R.J. Sinensky

My current research investigates the inherited landscape use of early farmers in the greater American Southwest. I am particularly interested in mobile groups that incorporate agriculture into their subsistence strategy yet maintain a resilient low-level food producing economic system over an extended period of time.

My thesis research explored how San Pedro phase (1200-800 BC) farmer-foragers living in the early agricultural period village of Las Capas, located in the Tucson Basin, navigated stochastic environmental conditions. I investigated the resource procurement strategies of ancient farmers during time periods that were both conducive and unfavorable to irrigation agriculture in order to explore the risk management strategies employed by Las Capas residents. Investigating how early farmer-foragers in the American Southwest navigated climate change provides an important case study of how societies in secondary locales of domestication navigated the benefits and risks of agriculture and increasing sedentism. Maintaining a flexible subsistence strategy was key for the resiliency of early farming groups in the American Southwest.