Diet and Health in the Zacapu Basin: A Geochemical Approach to the Bioarchaeology of the Tarascan State

Cahue, Laura, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

This Postdoctoral fellowship research project seeks to understand biocultural human adaptation to the Zacapu highland lake environment in the context of a growing population. The limited archaeological evidence for the determination of human subsistence in the Zacapu Basin does not make it clear whether or not these populations practiced intensive maize agriculture. While there is abundant archaeological evidence for an intense exploitation of aquatic resources (amphibians, clams, fish, waterfowl etc.), the role of maize in the diet remains unclear. Given the nutritional and symbolic value of maize throughout Mesoamerica at the time, it is inconceivable that maize was not an important component of the diet in the Zacapu Basin. The Zacapu Basin presents an opportunity to examine the adaptive strategies that human populations in the region may have used to obtain food from less-than-optimal environments, and the role that these strategies played in the formation of the Tarascan State. This project has three objectives: 1) to assess the levels of maize consumption at the Lomas sites through time, 2) to evaluate the nutritional adequacy of the diet, and 3) to determine dietary shifts on a smaller time-scale within each site. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes from bone collagen will be used to determine relative proportions of maize in the diet. Skeletal and dental indicators of nutritional stress and disease will be used to assess the nutritional and health status of the population, and fluoride dating techniques will be used to refine the relative chronologies of primary and secondary burials as well as commingled remain