Walking the desert, paddling the sea: Comcaac mobility in time

The Comcaac have lived along the central part of the Sonoran coast of Mexico for over a thousand years. These traditionally highly mobile hunters, gatherers, and fishermen of the desert and sea are now mainly settled in two villages with several seasonal exceptions. Past places remain important to the Comcaac, and they recall and remember these places through place-names, storytelling, and other cultural practices that integrate Comcaac historical events and traditions. Enduring cultural knowledge about the land and sea reveals that the Comcaac constructed a complex cultural landscape through their multifaceted mobility patterns during the past that included different people with varying degrees of cultural knowledge and experience. Through materiality theory, a cultural landscape approach and the analytical unit of place, this paper understands mobility as multifaceted, played out by different participants with different motivations. Direct involvement by Comcaac community members in this work expands and refines interpretations about the Comcaac cultural landscape through time using archaeological evidence, oral history, archival documents, and ethnographic information to better understand and explain past mobility patterns. Comcaac patterns of mobility and cultural meanings of places are valuable in understanding broader movement scenarios that may be applicable to a range of cultures.