HUNTERS AND GATHERERS
Groups of people dependent upon a different way of life from that of the Early Hunters are known to have occupied much of the present area of New Mexico. Although there is some suggestion of overlap in time of these people with the Early Hunters, they appear to have become prominent during the several thousand warm, dry years following the end of the Pleistocene. Adapted, as they were, to a fuller utilization of the resources of the area through the hunting and trapping of smaller game and an emphasis on the gathering of a wide variety of wild plant foods, these people ranged extensively across the varied terrain of the state. Similar patterns of subsistence and artifacts are known from the Great Basin region west of the Rocky Mountains, where they have been categorized under the term Desert Culture. Local manifestations of the Desert Culture in southeastern Arizona, extending eastward into western and southern New Mexico, are identified as the Cochise Culture. Other groups showing similarities with Archaic cultures to the east penetrated the northeastern part of New Mexico at a time when the area was still populated by Pleistocene bison.
Habitation sites of these gatherers are distributed in open situations and in shelter caves. Such sites are commonly marked by milling stones that characterize the preparation of wild foods ([fig. 3]), hearths, chopping and scraping implements, and stemmed projectile points markedly different from those used by the Early Hunters. These points were affixed to dart shafts that were propelled with a spear thrower or atlatl, a device that preceded the bow and arrow in America but is still used by Australian Aborigines.
Seasonal changes in the local availability of wild foods must have necessitated a nomadic or seminomadic way of life. The development of agricultural techniques in the later years before the beginning of the Christian Era, however, probably contributed to the development of a semisedentary existence that was eventually to lead to the village life of the later periods. The exact time of introduction of the principal agricultural crops, corn, squash, and beans, is unknown, but evidence from west-central New Mexico indicates their use by the Cochise people by 2500 B.C.