They are what they eat: A need to know more about diet through residues, hieroglyphic texts, and images of the Classic Mayas

Summary

Among the various sources of information about what foodstuffs comprised the Classic Mayan diet, we lack resolution on daily, domestic, and the various ritual and event foodstuffs. Beyond the archaeologically recovered macrofossil and faunal data, the identifications of drugs and ritual foodstuffs are less well established. Speculative and presumed behaviors that surround these goods tend to bias methods of analysis towards known substances and preconceived interpretations, thereby potentially obscuring empirical data on actual behavior. In the case of the "chocolate vases", the residues did not match our assumptions. Are there other assumptions we have made that maybe leading us astray? There are a number of other residues and contexts to which we should be paying special attention, and we need more appropriate methods of acquiring residues from limited-preservation soils and contexts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• A Material World: Collaborative Research in Art, Archaeology, and Materials Science in the Study of the Ancient Americas

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17193