Defining the Jocome and Their “Gifts of Little Value”

Abstract

Many mobile hunter-gatherer-raiders were identified in what is now southern Arizona, New Mexico, and in northern Sonora and Chihuahua by Spanish chroniclers at and long after first contact. Despite their ubiquity, most have yet to be identified. The Jocome—a group that featured prominently in fifteenth- through eighteenth-century regional politics—were among these and until recently little has been known about them except for a few documentary references between 1540 and the mid-1700s. Sustained archaeological investigations have isolated a material culture signature within the Jocome heartland in southern Arizona, revealing a range of site types with distinctive evidence that represents a variant of the Canutillo complex. Until groups like the Jocome that were influential in their time are incorporated into our discussions we will not fully understand the reorganizational processes of the late prehistoric period.