Over the past decade many authors have briefly cited or discussed several kinds of evidence for the prehistoric agriculture of the Southwest. Most of this evidence, however, has not received careful scrutiny, nor has it been given major emphasis in any but a few archaeological studies. The importance of agriculture has been more often assumed than demonstrated, and a critical reading of Southwestern archaeological literature reveals that all too often reference to “agriculture” (or “horticulture“) is unaccompanied by any consideration of the many different types of activity that are subsumed by such a term.

From the earliest days of exploration among the “cliff-dwellings” and other ruins the presence of stored corn made it clear that the occupants had been farmers. Other evidence seemed superfluous, since the surviving Pueblo Indians were also farmers, and it could be assumed that farming methods had changed but little over the centuries. Therefore, none of the earlier archaeologists in the Southwest gave serious attention to the agricultural evidence.

The farm remains which will be described in the next chapter can be classified rather easily into three main types, (1) short walls or lines of stones across stream channels, forming terraces, (2) linear borders, made of long lines of stones arranged in more or less parallel or concentric lines, and (3) grid borders, a term we have chosen for lines of stones arranged as in the linear borders, but with added transverse rows of stones. The characteristics of these types will be described in this chapter, together with two other important types of remains occurring in association with some of the farms — field houses and boundary markers. It should be realized that most sites show a combination of two or more kinds of field systems, as will be pointed out in describing the sites, although it is convenient to first define each type separately.

Although there are many farming sites in the Point of Pines area, only ten are described here in detail. These ten sites are representative of the variety of topographic situations and types of farms, and provide an adequate sample for studying the prehistoric agricultural practices of the area. Summary data on the ten sites are presented at the end of this chapter (Table 4).

About 8 miles west-northwest of the Point of Pines field school and about a mile south of Clover Well, on a small promontory overlooking Clover Basin, are the remains of a small village partly surrounded by farms or garden plots. The location today is in grass, with scattered juniper and ponderosa pine, and the surface is littered with basalt boulders (Fig. 4). At many places the boulders appear concentrated in lines and a little study reveals the pattern shown in the map (Fig. 3).