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.