Across the Chichimec Sea : papers in honor of J. Charles Kelley /

TheChichimec Sea is a metaphorical term for that large area of mountain, desert, and desiccated lake bed that covers much of northern Mexico and parts of the southwestern United States. Aboriginally--indeed, well into his­toric times--this large area was inhab­ited by diverse bands of Indians who had in common mainly the fact that they shared neither in the complex civi­lization of Mesoamerica nor the sub-­Mesoamerican cultures of the Greater Southwest.

This comprehensive and unified vol­ume of original essays deals with the complex problems of interaction--across and around the Chichimec Sea--between Mesoamerica and the South­west. The twenty contributions to this volume, by anthropologists, archaeol­ogists, geographers, ethnohistorians, and ethnobotanists, all deal with diverse aspects of the problem of Mesoamerican­-Southwest contacts.