Books by Shanti Morell-Hart
https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477327968/, 2024
Among the richest culinary traditions in Mexico are those of the “eight regions" of the state of ... more Among the richest culinary traditions in Mexico are those of the “eight regions" of the state of Oaxaca. Mesquite Pods to Mezcal brings together some of the most prominent scholars in Oaxacan archaeology and related fields to explore the evolution of the area's world-renowned cuisines. This volume, the first to address food practices across Oaxaca through a long-term historical lens, covers the full spectrum of human occupation in Oaxaca, from the early Holocene to contemporary times. Contributors consider the deep history of agroecological management and large-scale landscape transformation, framing food production as a human-environment relation. They explore how, after the arrival of the Spanish, Oaxacan cuisine adapted, diets changed, and food became a stronger marker of identity. Examining the present, further studies document how traditional foodways persist and what they mean for contemporary Oaxacans, whether they are traveling ancient roads, working outside the region, or rebuilding after an earthquake. Together, the original case studies in this volume demonstrate how new methods and diverse theoretical approaches can come together to trace the development of a rich food tradition, one that is thriving today.
Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Shanti Morell-Hart
Mesquite Pods to Mezcal: 10,000 Years of Oaxacan Cuisines, 2024
In this chapter we describe a specialized rockshelter storage feature at a
site we have anonymize... more In this chapter we describe a specialized rockshelter storage feature at a
site we have anonymized as Cerro X, which was a long-standing destination for pilgrimage in the Sierra Sur region of Nejapa in southeastern Oaxaca. Incredibly, the bin contained the seeds of over 127 indigenous plant species. The placement of the bin, in a protected and spiritually significant location, demonstrates how spiritual and physical security were inextricably and unavoidably interlinked. The bin also speaks to the important role of food practices and local Indigenous cuisine in the construction of cultural identity and future selves. We argue that the bin and its contents are evidence of the extraordinary efforts that people took to protect their traditional ecological knowledge and to ensure food sovereignty and food security during a time of intense conflict and change.
Mesquite Pods to Mezcal: 10,000 Years of Oaxacan Cuisines, 2024
The state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico traces its distinct multiethnic character to prehispanic t... more The state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico traces its distinct multiethnic character to prehispanic times....This volume not only presents
the archaeological evidence of what ancient Oaxacan communities grew,
cooked, and ate but also reveals how, since ancient times, cooks and farmers have experimented with their environments to feed their families. Over time, people developed regional flavors and identities while also negotiating and resisting asymmetrical power structures, from the rise of ruling elites in the Formative period, to the establishment of colonial rule, to the gentrification of Oaxacan foods in the global market. The contributions in this volume bring us to the present and outside of Oaxaca, where Oaxacan communities in the United States are holding on to and transforming their culinary traditions, often rejecting dominant narratives of modernization, acculturation, and what constitutes healthy and prestigious foods. While this book documents parts of the long history of Oaxacan cuisines, there is no doubt that these food traditions are alive and evolving and have an interesting future ahead.
Mesquite Pods to Mezcal: 10,000 Years of Oaxacan Cuisines, 2024
In this chapter, we describe some of the culinary ingredients, tools, and features documented at ... more In this chapter, we describe some of the culinary ingredients, tools, and features documented at the Archaic site MRG-6, near Mitla, Oaxaca. We interpret these patterns in terms of the likely practices and activities that they represent. Foodways of the Archaic period have been well documented at other sites, but such studies usually focus on basic subsistence in place of cuisine (see, e.g., Flannery 1986; Webster 1986). Here we more fully address the latter. We highlight some of the particularities of the MRG-6 rockshelter, including location, storage features, and stone implements. Turning to the botanical residues, we describe our paleoethnobotanical methods and summarize the results. Combining the list of identified plant taxa with the documented features and implements, we consider culinary continuities and discontinuities with contemporary food practices. By addressing elements of intangible heritage, through tangible residues, we approach cuisine in a way that goes beyond simply cementing agriculture as the core of Mexican (Michoacano) cuisine, as presented in the UNESCO inscription. We consider a broader set of activities, ingredients, and intentions than agriculture alone can encompass.
