566 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1960 



In Colombia, tlie Mornil II phase, which is represented by a stable 

 village-site area, is believed to have possessed maize [41]. 



The foregoing discussion carries the implication that village farm- 

 ing was a pattern diffused through Nuclear America from a smgle 

 area or region. Essentially, this is the point of view expressed in 

 tliis article. This is not to overlook the possibility that village agri- 

 cultural stability may have arisen independently in more than one 

 place in the New World. In fact, as I point out below, it apparently 

 did just that in the tropical forests of South America. I am of the 

 opinion, however, that in the Nuclear American zone the maize plant, 

 genetically developed and economically successful, became the vital 

 element in a village-farming way of life that subsequently spread as 

 a complex. For the present, I would hazard the guess that this com- 

 plex developed ui southern Middle America and from there spread 

 northward to Mexico and southward as far as Peru. This was, in a 

 sense, its primary diltusion or spread. Aftervv'ard, there were sec- 

 ondary diif usions to other parts of the Americas. 



THE VILLAGE IN NON-NUCLEAR AMERICA 



These secondary disseminations of the Nuclear American pattern 

 of village farming were responsible for the establislmient of similar 

 commmiities in areas such as southwestern North America, the south- 

 em Andes, lowland tropical South America, and the eastern wood- 

 lands of North America (see figs. 1-3). This process was relatively 

 simple in southwestern North America and the southern Andes. The 

 agricultural patterns were diffused to, or carried and supermiposed 

 upon, peoples with food-coUectmg economies of limited efficiency. 

 In the Southwest, village farming and ceramics hrst appear at about 

 the same time in such cultures as the Valiki, the MogoUon I, and 

 the Basketmaker [2, pp. 151-155]. This was between 200 B.C. and 

 A.D. 300. Moving from the south, the village-farming pattern pushed 

 as far as the Fremont culture [61] of the northern periphery of the 

 Southwest. In the southern Andes there is, as yet, no good hint of 

 an early incipient-cultivation tradition, and, apparently, pottery and 

 agriculture arrive at about the same time, integrated as a village- 

 farming complex. This flow of migration or diffusion was from 

 Peru-Bolivia southward. Pichalo I [30] of northern Chile marks 

 such an introduction, as do the earliest of the Barreales phases [62] 

 in northwest Argentina. The time is about the beginning of the 

 Christian Era. Beyond the southern Andes the village-farming pat- 

 tern did not diffuse onto the plains of the pampas or Patagonia. 



The relationship of Nuclear American village farming to the tropi- 

 cal lowlands of South America was nuich more complex. There tlie 

 maize-farming pattern was projected into an area in which village 



