Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Discussions of plant use in Mesoamerica have historically focused on two agricultural resources: maize and cacao. While recognizing the importance of these resources, we call attention to the critical contributions of other foraged and horticultural plants to nourishing the bodies and souls of indigenous Mesoamericans. Agroforestry systems in Mesoamerica were multilayered, species-rich, and adaptive. This session asks how less studied plants contributed to these anthropogenic landscapes (perhaps even as keystone species), what economic roles they played, and how such plants also factored, on a more ideological level, into visual and textual communication systems. Each participant takes up the task of considering visual, textual, and/or archaeological evidence of a species or category of food/nonfood plants (other than maize or cacao). Papers will expand our understanding of how a diverse suite of wild and domesticated resources contributed to sustaining human life and relationships with non-human agents. By placing various time periods, subregions, and methodological frameworks in discussion with one another, this symposium will bridge the gap between humanistic and scientific discussions of less discussed but nevertheless invaluable plant resources.

Other Keywords
Paleoethnobotany • Iconography and epigraphy • Subsistence and Foodways • Maya: Classic • Ritual and Symbolism • Maya: Preclassic • Ethnohistory/History • Iconography and Art • Maya: Postclassic • Highland Mesoamerica: Postclassic

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • United Mexican States (Country) • Belize (Country) • Republic of Guatemala (Country) • Republic of El Salvador (Country) • Mesoamerica • Peten (State / Territory) • Cayo (State / Territory) • Stann Creek (State / Territory) • Toledo (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-15 of 15)

  • Documents (15)
Documents
  • Agricultural Diversity in Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala: New Ideas on Environmental Resources (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Arroyo. Felipe Trabanino. Eleanora Reber. David Lentz.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations carried out in recent years in various sectors of the Kaminaljuyu site have revealed relevant aspects of the use of local plants, their control, and distribution. Analysis of residues in ceramics allows us to know some data....

  • All that Sprouts Is Not Maize: Phytogenic Imagery in Mesoamerican Art and Narrative (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Carrasco.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Interpretations of sprouting imagery and phytomorphic deities in Mesoamerican iconography have often turned to maize. Although maize informs Maya art and is personified as the Maya Maize God, imagery from elsewhere in Mesoamerica is often less...

  • Beans of Power: Phaseolus and Late Preclassic Rulership on the Pacific Coast (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mallory Melton.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rulership in Mesoamerican societies was inextricably tied to generative aspects of agriculture. Becoming a focal point for the maintenance of cosmological order provided a pathway for asserting control of aspects of the natural world, like...

  • Culinary Arts and Plant Residues of the Ancient Maya Lowlands: Botanical Ingredients beyond Maize and Cacao (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Shanti Morell-Hart.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Foraging, home gardening, and large-scale cultivation yielded products consumed at every level of ancient Maya societies, albeit in varying proportions. For decades, researchers have carefully documented miniscule botanical residues, from...

  • De quelites me como un taco: The Importance of Secondary-Growth Plants in Polyculture-Based Farming Strategies and Food Traditions at Etlatongo, Oaxaca (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Víctor Emmanuel Salazar Chávez. Jeffrey Blomster.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Whenever we think of Mesoamerican foods, it is easy to imagine maize. It is particularly true during the Early Formative period, when the first sedentary villages appear in the region. Maize has been used almost exclusively to explain and...

  • The Forest Foods of Ancient Arenal, Costa Rica (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Venicia Slotten.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleoethnobotanical investigations at two different domestic structures in Arenal, Costa Rica, reveal the plant resources utilized by past peoples living in this volcanically active setting from 1500 BCE to 600 CE. Over 100 different genera of...

  • Managing Teotlalpan: Resourcefulness and Socioecological Diversity during the Epiclassic Period in Central Mexico (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Morehart.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies on traditional ecological knowledge stress the importance of local resource management and autonomous governance. Resourcefulness constitutes an integral aspect of such bottom-up pathways. Dependent on knowledge, skills, and social...

  • A New Locus for Avocado Domestication in Mesoamerica: Evidence for 8,000 Years of Human Selection and Tree Management at El Gigante, Honduras (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amber VanDerwarker. Douglas Kennett. Heather Thakar. Victoria Newhall. Kenneth Hirth.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent research demonstrates that ancient Mesoamericans engaged in forest management long before they domesticated maize. Our research from El Gigante provides additional evidence for the antiquity of tree management practices in several...

  • The Place of Maguey at El Tajín and in North-Central Veracruz during the Classic Period (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rex Koontz.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The presence of maguey in key iconographic programs at the major Classic Veracruz site of El Tajín has been explained largely through a hypothetical pulque cult at the site. This presentation will both extend and debate this interpretation of...

  • Sacred Surfaces: Reed Mats in Classic Maya Writing (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mallory Matsumoto.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological, ethnohistorical, art historical, and ethnographic evidence attests to extensive use of reed mats over millennia across the Maya region. In addition to being used for sleeping or sitting atop benches or floors, mats partitioned...

  • "These, therefore, are our roots, our existence": Ancestral Roots as the Embodiment of Identity in K'iche' Maya Society (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Allen Christenson.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Title of Totonicapán, a sixteenth-century K’iche’ Maya text, the authors declare that the founders of their royal lineage were the “roots” from which they grew and were nourished, as a maize plant draws its sustenance from its roots:...

  • Tree Resin in Mesoamerican Religion: Blurring Ontological Boundaries in Ceremony and Beyond (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Mendoza.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Copalli (copal) is an aromatic tree resin and a central figure in Mesoamerican ceremonies. Produced from various species of the Bursera genus, copalli is understood as the blood of trees and can be molded into figures or burned into thick...

  • Tuber Cultivation and Tropes of Fragmentation in Mesoamerica (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Guernsey. Kathryn Reese-Taylor.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Acts of deliberate fragmentation characterize tuber cultivation. Root plants rarely produce seeds, so new tubers develop by fragmenting the stem and inserting the severed portion into the ground, from which new tubers develop. Evidence of...

  • Tz’ite and Sib’aq: The Wrong Materials to Create People in the Popol Wuj (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Oswaldo Chinchilla.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many species of plants are named in the mythical narratives of the Popol Wuj. The sixteenth-century text from the K’iche’ of highland Guatemala describes how the gods and the first people used wild and cultivated plants and plant-derived...

  • Verdant Signs: The Making and Shaping of Foodstuffs in Mesoamerican Texts (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Strauss.

    This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Verdant signs abound in the writing systems of ancient Mesoamerica. Hieroglyphic records of abundance, germination, and rebirth ground ritual speech in agricultural metaphors. A robust iconography of vegetal growth reflects both the natural...