shall emphasize what we know of the subsistence and 
domesticated plants utilized, with only a mention of the 
more diagnostic artifact types. 
The people of the Infiernillo Phase were nomadic 
family bands of wild plant collectors who did some hunt- 
ing. Nevertheless, they utilized the domesticated gourd 
(Lagenaria siceraria) and the pumpkin (Cucurbita Pepo). 
The seeds of the pumpkin, however, are extremely small 
and it must have been close to the hypothetical wild 
form if it were not actually wild. Other plants collected, 
which could have been domesticated, included runner 
beans, chili pepper and opuntia. These species, however, 
represented only a small portion of the diet which was 
composed mainly of a wide assortment of wild plants. 
Among the distinctive artifacts we might list Fuegian 
nets, loop-twine and Fuegian baskets, flake choppers, 
pebble smoothers, checker-woven mats with oblique 
corners, short incipient contracting-stemmed and small 
diamond-shaped projectile points, fire tongs and digging 
sticks. We could further enumerate a number of more 
general cultural traits such as several kinds of choppers, 
side scrapers and scraping planes, round-based points and 
knives, atlat] and dart fragments, twilled mats and dif- 
ferent kinds of string with various knots in them. 
Ocampo had more foodstuffs and many more artifacts. 
The people of this stage were semi-nomadic plant collec- 
tors who did a little hunting and who gained asmall part 
of their sustenance from domesticated plants. Their in- 
cipient agriculture included pumpkins (Cucurbita Pepo), 
gourds (Lagenaria siceraria), common beans (Phaseolus 
vulgaris) of two varieties, chili peppers (Capsicum) and, 
possibly, corn. We say ‘‘possibly corn,’’ because, al- 
though we found no cobs or kernels in the refuse, an 
examination of feces from these levels revealed minute 
particles of cobs and leaves. This discovery suggests that 
[ 35 | 