Frontiers in Earth Science, 2023
The soil mantle of the tropical karst landscapes of southern Mexico was a key resource for ancien... more The soil mantle of the tropical karst landscapes of southern Mexico was a key resource for ancient Maya agriculture and experienced deep transformation due to long-term human impacts under changing environmental conditions. We conducted a comparative analysis of three compound soil toposequences in mountainous (Sierra de Chiapas/Middle Usumacinta Valley, Busiljá, and Chinikihá archaeological sites) and platform (NE Yucatán Peninsula, Yalahau region) karst landscapes to reconstruct general tendencies and regional variations in pedodiversity development and soil–human interactions since the Early Preclassic Period. Toposequence characterization is based on macro- and micromorphological observations, accompanied by a suite of laboratory data. Calcareous upland geoforms of all toposequences have similar soil combinations consisting of shallow Rendzina and deep red clayey Terra Rossa types of profiles. We argue that Rendzinas, now dominant in the upland soil cover, in most cases, are not a product of incipient pedogenesis on limestone; they have developed from the residues of Terra Rossa soils after their advanced erosion. Pedosediments generated by ancient soil erosion have been found in the piedmont and depression positions in the mountainous landscapes of Chiapas, as a result of lateral downslope soil removal, and in the subsurface karstic cavities in the platform of NE Yucatán, indicating vertical “soil piping.” The soils of the lowland domains show contrasting differences between the toposequences: gleyic clay–rich soils and humic alluvial soils prevail in Chinikihá and Busiljá, whereas hydromorphic carbonate soils have formed in Yalahau karstic depressions. These differences in the lowland soil properties led to divergent ancient Maya land use strategies; in Chinikihá and Busiljá, the major agricultural domain was developed in the lowlands, implying largescale artificial drainage. On the contrary, in Yalahau, mostly upland Rendzinas were cultivated, implying “precision agriculture” and “container gardening.”
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2023
Download: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1htzv-JVby-jj
The emergence and expansion of inequali... more Download: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1htzv-JVby-jj
The emergence and expansion of inequality have been topics of household archaeology for decades. Traditionally, this question has been informed by ethnographic, ethnohistoric and/or comparative studies. Within sites and regions, comparative physical, spatial, and architectural studies of households offer an important baseline of information about status, wealth, and well-being, especially in the Maya lowlands where households are accessible in the archaeological record. Between sites, more research is necessary to assess how these physical measurements of household remains compare. This paper investigates the intersection of landscape, household, and community based on a multi-scalar analysis of households using the Gini index across southeastern Mexico, in the context of a broader study of land use, land management, and settlement patterns. Notably, this paper represents a region-wide analysis of nearly continuous LiDAR data within and outside of previously documented prehispanic Maya settlements. While we conclude that the Gini index is useful for establishing a comparative understanding of settlement, we also recognize that the index is a starting point to identify other ways to study how household to community-level social and economic variability intersects with diverse ecological patterns. Highlighting the opportunities and limitations with applying measures like the Gini index across culturally, temporally, and geographically heterogeneous areas, we illustrate how systematic studies of settlement can be coupled to broader studies of landscape archaeology to interpret changing patterns of land management and settlement across the Maya lowlands.
Journal of Archaeological Research, 2023
Pre-Columbian food production in the Maya Lowlands was long characterized as reliant on extensive... more Pre-Columbian food production in the Maya Lowlands was long characterized as reliant on extensive, slash-and-burn agriculture as the sole cultivation system possible in the region, given environmental limitations, with maize as the dominant crop. While aspects of this "swidden thesis" of Maya agriculture have been chipped away in recent years, there has been an underappreciation of the many forms of long-term capital investments in agriculture made by ancient Maya people. Here, we review the last three decades of research that has overturned the swidden thesis, focusing on long-term strategies. We demonstrate long-lasting agricultural investments by Maya people, in social capital including multigenerational land tenure, in cultivated capital including long-lived trees, and in landesque capital including soil amendments and landscape engineering projects, such as terracing and wetland modification.
Journal of Archaeological Research, 2022
We focus on pre-Columbian agricultural regimes in the Maya Lowlands, using new datasets of archae... more We focus on pre-Columbian agricultural regimes in the Maya Lowlands, using new datasets of archaeological wood charcoal, seeds, phytoliths, and starch grains; biological properties of plants; and contemporary Indigenous practices. We address inherited models of agriculture in the lowlands: the limitations of the environment (finding more affordances than anticipated by earlier models); the homogeneity of agricultural strategies (finding more heterogeneity of strategies across the lowlands than a single rigid template); the centrality of maize in agriculture (finding more reliance on root crops and tree crops than historically documented); the focus on the milpa system as food base (finding more agroforestry, homegardening, horticulture, and wild resource management than previously documented); the dominance of swidden strategies in agricultural practices (finding more diverse practices than accounted for in most models); and the foregrounding of maize crop failure in collapse models (finding more evidence of resilience and sustainable agricultural practices than predicted).
