Not So Far from Paquimé presents a final statement on the Proyecto Arqueológico Chihuahua (PAC) and its two decades of research in west-central Chihuahua, Mexico. The project conducted work in four different drainage basins. The study zones were located approximately 75 to 275 km to the south-southeast of the better-known Casas Grandes Valley and its primate site, Paquimé. The PAC began with the intent of discerning cultural boundaries of the Casas Grandes culture and exploring the integration of hinterland populations into larger political frameworks. These themes remained omnipresent over 20 years of research, but with substantial modifications. A central finding of the PAC is that the large and materially rich site of Paquimé did not exert strong influence outside of the Casas Grandes Valley. Throughout the volume, Paquimé and the associated Medio period thus serve principally as a comparative example to illustrate how hinterland regions developed on their own, more rustic, trajectories. This independence is of critical importance to regional specialists engaged in perennial debates regarding Paquimé’s economic, political, and ideological reach.
Most of the volume is dedicated to outlining the culture history of west-central Chihuahua, but this is not the volume's only contribution. Chapter 1 (Kelley) summarizes the history of research in the region and provides an explanation of the project's impetus. Chapter 2 (Garvin and Kelley) describes the setting and evaluates the agricultural potential of the project's four principal subareas. The chapter highlights the project's interdisciplinary quality and its grounding in a mode of archaeology that views environmental factors as critical constraints on cultural trajectories. Chapter 3 (Kelley) covers Paleoindian and Archaic periods, but focuses on the formative Viejo period, circa AD 750–1200. Kelley infers a lineage-based organization during the Viejo period, but with few spatial or architectural correlates to indicate suprahousehold-level patterns. Chapter 4 (Kelley and Phillips) considers occupation in the PAC region during the Medio period, circa AD 1200–1450. Settlement in this region during the Medio period substantially diverged from patterns in the Casas Grandes Valley in population density and social complexity. Kelley and Phillips believe that this divergence is related to a lack of irrigation agriculture in the PAC region. Chapter 5 (Adams) analyzes botanical remains and develops an intriguing narrative of declining agricultural productivity from the Viejo to the Medio period. Ceramic data are presented in Chapter 6 (Kelley and Larkin). Nuanced patterns of typological distributions will be of interest to regional specialists. More broadly, a lack of familiar Casas Grandes iconography in the PAC region suggests an intentional avoidance of the religion that legitimated authority and inequality at Paquimé. Chapter 7 (Fralick, Hollings, and Stewart) investigates the provenance relationships of ceramics through inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy. Results indicate that only very localized exchange was common, with the possible exception of Santa Ana Polychrome. Chapters 8 and 9 discuss areas outside the PAC region. Chapter 8 (MacWilliams) presents a synopsis of the La Cruz culture in the Bustillos Basin, located at the southern edge of the PAC study region. La Cruz presents an enigma; despite its location between dynamic cultural traditions, it violates expectations of existing frontier theory in its disconnectedness and conservativism. The Villa Ahumada region is the subject of Chapter 9 (Cruz-Antillón and Maxwell). Inhabitants of this region mixed aspects of Casas Grandes and Jornada Mogollon culture and possibly leveraged their geographic position as a hub of turquoise exchange. Chapter 10 (Kelley, Stewart, Garvin, and Phillips) summarizes the project's major insights regarding the significance of the PAC region's ersatz version of Casas Grandes culture.
In Chapter 11, Jane Kelley offers her final thoughts on a career in Chihuahuan archaeology. This far-ranging introspective tackles basic issues of epistemology in the generation of archaeological knowledge. Life histories of major contributors to Chihuahuan archaeology provide a framework for deconstructing the themes that have become central questions in regional studies. The discussion engages larger debates in archaeology, weighing the merits of historical-humanistic versus processual approaches to understanding the past. Kelley advocates for a middle-road approach. Notably, she does not simply lament the lack of definitive consensus on certain themes but provides suggestions for how to address lingering archaeological questions such as the significance of rare goods at Paquimé and the nature of Paquimé leadership.
Overall, Not So Far from Paquimé aptly threads a difficult needle between monograph and edited volume. The contribution is of substantial import to regional specialists in the US Southwest and northwest Mexico, but chapters such as Kelley's final comments on the nature and practice of archaeological questions merit a much wider audience.
