Stable Carbon Isotope Enrichment of Archaeological Soil Organic Matter from Zea mays

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Although δ13C values obtained on Soil Organic Matter (SOM) from archaeological sites have been used as isotopic fingerprints for the identification of ancient maize agricultural fields and the evaluation of the scale of maize production, determining the quantity and rate of 13C enrichment through time largely has been ignored. The focus of this study is to use δ13C values obtained on SOM from experimental, ethnobotanical, and ethnohistoric maize agricultural fields to determine the quantity and rate of SOM enrichment from maize and discuss the implications for archaeological interpretations of ancient maize agriculture.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23801