Gendered Logistic Mobility Among the Earliest Farmers in the Sonoran Desert

Abstract

Archaeological evidence suggests that early farmers in the Sonoran Desert practiced a mixed subsistence strategy that likely involved logistical foraging by a segment of the population to supplement agricultural investments on the floodplains. Patterned differences in labor investments in archaeological populations can often be extrapolated by comparing cross-sectional geometry in long bones, which can vary as a result of repetitive behaviors. We compare cross-sectional geometry (dimensions) of the femur between site location, archaeological phase, and by sex (males vs. females) in a series of skeletal samples from the Early Agricultural period (2100 B.C.—A.D. 50) to test the hypothesis that males exhibit greater anterior-posterior dimensions of the femur midshaft compared to females. We found that the cross-sectional geometry of the femur is significantly different between the sexes, indicating that males participated in foraging forays more frequently than females, and we suggest that these early farmers employed a gendered logistic mobility strategy. These differences reflect a continued investment in foraged resources (subsistence and materials) during the Early Agricultural period in the Sonoran Desert and have important implications for the division of labor and the construction of gender roles among these communities.