Formative complexity (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Blake.

Increasing reliance on staple crop agriculture has long been a cornerstone of most archaeological theorizing about emerging complex society—and especially early state formation. Comparisons of Formative Mesoamerica and Andean South America reveal the very different roles that the New World’s most important grain crop—maize—played in Formative period and subsequent economies. In Mesoamerica, where maize was first domesticated, it became an increasingly important, and symbolically laden, source of...