South of the border, a spectacular range of ancient volcanoes rises from the desert floor just a few miles from the Sea of Cortez. Virtually untraveled, the Sierra Pinacate in northwestern Mexico beckons adventurers and scientists. Here, in words and pictures, is a remarkable introduction to this place of almost surreal beauty. Sometimes veiled in clouds or dust storms, the Pinacate have long been shrouded in mystery as well. From prehistoric times until today, people of Sonora have told tales of giants, men and animals, bottomless pits, endless tunnels, hostile Indians, smoking caverns, and ever-present dangers found in the Pinacate. This book takes readers deep into the heart of this fascinating area. Julian Hayden, who worked and traveled in the Pinacate for four decades, introduces the natural history, archaeology, geology, and human history of the area. Spectacular color photographs by Jack Dykinga capture the magic and the isolation of this stunning region. Hayden's text is presented in both English and Spanish. The Mexican government has already declared the Pinacate an officially protected biosphere reserve; still pending is its inclusion in the Man and the Biosphere program of the United Nations. More than a natural history, The Sierra Pinacate is an elegant appreciation of a place of wonder.

South of the border, a spectacular range of ancient volcanoes rises from the desert floor just a few miles from the Sea of Cortez. Virtually untraveled, the Sierra Pinacate in northwestern Mexico beckons adventurers and scientists. Here, in words and pictures, is a remarkable introduction to this place of almost surreal beauty. Sometimes veiled in clouds or dust storms, the Pinacate have long been shrouded in mystery as well. From prehistoric times until today, people of Sonora have told tales of giants, men and animals, bottomless pits, endless tunnels, hostile Indians, smoking caverns, and ever-present dangers found in the Pinacate. This book takes readers deep into the heart of this fascinating area. Julian Hayden, who worked and traveled in the Pinacate for four decades, introduces the natural history, archaeology, geology, and human history of the area. Spectacular color photographs by Jack Dykinga capture the magic and the isolation of this stunning region. Hayden's text is presented in both English and Spanish. The Mexican government has already declared the Pinacate an officially protected biosphere reserve; still pending is its inclusion in the Man and the Biosphere program of the United Nations. More than a natural history, The Sierra Pinacate is an elegant appreciation of a place of wonder.

From the Pinacate lava fields and expansive dunes to the shores of the Gulf of California, the Gran Desierto is one of the hottest and driest places in the Western Hemisphere. Yet this region in the state of Sonora in northwestern Mexico embraces a remarkable number of habitats with a fascinating and surprisingly rich flora. This is the heart of the Sonoran Desert, still in a largely primordial state, in juxtaposition with the ravished wetlands of the once great Río Colorado. Flora of the Gran Desierto is the culmination of more than twenty-five years of research in this magnificent desert and delta by botanist Richard Felger. This comprehensive floristic study of more than 565 species of vascular plants features original diagnostic descriptions and innovative identification keys to the families, genera, and species. Particular attention has been devoted to taxa that are poorly known. Even weeds and their histories are treated in detail. Hundreds of illustrations by such eminent botanical artists as Lucretia Brezeale Hamilton, Matt Johnson, and Bobbi Angell will aid in the identification of plants. Common names of plants are given in English, Spanish, and O'odham. While emphasizing scientific accuracy, the book is written in an accessible style. Felger's observations and knowledge of plant ecology, geographic distribution, evolution, ethnobotany, plant variation and special adaptations, and the history of the region provides botanists, naturalists, ecologists, conservationists, and anyone else celebrating the desert with readable, interesting, and important information. With two of Mexico's newest biosphere reserves—the Pinacate and the Upper Gulf of California—this region is a keystone for desert conservation efforts. Its location linking vast preserves to the north makes this book especially useful for anyone interested in borderland studies and the Sonoran Desert. Flora of the Gran Desierto represents a most creative, definitive, and enthusiastic treatment of Sonoran Desert plant life and is highly relevant to ecological restoration in deserts and wetlands in arid places worldwide.

Field Man is the captivating memoir of renowned southwestern archaeologist Julian Dodge Hayden, a man who held no professional degree or faculty position but who camped and argued with a who's who of the discipline, including Emil Haury, Malcolm Rogers, Paul Ezell, and Norman Tindale. This is the personal story of a blue-collar scholar who bucked the conventional thinking on the antiquity of man in the New World, who brought a formidable pragmatism and "hand sense" to the identification of stone tools, and who is remembered as the leading authority on the prehistory of the Sierra Pinacate in northwestern Mexico. But Field Man is also an evocative recollection of a bygone time and place, a time when archaeological trips to the Southwest were "expeditions," when a man might run a Civilian Conservation Corps crew by day and study the artifacts of ancient peoples by night, when one could honeymoon by a still-full Gila River, and when a Model T pickup needed extra transmissions to tackle the back roads of Arizona. To say that Julian Hayden led an eventful life would be an understatement. He accompanied his father, a Harvard-trained archaeologist, on influential excavations, became a crew chief in his own right, taught himself silversmithing, married a "city girl," helped build the Yuma Air Field, worked as a civilian safety officer, and was a friend and mentor to countless students. He also crossed paths with leading figures in other fields. Barry Goldwater and even Frank Lloyd Wright turn up in this wide-ranging narrative of a "desert rat" who was at once a throwback and--as he only half-jokingly suggests--ahead of his time. Field Man is the product of years of interviews with Hayden conducted by his colleagues and friends Bill Broyles and Diane Boyer. It is introduced by noted southwestern anthropologist J. Jefferson Reid, and contains an epilogue by Steve Hayden, one of Julian's sons.

Why and when human societies shifted from nomadic hunting and gathering to settled agriculture engages the interest of scholars around the world. One of the most fruitful areas in which to study this issue is the North American Southwest, where Late Archaic inhabitants of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts of Mexico, Arizona, and New Mexico turned to farming while their counterparts in Trans-Pecos and South Texas continued to forage. By investigating the environmental, biological, and cultural factors that led to these differing patterns of development, we can identify some of the necessary conditions for the rise of agriculture and the corresponding evolution of village life. The twelve papers in this volume synthesize previous and ongoing research and offer new theoretical models to provide the most up-to-date picture of life during the Late Archaic (from 3,000 to 1,500 years ago) across the entire North American Borderlands. Some of the papers focus on specific research topics such as stone tool technology and mobility patterns. Others study the development of agriculture across whole regions within the Borderlands. The two concluding papers trace pan-regional patterns in the adoption of farming and also link them to the growth of agriculture in other parts of the world.