Between Foraging and Farming

Over the last decade, a number of surprising findings have been reported about the origins of agriculture in Mexico and the southwestern United States. In his Perspective, Smith discusses results reported in the same issue by Hard and Roney in which accelerator mass spectrometry was used to date maize plants from Cerro JuanaqueA±a, Chihuahua, Mexico. The results indicate the existence of a massive terraced village complex 3000 years before the present.