An Evaluation of Food during Sociopolitical Transitions at Formative Tres Zapotes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Tres Zapotes is an important site in the broader discussion of Olmec cultural continuity and Formative period political economy with an archaeological record that spans the two millennia between 1000 BC and AD 1000. It is a key site for understanding the emergence of Classic period civilization from ancient Olmec roots in Mexico’s southern Gulf Coast lowlands. The occupational history and archaeological record at Tres Zapotes challenges the previous notion that Olmec culture and traditions “collapsed” with the decline of La Venta around 400 BC, and recent work has argued that a shift from a centralized political structure to a more decentralized/collective one can be attributed to the fluorescence of Tres Zapotes when other polities fell. To expand upon this work, I utilize paleoethnobotanical data from Tres Zapotes to examine what patterns in foodways (practices surrounding food production, consumption, storage and disposal) can reveal regarding sociopolitical transitions over Tres Zapotes’ long culture sequence. Comparative analyses across elite and non-elite contexts through time reveals changes in provisioning and processing strategies providing insight into the role of food throughout Tres Zapotes’ continuous occupation and the changes in political-economic strategies therein.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37444.0