During the Early Agricultural period (2100 BC–AD 50), preceramic farmers in the Sonoran Desert invested considerable labor in canal-irrigated field systems while remaining very residentially mobile. The degree to which they exercised formal systems of land tenure, or organized their communities above the household level, remains contested. This article discusses the spatial and social organization of Early Cienega–phase settlements in the Los Pozos site group, an Early Agricultural site complex located along the Santa Cruz River in southern Arizona. At Los Pozos, the formal spatial organization of seasonal farmsteads suggests that despite continued residential mobility, multihousehold lineages maintained distinct territories. Enduring “house groups”—likely lineal groups—are associated with disproportionately large cemeteries, suggesting the revisitation of ancestral territory through occupational hiatuses. However, variability in the formality and permanence of Early Cienega–phase settlements throughout the region indicates a flexible continuum of occupational mobility. These higher-order affiliations were only expressed in persistent settlements near highly productive farmland, where the relative priority of households over improved land might be contested.

We examine the changes in funerary rituals from the Early Agricultural period (2100 BC–AD 50) to the Early Preclassic period (AD 475–750) and how these changes concurrently reflect changes in social relationships between the dead, their families, and the community. The predominant mortuary ritual in the Early Agricultural period was inhumation, possibly emphasizing a variety of identity intersections of the dead and the mourners in the treatment of the body while creating collective memories and remembrances through shared ways of commemorating the dead. An innovation in funerary practices in the form of secondary cremation appeared in the Early Agricultural period and was slowly but broadly adopted, representing new social dynamics within the society. Thereafter, secondary cremation became the main funeral custom. During the Early Preclassic period, the variation in body position and the type and quantity of objects found with individuals decreased. It is possible that the vehicle for displaying different identity intersections changed and was not placed in the body, per se, as much as in previous periods. However, the transformation characteristics of these funeral rituals and the increase in community investment could have fostered the building or reinforcing of stronger social ties that highlighted a “collective identity.”