Production Matters: Organic Residue and Iconographic Evidence for Late Precolumbian Datura Making in the Central Arkansas River Valley

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent absorbed residue studies have confirmed that ceramic and shell containers were used for consuming Datura in precolumbian times. Until now, no one has identified what tools precolumbian people used to produce a concentrated hallucinogenic concoction. In this study, we used mass spectrometry to identify Datura residues (a flowering plant with hallucinogenic properties) in two late precolumbian composite bottles from sites in the Central Arkansas River valley. Unlike the construction of most Mississippian bottles, the bottles in this study are unique because ceramic disks with a series of concentric perforations were incorporated in the bottles at the juncture of the bottle neck with the globular portion of the body. The organic residue analysis revealed Datura residues in both bottles and iconography suggests Datura-specific representations. We argue that the internal clay disks served as strainers that allowed Datura producers to separate the hallucinogenic alkaloids from the Datura flower to produce a powerful liquid beverage.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33634