Ancient Mesoamerica, 2022
Botanical residues recovered from excavations in the Southeast Marketplace of Piedras Negras prov... more Botanical residues recovered from excavations in the Southeast Marketplace of Piedras Negras provide information about the healing and medical activities of the site's Classic period (a.d. 350-900) inhabitants, and point towards the intersection between commerce and medicine for the ancient Maya. The plants were likely exchanged at the market then used on-site for the purposes of healing. The botanical remains are complemented by both architectural and bioarchaeological evidence for healing at this locus, including a high concentration of sweatbaths and evidence for palliative tooth extraction. With the aid of ethnohistory, we identify health care practices potentially associated with the plant remains. However, we expand on basic understandings of "healing" with a critical look at how some medicinal plants may have been ritually invoked, even when never directly ingested or applied topically.
Archaeology of Food and Foodways, 2022
Introduction to the first issue of Archaeology of Food and Foodways
Remote Sensing, 2021
DOWNLOAD HERE: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/20/4109
We present results from the archaeologic... more DOWNLOAD HERE: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/20/4109
We present results from the archaeological analysis of 331 km2 of high-resolution airborne lidar data collected in the Upper Usumacinta River basin of Mexico and Guatemala. Multiple visualizations of the DEM and multi-spectral data from four lidar transects crossing the Classic period (AD 350–900) Maya kingdoms centered on the sites of Piedras Negras, La Mar, and Lacanja Tzeltal permitted the identification of ancient settlement and associated features of agricultural infrastructure. HDBSCAN (hierarchical density-based clustering of applications with noise) cluster analysis was applied to the distribution of ancient structures to define urban, peri-urban, sub-urban, and rural settlement zones. Interpretations of these remotely sensed data are informed by decades of ground-based archaeological survey and excavations, as well as a rich historical record drawn from inscribed stone monuments. Our results demonstrate that these neighboring kingdoms in three adjacent valleys exhibit divergent patterns of structure clustering and low-density urbanism, distributions of agricultural infrastructure, and economic practices during the Classic period. Beyond meeting basic subsistence needs, agricultural production in multiple areas permitted surpluses likely for the purposes of tribute, taxation, and marketing. More broadly, this research highlights the strengths of HDBSCAN to the archaeological study of settlement distributions when compared to more commonly applied methods of density-based cluster analysis.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2022
Medicinal practices were critical in ancient societies, yet we have limited insight into these pr... more Medicinal practices were critical in ancient societies, yet we have limited insight into these practices outside references found in ancient texts. Meanwhile, historic and ethnographic resources have documented how a number of plants, from across the landscape, are assembled into pharmacopoeias and transformed into materia medica. These documentary resources attest to diverse healthcare practices that incorporate botanical elements, while residues in the archaeological record (seeds, phytoliths and starch grains) point to a variety of activities, some of them therapeutic in nature. Focusing on four pre-Hispanic communities in northwestern Honduras, I draw upon ethnobotanical and ethnobiological knowledge to infer medical practices potentially represented by ancient plant residues. Comparing these findings with prior investigations, I address the limits of dividing taxa into mutually exclusive categories such as 'food', 'fuel' and 'medicine'. I consider the importance of apothecary craft in past lifeways, as well as the persistence of many traditions in contemporary medical practice.
Latin American Antiquity, 2021
Investigations at sites across northwestern Honduras-inside and outside the Maya area-have reveal... more Investigations at sites across northwestern Honduras-inside and outside the Maya area-have revealed diverse food activities and ingredients. Paralleling the evidence from durable artifact assemblages, we see transformation over time in materials and practices, as well as the movement of elements across the landscape. Botanical evidence points toward a dynamic overlap between northern and southern societies, with northwestern Honduras serving as a sort of regional crossroads. In this article, we compare cuisines from several ancient communities in northwestern Honduras, using microbotanical and macrobotanical residues. We briefly address the political and historic context of the region and provide abridged biographies of several culinary taxa. Of particular interest are milpa annual crops such as maize and squash, managed and cultivated palm species, wild and managed herbaceous species, edible fruit species, and root and tuberous crops such as lerén, sweet potato, and manioc.
