigeae); the Sonora mud turtle (Kinosternon sonoriense); and the desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii).[36]
↑ Paul Kirchhoff, "Gatherers and farmers in the Greater Southwest: a problem in classification", in American Anthropologist, 56 (1954) (Special Southwest Issue), pp. 529–50, see map p. 544.
The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is a 98-acre zoo, aquarium, botanical garden, natural history museum, publisher, and art gallery founded in 1952. Located just west of Tucson, Arizona, it features two miles (3.2 km) of walking paths traversing 21 acres of desert landscape. It is one of the most visited attractions in Southern Arizona.
The ringtail is a mammal of the raccoon family native to arid regions of North America. It is widely distributed and well-adapted to disturbed areas. It has been legally trapped for its fur. It is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. The species is known by a variety of different names, such as ring-tailed cat, miner's cat, civet cat, and cacomistle, though the last of these can refer to B. sumichrasti.
The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacent portions of California, Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. The largest cities by metropolitan area are Phoenix, Las Vegas, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Tucson. Before 1848, in the historical region of Santa Fe de Nuevo México as well as parts of Alta California and Coahuila y Tejas, settlement was almost non-existent outside of Nuevo México's Pueblos and Spanish or Mexican municipalities. Much of the area had been a part of New Spain and Mexico until the United States acquired the area through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the smaller Gadsden Purchase in 1854.
The Sonoran Desert is a hot desert in North America and ecoregion that covers the northwestern Mexican states of Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur, as well as part of the southwestern United States. It is the hottest desert in both Mexico and the United States. It has an area of 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 sq mi).
The elf owl is a small grayish-brown owl about the size of a sparrow found in the Southwestern United States, central Mexico, and the Baja California peninsula. It has pale yellow eyes highlighted by thin white "eyebrows" and a gray bill with a horn-colored tip. The elf owl frequently inhabits woodpecker holes in saguaro cacti; it also nests in natural tree cavities. It is nocturnal and feeds primarily on insects.
Sceloporus magister, also known as the desert spiny lizard, is a lizard species of the family Phrynosomatidae, native to the Chihuahuan Desert and Sonoran Desert of North America.
The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens, formerly the Living Desert Museum, is a non-profit zoo and desert botanical garden located in Palm Desert, Riverside County, California, United States. The Living Desert is home to over 500 animals representing over 150 species and welcomes over 500,000 visitors annually. Situated in the Sonoran Desert of the Coachella Valley and Santa Rosa Mountains foothills near Palm Springs, California, The Living Desert is set on 1,200 acres, with 80 developed as zoo and gardens.
Fraxinus velutina, the velvet ash, Arizona ash or Modesto ash, is a species of Fraxinus native to southwestern North America, in the United States from southern California east to Texas, and in Mexico from northern Baja California east to Coahuila and Nuevo León.
The Colorado Desert sidewinder is a pitviper subspecies found in an area that centers on the Sonoran Colorado Desert in Southern California. It is also native to the Sonoran Desert in the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico. Like all other pitvipers, it is venomous.
The Lower Colorado River Valley (LCRV) is the river region of the lower Colorado River of the southwestern United States in North America that rises in the Rocky Mountains and has its outlet at the Colorado River Delta in the northern Gulf of California in northwestern Mexico, between the states of Baja California and Sonora. This north–south stretch of the Colorado River forms the border between the U.S. states of California/Arizona and Nevada/Arizona, and between the Mexican states of Baja California/Sonora.
Hibiscus denudatus is a perennial shrub of the mallow family, Malvaceae. It is in the rosemallow genus, Hibiscus.
The fauna of the State of California may be the most diverse in the United States of America. Of the Lower 48 conterminous states, California has the greatest diversity in climate, terrain and geology in general. The state's six life zones are the lower Sonoran (desert); upper Sonoran ; transition ; and the Canadian, Hudsonian, and Arctic zones, comprising California's highest elevations. California’s diverse geography gives rise to dozens of different ecosystems, each of which has its own unique native plants and animals. California is a huge state, the 3rd largest in the U.S., and can range broadly in habitat type.
The Indigenous peoples of the North American Southwest are those in the current states of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada in the western United States, and the states of Sonora and Chihuahua in northern Mexico. An often quoted statement from Erik Reed (1666) defined the Greater Southwest culture area as extending north to south from Durango, Mexico to Durango, Colorado and east to west from Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas, New Mexico. Other names sometimes used to define the region include "American Southwest", "Northern Mexico", "Chichimeca", and "Oasisamerica/Aridoamerica". This region has long been occupied by hunter-gatherers and agricultural people.
References
Robery A. Bye; Edelmira Linares (2007). "9". In Carrasco, David (ed.). Cave, City, and Eagle's Nest: An Interpretive Journey through the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico. pp.255–280. ISBN978-0-8263-4283-6. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
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