THE PRE-HISPANIC COMMUNITIES OF THE ONAVAS VALLEY NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN THE MIDDLE YAQUI RIVER VALLEY, SONORA, MEXICO

Despite the impressive amount of archaeological research conducted in Sonora in the last few decades, some areas remain little researched. The Middle Rio Yaqui region is one such area. Traditionally, this region has been identified as part of the Rio Sonora archaeological tradition that embraces the sierra region from near the international border south to northern Sinaloa. No archaeological research has been conducted in the middle of this region to verify this interpretative assumption, however. This essay presents basic data from the Onavas Valley Archaeological Project (OVAP), which was conducted in the Middle Rio Yaqui Valley in the summer of 2004 to obtain an initial understanding of an archaeologically poorly researched area and to examine the area's possible role in interactions with neighboring archaeological areas. The data illustrate that the Onavas Valley population appears to have been more related to the Huatabampo archaeological tradition than to the Rio Sonora archaeological tradition.