Archaeology in the Punta Peñasco Region, Sonora

Abstract

The incentive for an archaeological reconnaissance of this region (see map, Fig. 29) by Mrs. Gifford and myself in the fall of 1944, and again for a single day in November, 1945, came from reading references to kitchen middens in the report of the conchologist H. N. Lowe: “The numerous large kitchen middens at Punta Peñasco and Punta La Cholla contained thousands of these Glycimeris maculata with rarely a valve of the much larger G. gigantea. With these were quantities of the huge Cardita affinis, Chione, Ostrea, Paphia, Cardium, and large Murex. No stone artifacts or black earth were noted in any of these shell heaps. Perhaps the early inhabitants preferred their shell-fish raw.” At Punta Peñasco these “middens” proved to be uplifted marine deposits which Dr. Leo G. Hertlein of the California Academy of Sciences identified as Late Pleistocene, basing his opinion on specimens and photographs.