‘Siempre a la Vanguardia’: A Tribute to Dolores Piperno Contributions to the Origins and Spread of Agriculture

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Stromberg.

Grass-dominated ecosystems occupy >40% of Earth’s land surface today. Documenting when this prominent biome emerged was traditionally hampered by the rarity of identifiable grass fossils. Recently, phytoliths have emerged as a vital tool for tracking the evolutionary history of grasslands. Key to understanding ancient grassland composition is studying the 3-D morphology of silica grass short cell (GSSC) phytoliths. GSSCs have long been known as broadly diagnostic within grasses, but a landmark...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonia Zarrillo.

Genetic studies suggest a single domestication event for cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) in the Upper Amazon of southeastern Ecuador and northeastern Peru and then transported by humans northwards to Central America and Mexico. As such, we should expect to find the earliest archaeological evidence of cacao use in the tropical forests of South America. This paper presents starch granule evidence for the use of cacao dating to 3500-3300 Cal BC from the Santa Ana - La Florida site in the Upper Amazon of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Ranere. Richard Cooke.

There has been a sea change in our understanding of the early human occupation in the tropical lowlands of the Americas over the last 4 decades. Research carried out in Panama has contributed to this change in a number of ways. First, evidence of Terminal Pleistocene hunter-gatherer populations using both Clovis technology and presumably later fluted fishtail projectile point technology were recovered in tropical forest as well as open woodland habitats. Importantly, the pioneering analyses of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Stothert.

Personal and professional reminiscences from 1979 to the present of the life and works of Dolores Piperno, great person, smart graduate student and distinguished scientist whose contribution to the early history of Ecuador (culture Las Vegas) has been transforatioal. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Messner.

Over the last several decades, Dolores Piperno has made significant methodological and theoretical contributions to our archaeological understanding of the past. This paper draws on these insights to explore Early Holocene foraging strategies in the Lower Illinois River Valley and how these practices fit within their paleoenvironmental and social contexts. These data offer insights into the long trajectory toward plant domestication in eastern North America and the construction of space and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth Dickau. Javier Aceituno. Anthony Ranere.

Archaeological research in the Middle Cauca region of Colombia has identified significant human presence during the early to middle Holocene (10,600-3600 uncal BP), associated with lithic technology focused on plant processing (e.g. handstones, milling stone bases, and "hoes"). Starch residue analysis on these tools has documented the early availability and use of several domesticates; both exogenous, such as maize (Zea mays) and manioc (Manihot esculenta), and possibly indigenous, such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Irene Holst.

Over the past decade an increasing number of archaeological starch grain studies have made important contributions to our understanding of prehistoric diets and subsistence strategies. The research has also generated a number of questions concerning the identification and interpretation of starch grain records from the Neotropics and elsewhere. Some of them involve possible modification of archaeological grains from cooking and grinding. Starch may also be susceptible to damage or degradation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Sayre. Daniel Contreras.

The work of Dolores Piperno has significantly advanced our understanding of the rise of agriculture in the tropical Americas. Her work has been fundamental in the development of microbotanical techniques used to understand the use of plants in the past. This paper builds off of Dolores' analysis of plants depicted on the Tello Obelisk, at the site of Chavin de Huantar in Peru, in order to consider the role that plants from distinct ecological zones across the Andes played at the temple site....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tom Dillehay.

By 7,000-6,000 BP on the coast and in the western highlands of northern Peru, several long-distance food crops, whether domesticated or not, were adopted by local communities. Most of the crops are derived from Neo-Tropical environments far to the north, perhaps in the Ecuadorian and Colombian lowlands, or from the eastern side of the Andes. The technological, demographic and economic mechanisms and processes by which this adoption process took place is considered for several archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Kealhofer. Judith Field. Adelle Coster.

Investigations of rainforest archaeological sites from the Koombaloomba Dam environs in the NE Queensland Wet Tropics, have established a human presence here since the early Holocene (Cosgrove et al., 2007). These open sites have yielded abundant archaeological finds including excellent preservation of plant macro-remains in the form of wood charcoal and the carbonised shells of some toxic starchy economic plant species including Beilschmiedia bancroftii, the Yellow Walnut. Examination of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Bush.

A shifted baseline is the intergenerational acceptance of the progressive degradation of a system as reflecting its natural state. Paleoecological analyses have revealed the long-term usage by humans of sites previously thought to be ‘pristine’. Analysis of lake sediments in remote areas of Panama and Ecuador revealed unexpected histories of land usage. In Ecuador, Lake Ayauch provided a record of maize agriculture from 6000 years BP. At Lake Wodehouse, in Panama, a 3300-year long record from an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Crystal McMichael. Dolores Piperno. Eduardo Neves. Eduardo Tamanaha.

The extent and intensity of pre-Columbian human impacts on Amazonian forests has remained a topic of debate for decades. Traditional views of pre-Columbian Amazonia as a ‘pristine forest’ have recently been replaced by predictions of vibrant cultures frequently scattered across the Basin. A primary form of evidence for the latter includes the presence of terra preta soils, which are nutrient-enriched anthrosols that were formed in prehistory. Archaeological and paleoecological investigations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Scott Cummings.

Dolores Piperno has addressed the origins of maize agriculture in the New World through examination of samples from MesoAmerica. Ultimately, maize diffused throughout the world. Prior to globilization, maize spread throughout the Americas. Zea mays is represented by over 100 races in North America alone. My work has focused on the spread of maize agriculture, rather than its origins. Identifying races of maize is a daunting task for any region of the Americas. The most informative remains for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Weisskopf. Ling Qin. Dorian Fuller.

Using data from modern and archaeological phytolith assemblages we follow the trajectory of wild rice cultivated on wetland margins at 5000 BC through early domestication and the first artificial arable systems in dug out fields at c. 4000 BC to fully developed irrigated paddy fields in the Lower Yangtze Valley. Using multivariate analysis with phytolith assemblages from ecological communities of rice weed flora across a range of arable systems we create modern analogues of ancient systems which...