Pre-Columbian Agaves in the Southwestern United States: Discovering Lost Crops among the Hohokam and other Arizona Cultures

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Frontiers of Plant Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The importance of agaves to Mesoamerica and its cultures has long been recognized, providing food, fiber and beverage. However, their significance to these cultures has overshadowed and distorted the plants’ role for indigenous peoples north of the U.S. - Mexico border. Pre-Columbian farmers grew no less than six and possibly as many as eight or more domesticated agaves in Arizona dating to at least A.D. 600. Because of their longevity and primarily asexual reproduction, relict agave clones have persisted in the landscape to the present, providing an opportunity to study pre-Columbian nutrition, trade, migration and agricultural practices. Additionally, these remnant clones present a rare opportunity to examine domesticates virtually unchanged since they were last cultivated within a prehistoric cultural context. DNA sequence data, in addition to plant morphology, suggests that at least three may have originated in Arizona, suggesting this state as a secondary center of domestication. These discoveries underscore the necessity of viewing landscapes and some plant species from a cultural, rather than "natural," perspective that may help discern potential cryptic species veiled by more traditional taxonomic treatments. Understanding these plants and their ecological/cultural roles requires interdisciplinary collaboration between botanists and archaeologists.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Frontiers of Plant Domestication   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25852