6 
SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 146 
by way of the central plateau into the Anasazi area, and the eastern 
complex moving out of Guatemala along the east coast and into the 
Caddo area. 
Northern Mexico was apparently on the receiving end in matters 
pertaining to the acceptance and development of domesticated plants, 
which were derived from various places and at different times in the 
historical continuum of the zone. One thing we are fairly certain of 
is that in northern Mexico, as in the rest of the New World, the 
shift from food gathering to food production, wherein man changed 
from living with his environment to living off of his environment, was 
a long, slow process. Many of the indigenes of the area never did 
achieve or accept a state of stable food production, save in some of 
the lusher river valleys, and then not until comparatively late in time. 
There are many impressive questions which remain to be answered. 
One is, whether roots and other tubers or seed plants were the first 
to catch the eye of the food gatherer. 
MAN AS A SOIL PARASITE 
NUCLEAR FAMILY FORMATIVE VILLAGE FARMING COMMUNITIES 
BEARING PLAINWARE POTTERY (a.D. 1-500) 
Villages similar in form and content to the earlier desert culture 
save for the addition of simple brown-and-red wares have been de- 
scribed as forming the ceramic base of the Mogollon Culture ( Martin 
et al., 1952). The Pinelawn Phase of the Mogollon; the Penasco 
Phase of the Ootam at the San Simon Village (Sayles, 1945, pp. 
5-15), and the Vahki Phase of the Snaketown chronology (Gladwin 
et al., 1937) imply that sometime after agriculture became a set 
economic pattern, ceramics were introduced into the widespread des- 
ert cultures. This cultural trait probably originated somewhere in 
Mesoamerica. 
One of the difficulties in carrying on a search for old plainware 
sites in northern Mexico is that although a number of ruins bearing 
only brown-and-red wares in association with crude house structures 
have been reported (Amsden, 1928), they cannot be placed in time 
because such ruins can appear at both ends of the ceramic contin- 
uum. Sites of this type were probably occupied through Sonora and 
parts of Sinaloa, as well as Coahuila and Durango when the Spanish 
made their initial contacts. It is believed that such an early ceramic 
phase did exist in Chihuahua (Lister et al., 1958, p. 110) and Du- 
rango, as well as along the Conchos River (Kelley, 1954, pp. 172- 
179). If the Valley of Mexico was the original source for ceramics, 
as suggested by a similarity between the first known Mogollon ce- 
