Context and Age of Early Maize (Zea mays) in the Central Plains

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Maize, or corn, was one of the dominate crops to many North American Plains tribes, contributing beyond subsistence to origin beliefs, rituals, ceremonies, and trade. Given this, archaeologists seek to recreate the evolutionary processes by which maize became an important element in the economy of Plains populations. Central to this understanding is documenting the arrival of this cultigen. Using microbotanical identifications from absorbed and visible cooking residues and tooth calculus, coupled with AMS dates, this paper summarizes what we currently know about the distribution of this crop in central Plains contexts dating from ca. 1900BP to 1500BP. These data add to a growing body of information on the northern and eastern dispersal of maize with incidences of maize starch and phytoliths occurring 700-800 years earlier than the direct dated macrobotanical remains. A suggested use of maize recovered from microbotanical analysis is offered.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23736