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A Reanalysis Of Population Dynamics In The Casas Grandes Region Of Northern Mexico Using Mitochondrial Dna, Meradeth Snow, Michael T. Searcy

Faculty Publications

The Casas Grades region in northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, is ideally situated to explore the notion of contact between the Southwest/Northwest and Mesoamerica, as it lies geographically in the borderlands where traditions of both culture areas were practiced. In order to explain these ties, past researchers have suggested the flourishing Casas Grandes population in the thirteenth century AD was caused by migrants from Mesoamerica, as first suggested by Di Peso in his pochteca hypothesis. Others, such as Lekson and his Chaco Meridian hypothesis, suggest migration from the north. Mitochondrial genetic data from earlier and later time periods provides the ability to …