Changing Food Practices at Tequendama, Aguazuque, and Zipacon (Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia)

Summary

The process of domestication has interested archaeologists working in the Andes for decades but for many years problems of preservation and access to certain analyses have caused a lag in the recovery of concrete evidence. Although, previous research carried out in the 1970’s and 1980’s at the preceramic sites of Tequendama, Aguazuque, and Zipacon on the altiplano of the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia yielded a wealth of paleoenvironmental, tool use, and faunal data, few botanical remains were recovered from these projects. This research helped create window into understanding the changes in the social and economic practices of these early societies but more recent excavations at these sites have employed a multiproxy paleoethnobotanical approach that includes the collection of column samples for macrobotanical and microbotanical analysis to overcome problems with preservation biases. The supplementation of this new data set to the information that already exists will allow us to explore socio-cultural changes that were occuring during the mid-holocene through the lens of diachronic changes in foodways on the Sabana de Bogotá. By directing inquiry into changing food practices we will begin to understand, not only how these early populations interacted with, but also how they conceptualized, their environment.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Food and Culture in the Andes

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