Foodways and Diet in the Prehispanic Mixteca Alta : Ceramic and Isotope Analyses in the Specific Case of the Tomb 1 Burial in Nduatiucu (San Felipe Ixtapa, Teposcolula)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This presentation examines the archaeological possibilities for investigating prehispanic foodways and diet. We do this through the analysis of a burial recovered in Tomb 1 at Nduatiucu, in the Teposcolula valley in the Mixteca Alta. The burial first excavated in the 1970s by Winter et al. (1975) and later re-assessed and radiocarbon dated by Saumur 2017 dates to the early Postclassic period (ca. 1000 A.D.). We discuss two specific elements of this find: first, the associated ceramics that inform us about food preparation and consumption in this specific context in the Mixteca Alta; second, the results of an isotopic study of the human remains that inform us about the individual’s diet. We will present the aims, methods and results of this case study and compare our results with those from other analyses that have been conducted on early Colonial human remains recovered at Pueblo Viejo de Teposcolula (Yucundaa) (Warinner et al. 2012). This comparative work will also consider the available data coming from other Mesoamerican regions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23900