Her Cup for Sweet Cacao: Food in Ancient Maya Society, 2020
https://books.google.com/books?id=OTgBEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT104
From Fighting with Food to Feasts, ... more https://books.google.com/books?id=OTgBEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT104
From Fighting with Food to Feasts, anthropological literature has long demonstrated the active social role of food, as substance as much as symbol. Foodstuffs in the Maya area created obligation, bound people together, marked difference, ritualized practice, and incentivized social movement. Plants, as primary or even sole ingredients, occupied a special place in these dynamics. Beyond basic nutritional building blocks, plants were active agents, socially marshalled to amass labor for monumental projects such as terraces and canals, valued as (fickle) commodities in long-distance trade, and assembled in elaborate dishes for large-scale ceremonial feasts. Moreover, day-to-day activities reinforced or overturned social norms through the medium of food-- collection, preparation, and consumption. Social messages were ingested, as much as they were transformed and maintained through ingestion. All of this aside from the many ways food plants were used in ritualized practice but not ever physically consumed by ancient Maya participants.
Drawing from the writings of scholars including Mary Weismantel, Marshall McLuhan, and Charles Saunders Peirce, I consider the ways that food plants in the Maya area operated simultaneously as icons, indices, and symbols, often independently of human intention and sometimes in opposition. Using published work by other scholars, as well as paleoethnobotanical data I’ve collected from multiple sites in the Maya area, I draw a picture of plants that were manipulated for social ends as frequently as they actively manipulated the worlds around them. From transported landscapes to trade wars, food plants played dynamic roles in the lives of ancient Maya people. This perspective goes beyond the basic matter of subsistence to get at the heart of sociality.
Semiotic Review, 2020
In this paper I use the semiotic, practical, and material movements of cuisine over time to addre... more In this paper I use the semiotic, practical, and material movements of cuisine over time to address a well-worn paradox in philosophy. Incorporating perspectives on intangible heritage, I ground the paper in linguistic approaches to foodways. By taking this standpoint, we can prod at long-standing issues of typology and temporality, as well as the iterative process of foodways generally and recipes specifically. The ancient Ship of Theseus puzzle is rooted in the physicality of objects, and can invoke subsistence as substance. But food occupies a special place given that it is equal parts material and immaterial; a meal is comprised of both tangible and intangible ingredients. If recipes "move" over time into new forms and meanings, when is the dish of Theseus no longer the dish of Theseus?
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2020
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X20303345
This paper presents the ar... more https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X20303345
This paper presents the archaeological evaluation of 458 tiles of LiDAR collected by environmental scientists over southern Mexico using the G-LiHT system of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Specifically, this article describes the results of a full processing, inspection, and annotation of these data for the identification and baseline analysis of archaeological features. In this paper, we: 1) introduce the dataset and describe our efforts to systematically process and annotate archaeological features and 2) revisit the cultural and ecological context of the samples. The results presented here confirm some of the conclusions presented previously, including the benefit of mining large previously acquired digital data for archaeological information, the diversity of lowland settlement and features in between areas already well-documented, and the contribution to landscape archaeology of such transect samples when coupled to macro-environmental data sets. These data also fill in some details about the prehispanic Mesoamerican landscape, raising new questions about the relationship between past settlements and regional cultural, political, and ecological systems. Finally, these data offer important foundational inventories for discussing how to preserve and conserve archaeological resources across the lowlands, especially when these resources are not tied to monumental architecture.
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2020
In this paper, we discuss dietary and possible medicinal practices of an Early Formative period (... more In this paper, we discuss dietary and possible medicinal practices of an Early Formative period (2000–1000 BCE) community transitioning from Archaic-style to Formative-style lifeways. The results we present come from the analysis of plant residues, including microbotanical and macrobotanical remains, which were excavated at the village site of La Consentida in coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. Phytoliths and starch grains were recovered by soni- cation from twenty ceramic and lithic artifacts. The microbotanical analyses identified plant remains from four different families: Malvaceae (Bombacoideae subfamily; cotton family), Dioscoreaceae (yam family), Fabaceae (bean family), and Poaceae (grass family, including maize). We also report on limited macrobotanical analysis, including a seed of guapinol (Hymenaea courbaril). Together, these results complement existing archaeological studies of lithic and ceramic artifacts from La Consentida, as well as stable isotopic analyses of human remains from the site.
