Beyond Water Harvesting: A Soil Hydrology Perspective on Traditional Southwestern Agricultural Technology

This article presents a hypothetical, general model that describes the processes involved in one aspect of traditional Southwestern agriculture: the interactions between soil hydrology and farming technology. In conjunction with extensive participation in hand cultivation with Hopi farmers, studies of soil hydrologic processes in Hopi maize fields have identified hydrological processes directly linked to Hopi field location criteria and farming practices. Field location criteria select for locations where soil textures and soil profile heterogeneity control rates of moisture infiltration, as well as loss to runoff, bare soil evaporation, and drainage. Farming practices, including clearing, maintenance, plant spacing, seed depth, and planting pit morphology, operate in conjunction with soil profile attributes to increase the amount of moisture available to plants and the mobility of that moisture. Effects of both soil profile attributes and farming practices are integrated into the discrete soil volume model of hydrologic processes occurring in the basic unit of Hopi farming, the individual plant clump. This information provides basic insights on ways archaeologists might evaluate the productive potentials of soils, the extent of farmable land around prehistoric communities, and the ranges of climate conditions that permit crop growth on that land.