A Taste for Tubers: The Circulation of the Familiar through the Ancient Titicaca Basin

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeologists track the social, political, and economic dynamics of the ancient Lake Titicaca basin through the circulation of people and things. Plant things, in particular, reveal food choices, quotidian diets and special meals, and broader trade relations before and after the settling of the urban center of Tiwanaku. In this paper, we discuss paleoethnobotanical work at two settlements with Late Formative and Tiwanaku occupations. We present new evidence for lowland tubers (yuca, sweet potato, arrowroot) from the recently excavated site of Challapata in the eastern Titicaca basin and the well-known southern basin site Chiripa. We consider these non-local food findings in the context of local tubers, such as potato, oca, and ulluco. Why would Titicaca tuber growers wish to acquire lowland tubers as well? We suggest that these non-local plants were desirable because of a particular local taste for

tubers and extant knowledge of tuber cooking techniques. Titicaca Basin communities chose their food (and cultivated trade relations) due to particular tastes and food familiarity, not simply for exotic flavours. We suggest the need for further attention to such choices, particularly over periods where not just social and political orders were changing, but likely larger sensory worlds associated with food choice.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33055