Journal of Field Archaeology , 2020
(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00934690.2019.1684748) In this article, we provide ... more (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00934690.2019.1684748) In this article, we provide the results of preliminary archaeological and epigraphic research undertaken at the site of Lacanjá Tzeltal, Chiapas. Field research conducted in 2018, in collaboration with local community members, has allowed us to identify this archaeological site as the capital of a kingdom known from Classic period Maya inscriptions as “Sak Tz’i’” (White Dog). Because all previously known references to the kingdom came from looted monuments or texts found at other Maya centers, the location of the Sak Tz’i’ kingdom’s capital has been the subject of ongoing modeling and debate among scholars. Here we synthesize prior epigraphic and archaeological research concerning Sak Tz’i’, highlighting past efforts to locate the kingdom’s capital. We then discuss the results of preliminary survey, mapping, and excavations of Lacanjá Tzeltal, and present the first drawing and decipherment of Lacanjá Tzeltal Panel 1, the sculpture crucial for centering this “lost” Maya kingdom.
Ancient Mesoamerica, 2019
In recent years, researchers in pre-Hispanic Central America have used new approaches that greatl... more In recent years, researchers in pre-Hispanic Central America have used new approaches that greatly amplify and enhance evidence of plants and their uses. This paper presents a case study from Puerto Escondido, located in the lower Ulúa River valley of Caribbean coastal Honduras. We demonstrate the effectiveness of using multiple methods in concert to interpret ethnobotanical practice in the past. By examining chipped-stone tools, ceramics, sediments from artifact contexts, and macrobotanical remains, we advance complementary inquiries. Here, we address botanical practices “in the home,” such as foodways, medicinal practices, fiber crafting, and ritual activities, and those “close to home,” such as agricultural and horticultural practices, forest management, and other engagements with local and distant ecologies. This presents an opportunity to begin to develop an understanding of ethnoecology at Puerto Escondido, here defined as the dynamic relationship between affordances provided in a botanical landscape and the impacts of human activities on that botanical landscape.
Journal of Field Archaeology, 2019
What are useful quantitative approaches in situations with highly variable data quantities, conte... more What are useful quantitative approaches in situations with highly variable data quantities, contexts, and sampling strategies? How can paleoethnobotanical findings be interpreted without over-representing data or selling results short? Described here are several major issues and potential solutions. The four sites of the study are located northwestern Honduras, a region with fairly hostile environments for paleoethnobotanical preservation. For this reason, several types of botanical residues are combined to provide a more holistic picture of past ethnobotanical practices. In some cases, these data prove to be complementary, while in others, they are corroborative. This article includes tactics for integrating multiple sample protocols, multiple and overlapping diagnostic elements, multiple and overlapping clade categories, multiple and overlapping samples in a single locus, multiple and overlapping formation processes, and multiple and overlapping cultural practices. In each section, the issue, sampling strategies, quantitative approaches, and a few results are described.
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Books by Shanti Morell-Hart
Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Shanti Morell-Hart
site we have anonymized as Cerro X, which was a long-standing destination for pilgrimage in the Sierra Sur region of Nejapa in southeastern Oaxaca. Incredibly, the bin contained the seeds of over 127 indigenous plant species. The placement of the bin, in a protected and spiritually significant location, demonstrates how spiritual and physical security were inextricably and unavoidably interlinked. The bin also speaks to the important role of food practices and local Indigenous cuisine in the construction of cultural identity and future selves. We argue that the bin and its contents are evidence of the extraordinary efforts that people took to protect their traditional ecological knowledge and to ensure food sovereignty and food security during a time of intense conflict and change.
the archaeological evidence of what ancient Oaxacan communities grew,
cooked, and ate but also reveals how, since ancient times, cooks and farmers have experimented with their environments to feed their families. Over time, people developed regional flavors and identities while also negotiating and resisting asymmetrical power structures, from the rise of ruling elites in the Formative period, to the establishment of colonial rule, to the gentrification of Oaxacan foods in the global market. The contributions in this volume bring us to the present and outside of Oaxaca, where Oaxacan communities in the United States are holding on to and transforming their culinary traditions, often rejecting dominant narratives of modernization, acculturation, and what constitutes healthy and prestigious foods. While this book documents parts of the long history of Oaxacan cuisines, there is no doubt that these food traditions are alive and evolving and have an interesting future ahead.
