VIM. PIMAN INDIANS OF THE SONORAN DESERT
491
There are, as a matter of fact, abundant data bearing on man in the
desert. Except for studies of the effects of aridity on man's physiological
system, however, most such efforts address themselves to the interrelationship between man and desert in only a secondary way. There are ethnohistoric and ethnographic accounts of virtually every extant culture in the
world, including those of desert-dwelling pastoralists, hunting and gathering nomads, gardeners, dry farmers, and irrigation agriculturalists [see
Murdock (1967) for a list of the world's cultures and their salient ethnographic features]. For more than six decades archaeologists have been
plumbing the depths of desert sands from the tells of Egypt to the trash
mounds of southern Arizona. Yet, this work has been done by students
and scholars in the same way, and for the same reasons thought has been
directed toward the study of man throughout the world in all environments.
The focus of ethnologists has been on man; it has been secondarily on
the desert if the men under consideration happened to live in one. Studies
of the aboriginal cultures of Australia, for example, would have been carried out even were all of Australia's climate a tropical one.
At the moment, there is no single source, nor is there any convenient
group of sources, to which one may turn to obtain a world-wide overview
of the variability of human cultures whose native locus is the desert. Nor
is there even a simple listing of the world's deserts naming the peoples
native to those deserts. If there is, at least, I have been unable to find
it. This provides a thought-provoking picture of the status of our knowledge of man in arid lands.
B. SONORAN DESERT STUDIES
The Sonoran Desert is an area of about 250,000 km
2
lying in southwestern Arizona, southeastern California, western Sonora, and northeastern Baja California (Dunbier, 1968). Some investigators would add the
whole of central Baja California and another 50,000 km
2
to this figure
(Shreve and Wiggins, 1964, p. 12).
Most research efforts involving the Sonoran Desert have been carried
out at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The university is situated
within this desert near its eastern boundary.
A recently published bibliography of arid-lands research conducted at
the University of Arizona between 1891 and 1965 contains 1609 references arranged under 17 topical subheadings. One of these, "Ancient and
Modern Peoples and Land Use," has a mere 47 entries, and the criterion
for their selection was clearly man's use of land rather than his total involvement with it (Paylore, 1966).
491
There are, as a matter of fact, abundant data bearing on man in the
desert. Except for studies of the effects of aridity on man's physiological
system, however, most such efforts address themselves to the interrelationship between man and desert in only a secondary way. There are ethnohistoric and ethnographic accounts of virtually every extant culture in the
world, including those of desert-dwelling pastoralists, hunting and gathering nomads, gardeners, dry farmers, and irrigation agriculturalists [see
Murdock (1967) for a list of the world's cultures and their salient ethnographic features]. For more than six decades archaeologists have been
plumbing the depths of desert sands from the tells of Egypt to the trash
mounds of southern Arizona. Yet, this work has been done by students
and scholars in the same way, and for the same reasons thought has been
directed toward the study of man throughout the world in all environments.
The focus of ethnologists has been on man; it has been secondarily on
the desert if the men under consideration happened to live in one. Studies
of the aboriginal cultures of Australia, for example, would have been carried out even were all of Australia's climate a tropical one.
At the moment, there is no single source, nor is there any convenient
group of sources, to which one may turn to obtain a world-wide overview
of the variability of human cultures whose native locus is the desert. Nor
is there even a simple listing of the world's deserts naming the peoples
native to those deserts. If there is, at least, I have been unable to find
it. This provides a thought-provoking picture of the status of our knowledge of man in arid lands.
B. SONORAN DESERT STUDIES
The Sonoran Desert is an area of about 250,000 km
2
lying in southwestern Arizona, southeastern California, western Sonora, and northeastern Baja California (Dunbier, 1968). Some investigators would add the
whole of central Baja California and another 50,000 km
2
to this figure
(Shreve and Wiggins, 1964, p. 12).
Most research efforts involving the Sonoran Desert have been carried
out at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The university is situated
within this desert near its eastern boundary.
A recently published bibliography of arid-lands research conducted at
the University of Arizona between 1891 and 1965 contains 1609 references arranged under 17 topical subheadings. One of these, "Ancient and
Modern Peoples and Land Use," has a mere 47 entries, and the criterion
for their selection was clearly man's use of land rather than his total involvement with it (Paylore, 1966).