Ecology and Culture
Maize God
Agenda
• Domestication of plants– maize
• Climate and crops
• Cultural ecology– human culture and biophysical environment
are linked by dynamic feedback
The “living landscape”
• Western Euro model: we exist in a landscape--separate; we are active it is passive, a backdrop for human activity.
• Mesoamerican model: exist within a landscape, integrated--both are active and alive--all things possess “life energy” in the essence of spirit which can be understood through parallels and similarities
• Spirit in this sense is not as western cosmology understands it; not the soul; not an intelligence--an essence of being--in a web of vital spirit.
• There may be “mountain gods,” but a mountain itself may be a “god”
• People are corn of the gods
Early foragers
• 12,000-8000 years ago with certainty
• Earlier (only vague and uncertain evidence)
• PaleoIndian Period– North American sites dated to 12,000 years ago– archaeological evidence of big game hunting
societies: tools; butchering marks at kill sites.
Review: A land of many environments
• Three factors governed rise of agriculture– north-south division, – elevation gradients, – presence of only a few cultigens suited for
agricultural manipulation
• No large animals available for domestication
• Ideology and cosmology
• What we believe and how we act on those beliefs. – Ideologies define norms and responses to non-
conformities
• How we fit into the perceived/conceived universe. People of the corn.
8000 BC
• Earliest evidence of harvesting evidenced by milling stones and burned corn kernels.
• Seeds of various types, beans also found in archaeological deposits
• Seasonal foraging, hunting, semi-sedentary groups
Seasonality
• Foraging camps in different niche environments
• movement across landscape
• movement between elevation zones
• Dry season• Wet season• Band level social
organization assumed
Case study: Tehuacan Valley
• PaleoIndian period 10,000 -8600 BC
• Archaic Periods 8650-2600 BC
• Transitional to Formative 2600-1600 BC
Environment
• Tehuacan sequence worked out by McNiesh (Tehuacan Valley Project undertaken between 1967-1972) [See pages 86-87 for details]
• Regional interaction in niche environments
• Mix of humid river bottoms and dry canyons.
Maize domestication
• Several origins around 4000BC• Maize (corn) became staple along side beans
and squash, various chilies • Limited range of cultigens
• Key point: harvesting wild plants is not the same as agriculture, but still impacts plant evolution.
Maize evolution
Tehuacan maize from early Archaic to AD 1500
Formative Period Begins
• 2000 BC
• preceramic phases variable across space– not everyone developed pottery at the same
time; exact source uncertain.
Developmental variation 4000-3000 BC
• Pacific coast• Seasonal habitation of
coastal plain: shellfish gathering, fishing, gradual cultivation of crops.
• Microband social organization
• Lowlands• Poor foraging grounds
but well suited to cultivation; Archaic toolkits include axes, probably for forest clearing.
• Band and village social organization.
Ca. 2000 BC
• End of Archaic Period
• Village life established over much of Meso America
• Maize a staple crop supplemented by other foods.
• The process was the same as in Old World…but 6000 years later.