The emergence and expansion of inequality have been topics of household archaeology for decades. Traditionally, this question has been informed by ethnographic, ethnohistoric and/or comparative studies. Within sites and regions, comparative physical, spatial, and architectural studies of households offer an important baseline of information about status, wealth, and well-being, especially in the Maya lowlands where households are accessible in the archaeological record. Between sites, more research is necessary to assess how these physical measurements of household remains compare. This paper investigates the intersection of landscape, household, and community based on a multi-scalar analysis of households using the Gini index across southeastern Mexico, in the context of a broader study of land use, land management, and settlement patterns. Notably, this paper represents a region-wide analysis of nearly continuous LiDAR data within and outside of previously documented prehispanic Maya settlements. While we conclude that the Gini index is useful for establishing a comparative understanding of settlement, we also recognize that the index is a starting point to identify other ways to study how household to community-level social and economic variability intersects with diverse ecological patterns. Highlighting the opportunities and limitations with applying measures like the Gini index across culturally, temporally, and geographically heterogeneous areas, we illustrate how systematic studies of settlement can be coupled to broader studies of landscape archaeology to interpret changing patterns of land management and settlement across the Maya lowlands.
We present results from the archaeological analysis of 331 km2 of high-resolution airborne lidar data collected in the Upper Usumacinta River basin of Mexico and Guatemala. Multiple visualizations of the DEM and multi-spectral data from four lidar transects crossing the Classic period (AD 350–900) Maya kingdoms centered on the sites of Piedras Negras, La Mar, and Lacanja Tzeltal permitted the identification of ancient settlement and associated features of agricultural infrastructure. HDBSCAN (hierarchical density-based clustering of applications with noise) cluster analysis was applied to the distribution of ancient structures to define urban, peri-urban, sub-urban, and rural settlement zones. Interpretations of these remotely sensed data are informed by decades of ground-based archaeological survey and excavations, as well as a rich historical record drawn from inscribed stone monuments. Our results demonstrate that these neighboring kingdoms in three adjacent valleys exhibit divergent patterns of structure clustering and low-density urbanism, distributions of agricultural infrastructure, and economic practices during the Classic period. Beyond meeting basic subsistence needs, agricultural production in multiple areas permitted surpluses likely for the purposes of tribute, taxation, and marketing. More broadly, this research highlights the strengths of HDBSCAN to the archaeological study of settlement distributions when compared to more commonly applied methods of density-based cluster analysis.
From Fighting with Food to Feasts, anthropological literature has long demonstrated the active social role of food, as substance as much as symbol. Foodstuffs in the Maya area created obligation, bound people together, marked difference, ritualized practice, and incentivized social movement. Plants, as primary or even sole ingredients, occupied a special place in these dynamics. Beyond basic nutritional building blocks, plants were active agents, socially marshalled to amass labor for monumental projects such as terraces and canals, valued as (fickle) commodities in long-distance trade, and assembled in elaborate dishes for large-scale ceremonial feasts. Moreover, day-to-day activities reinforced or overturned social norms through the medium of food-- collection, preparation, and consumption. Social messages were ingested, as much as they were transformed and maintained through ingestion. All of this aside from the many ways food plants were used in ritualized practice but not ever physically consumed by ancient Maya participants.
Drawing from the writings of scholars including Mary Weismantel, Marshall McLuhan, and Charles Saunders Peirce, I consider the ways that food plants in the Maya area operated simultaneously as icons, indices, and symbols, often independently of human intention and sometimes in opposition. Using published work by other scholars, as well as paleoethnobotanical data I’ve collected from multiple sites in the Maya area, I draw a picture of plants that were manipulated for social ends as frequently as they actively manipulated the worlds around them. From transported landscapes to trade wars, food plants played dynamic roles in the lives of ancient Maya people. This perspective goes beyond the basic matter of subsistence to get at the heart of sociality.
