Changing Patterns of Plant Use at Formative and Classic Period Matacanela

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Olmec Manifestations and Ongoing Societal Transformations in the Tuxtlas Uplands: A View from Matacanela" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Although there has been much speculation about the nature of agriculture along the Formative and Classic period Gulf Coast of Mexico, the local and regional subsistence economies of these periods remain poorly understood, particularly for Classic-period sites. In this paper, we present the results of the macrobotanical analysis from the Matacanela Archaeological Project. Spanning the Middle Formative through Late Classic periods, plant data from the Matacanela site provide key insights into the nature of changing agricultural dependence through time and the organization of site-level plant food processing. An examination of presence and abundance of maize and coyol palm, in addition to a full analysis of assemblage diversity and equitability, suggest a restriction over time in the places in which these resources were processed and cooked. These patterns have broader implications for understandings of sociopolitical power, economy, and inequality in the Gulf lowlands.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Olmec Manifestations and Ongoing Societal Transformations in the Tuxtlas Uplands: A View from Matacanela   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23398