Re-evaluating the Earliest Evidence for Wild Potato Use in South-Central Chile

Summary

The earliest evidence of wild potato use anywhere in the world comes from Monte Verde (southern Chile), where tuber fragments were recovered from hearths that directly date to 14,500 cal B.P. Those tubers were tentatively assigned to a wild potato species (Solanum maglia) based on their starch granule morphology, which, according to Ugent et al., could be distinguished from the granule morphology of the domesticated potato (S. tuberosum). Recently, that identification has been called into question by Spooner et al., correctly pointing out that there is considerable variation in the size and shape of starch granules. This project extends this work by conducting a systematic study of starch granules from tuber reference materials of Solanum species that occur within a few hundred kilometers of Monte Verde. All reference materials were obtained from the USDA/ARS Potato Genebank and the International Potato Center and include S. chacoense, S. kurtzianum, S. maglia and S. tuberosum subsp. andigenum. We will present our approach to starch granule identification, clarifying whether the critical diagnostic features used by Ugent et al. allow with certainty an unequivocal assignment of the Monte Verde archaeological tubers to a single species.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20262