This paper presents the archaeological evaluation of 458 tiles of LiDAR collected by environmental scientists over southern Mexico using the G-LiHT system of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Specifically, this article describes the results of a full processing, inspection, and annotation of these data for the identification and baseline analysis of archaeological features. In this paper, we: 1) introduce the dataset and describe our efforts to systematically process and annotate archaeological features and 2) revisit the cultural and ecological context of the samples. The results presented here confirm some of the conclusions presented previously, including the benefit of mining large previously acquired digital data for archaeological information, the diversity of lowland settlement and features in between areas already well-documented, and the contribution to landscape archaeology of such transect samples when coupled to macro-environmental data sets. These data also fill in some details about the prehispanic Mesoamerican landscape, raising new questions about the relationship between past settlements and regional cultural, political, and ecological systems. Finally, these data offer important foundational inventories for discussing how to preserve and conserve archaeological resources across the lowlands, especially when these resources are not tied to monumental architecture.
site we have anonymized as Cerro X, which was a long-standing destination for pilgrimage in the Sierra Sur region of Nejapa in southeastern Oaxaca. Incredibly, the bin contained the seeds of over 127 indigenous plant species. The placement of the bin, in a protected and spiritually significant location, demonstrates how spiritual and physical security were inextricably and unavoidably interlinked. The bin also speaks to the important role of food practices and local Indigenous cuisine in the construction of cultural identity and future selves. We argue that the bin and its contents are evidence of the extraordinary efforts that people took to protect their traditional ecological knowledge and to ensure food sovereignty and food security during a time of intense conflict and change.
the archaeological evidence of what ancient Oaxacan communities grew,
cooked, and ate but also reveals how, since ancient times, cooks and farmers have experimented with their environments to feed their families. Over time, people developed regional flavors and identities while also negotiating and resisting asymmetrical power structures, from the rise of ruling elites in the Formative period, to the establishment of colonial rule, to the gentrification of Oaxacan foods in the global market. The contributions in this volume bring us to the present and outside of Oaxaca, where Oaxacan communities in the United States are holding on to and transforming their culinary traditions, often rejecting dominant narratives of modernization, acculturation, and what constitutes healthy and prestigious foods. While this book documents parts of the long history of Oaxacan cuisines, there is no doubt that these food traditions are alive and evolving and have an interesting future ahead.
The emergence and expansion of inequality have been topics of household archaeology for decades. Traditionally, this question has been informed by ethnographic, ethnohistoric and/or comparative studies. Within sites and regions, comparative physical, spatial, and architectural studies of households offer an important baseline of information about status, wealth, and well-being, especially in the Maya lowlands where households are accessible in the archaeological record. Between sites, more research is necessary to assess how these physical measurements of household remains compare. This paper investigates the intersection of landscape, household, and community based on a multi-scalar analysis of households using the Gini index across southeastern Mexico, in the context of a broader study of land use, land management, and settlement patterns. Notably, this paper represents a region-wide analysis of nearly continuous LiDAR data within and outside of previously documented prehispanic Maya settlements. While we conclude that the Gini index is useful for establishing a comparative understanding of settlement, we also recognize that the index is a starting point to identify other ways to study how household to community-level social and economic variability intersects with diverse ecological patterns. Highlighting the opportunities and limitations with applying measures like the Gini index across culturally, temporally, and geographically heterogeneous areas, we illustrate how systematic studies of settlement can be coupled to broader studies of landscape archaeology to interpret changing patterns of land management and settlement across the Maya lowlands.
We present results from the archaeological analysis of 331 km2 of high-resolution airborne lidar data collected in the Upper Usumacinta River basin of Mexico and Guatemala. Multiple visualizations of the DEM and multi-spectral data from four lidar transects crossing the Classic period (AD 350–900) Maya kingdoms centered on the sites of Piedras Negras, La Mar, and Lacanja Tzeltal permitted the identification of ancient settlement and associated features of agricultural infrastructure. HDBSCAN (hierarchical density-based clustering of applications with noise) cluster analysis was applied to the distribution of ancient structures to define urban, peri-urban, sub-urban, and rural settlement zones. Interpretations of these remotely sensed data are informed by decades of ground-based archaeological survey and excavations, as well as a rich historical record drawn from inscribed stone monuments. Our results demonstrate that these neighboring kingdoms in three adjacent valleys exhibit divergent patterns of structure clustering and low-density urbanism, distributions of agricultural infrastructure, and economic practices during the Classic period. Beyond meeting basic subsistence needs, agricultural production in multiple areas permitted surpluses likely for the purposes of tribute, taxation, and marketing. More broadly, this research highlights the strengths of HDBSCAN to the archaeological study of settlement distributions when compared to more commonly applied methods of density-based cluster analysis.
