ABSTRACT
The archaeogeographic survey of northwest Mexico by Carl O. Sauer and Donald Brand, in addition to being the first systematic archaeological reconnaissance of the northwest coastal corridor of Sinaloa-Nayarit, was a starting point also for knowledge of many natural science aspects of the prehistory of western Mexico. The West Mexican coastal plain is a distinct physiographic province, bounded on the northeast by the Sierra Madre Occidental and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. In studies contrasting the specialized environments of coastal lowland societies with the Mesoamerican highlands, one major argument has been that marine food resources are inferior to terrestrial resources, particularly mammals, both in terms of human labor investment and protein yield. In the contrast of core versus marginal Mesoamerica, it is doubtful that anything will contest the overall preeminence of the central highland civilizations and those of the jungle lowlands of southern Mesoamerica.
