Developoment Of A New Subsistence Adaptation In Middle America

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Gerardo Gutiérrez, of the University of Colorado-Boulder, in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of US and Mexican scholars, will investigate the economic and ideological changes that human groups underwent during their transition from highly mobile hunter and gatherers to settled agriculturalists in permanent villages, between 3500 to 600 BC in southern Mexico. This is a key moment in the human history of the Americas because many of the plants that comprise our present food production economy (such as maize, or corn) were domesticated during this period. Because ancient foods do not preserve well, this cultural transition is not effectively understood for the North American continent. Why did some forager groups experiment with early cultigens and begin to rely on cultivated plants? How were economic changes reflected in or encouraged by their beliefs and social structures? Archaeological exploration in a cave in southern Mexico should provide a better understanding of the adoption of maize as the primary cereal crop of the New World (and today, a significant crop in many parts of the Old World). Much of the cave is covered with mural paintings from this transitional period (Late Archaic and Olmec style) probably painted between 3500-600 BC. These paintings provide a remarkable opportunity for insight into what people perceived about the transition from simple societies in which everyone was more or less equal to much larger societies in which a few people held sway over many. Dr. Gutiérrez and his team will explore a dry cave that offers evidence of human occupation during the transition from a foraging to an agricultural economy. Sediments in this cave will be analyzed to uncover plant remains which are known to preserve well in dry caves and evaluate their importance in the changing diet of the people who inhabited the area. The researchers will also obtain scientific dates for the mural art and determine the chemical composition of the ancient paints to assess the sources of their pigments, the application of colors, and the styles represented. When fully studied, these murals will offer an unusual window into the ideologies and social beliefs of humans making the transition to agriculture. This research will be conducted in the Balsas River Basin of southern Mexico, the region of the Western Hemisphere with the earliest evidence of corn domestication. A team of archaeologists, paleobotanists, geomorphologists, art historians and restorers will undertake surface survey, mapping with unmanned aerial vehicles, x-ray fluorescence analysis, excavation, obsidian sourcing, and the study of micro- and macro-botanical remains. These studies will generate new quantitative and comparative data to investigate changes in landscapes, food production, resource consumption and the formation of exchange networks to evaluate rigorously the emergence of agriculture and social complexity in the New World. This research will provide opportunities for US and Mexican students to be trained in scientific methods, while promoting cooperation and understanding between academic communities of Mexico and the US.