From Fighting with Food to Feasts, anthropological literature has long demonstrated the active social role of food, as substance as much as symbol. Foodstuffs in the Maya area created obligation, bound people together, marked difference, ritualized practice, and incentivized social movement. Plants, as primary or even sole ingredients, occupied a special place in these dynamics. Beyond basic nutritional building blocks, plants were active agents, socially marshalled to amass labor for monumental projects such as terraces and canals, valued as (fickle) commodities in long-distance trade, and assembled in elaborate dishes for large-scale ceremonial feasts. Moreover, day-to-day activities reinforced or overturned social norms through the medium of food-- collection, preparation, and consumption. Social messages were ingested, as much as they were transformed and maintained through ingestion. All of this aside from the many ways food plants were used in ritualized practice but not ever physically consumed by ancient Maya participants.
Drawing from the writings of scholars including Mary Weismantel, Marshall McLuhan, and Charles Saunders Peirce, I consider the ways that food plants in the Maya area operated simultaneously as icons, indices, and symbols, often independently of human intention and sometimes in opposition. Using published work by other scholars, as well as paleoethnobotanical data I’ve collected from multiple sites in the Maya area, I draw a picture of plants that were manipulated for social ends as frequently as they actively manipulated the worlds around them. From transported landscapes to trade wars, food plants played dynamic roles in the lives of ancient Maya people. This perspective goes beyond the basic matter of subsistence to get at the heart of sociality.
This paper presents the archaeological evaluation of 458 tiles of LiDAR collected by environmental scientists over southern Mexico using the G-LiHT system of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Specifically, this article describes the results of a full processing, inspection, and annotation of these data for the identification and baseline analysis of archaeological features. In this paper, we: 1) introduce the dataset and describe our efforts to systematically process and annotate archaeological features and 2) revisit the cultural and ecological context of the samples. The results presented here confirm some of the conclusions presented previously, including the benefit of mining large previously acquired digital data for archaeological information, the diversity of lowland settlement and features in between areas already well-documented, and the contribution to landscape archaeology of such transect samples when coupled to macro-environmental data sets. These data also fill in some details about the prehispanic Mesoamerican landscape, raising new questions about the relationship between past settlements and regional cultural, political, and ecological systems. Finally, these data offer important foundational inventories for discussing how to preserve and conserve archaeological resources across the lowlands, especially when these resources are not tied to monumental architecture.
submerged, have long held the potential for Pleistocene
aged fossil deposits. Since the late 1980s, cave diving
explorers have been mapping these systems and, in the
course of their work, discovering the remains of animals
and humans. Although most of the human remains
have been from the Maya occupation of the region, a
few discoveries of pre-Maya humans are thought, but
not confirmed, to date to the Late Pleistocene or early
Holocene (González González et al. 2006; 2013), but
archaeological assemblages dating to this early period
have not yet been reported for the peninsula. The region’s
potential has remained largely untapped.
A major step toward realizing the paleoanthropological
and paleontological potential of the Yucatan’s submerged
caves came in 2007 with the discovery of Hoyo Negro.
Under study by an international team of archaeologists,
paleontologists, paleoecologists, and cave geochemists
from Mexico, the United States and Canada and led
by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia
(INAH), Hoyo Negro contains a remarkable time capsule
of the terminal Pleistocene climate and plant, animal, and
human life of the Yucatan Peninsula.
Botanical residues recovered from excavations in the Southeast Marketplace of Piedras Negras provide information about the healing and medical activities of the site's Classic period (a.d. 350–900) inhabitants, and point towards the intersection between commerce and medicine for the ancient Maya. The plants were likely exchanged at the market then used on-site for the purposes of healing. The botanical remains are complemented by both architectural and bioarchaeological evidence for healing at this locus, including a high concentration of sweatbaths and evidence for palliative tooth extraction. With the aid of ethnohistory, we identify health care practices potentially associated with the plant remains. However, we expand on basic understandings of “healing” with a critical look at how some medicinal plants may have been ritually invoked, even when never directly ingested or applied topically.