ABSTRACT
Denver a group of anthropologists who had worked in various arid or semi-arid lands and who also were concerned as social scientists with the problems of coping with drought and desertification. Anthropologists have studied the peoples and cultures of arid lands for over one hundred years, yet their findings are only slightly known outside their own field. In about 70 years much of the land had deteriorated--largely through increasing salinity--to the point that the large owners began to sell off enormous tracts--often to the government, which then redistributed it in smaller plots through the agrarian reform program. Throughout the transition period there was a tendency, which continues today, to blame the Spanish and Native Americans for what was believed to be range mismanagement, with subsequent degradation of the land. In the 1930's herd sizes were controlled by law, much to the distress of thousands of small Hispano arid Native American farmer-herders.
