Investigating the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico: New Dates and Isotopic Data

Summary

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

The dry caves and floodplain archaeological sites of the Tehuacan Valley in Puebla, Mexico, excavated by Richard S. MacNeish and his team in the 1960s, contained some of the earliest macrobotanical evidence for domesticated New World plants, including maize, avocados and chili peppers. While many studies have focused on the levels associated with these domesticated cultigens, less attention has been paid to the earliest deposits of the caves, which according to the excavators, spanned the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary. Here we present new AMS radiocarbon dates from the lowest levels of Coxcatlan cave (Ajuereado and Riego Phases) and stable isotope data from faunal bones (N=200) from nine site locations within the valley to document the timing of human occupation and to reconstruct the ecological contexts in which the early inhabitants lived. The AMS dates give us a new early date for cultural sequence in Tehuacan and the stable isotope results allow us to reconstruct environmental changes over time. These data increase our ability to model human adaptations to the post-Pleistocene environments in Mexico and help us understand how such adaptations may have led to increases in sedentary lifeways and ultimately to the origins of agriculture.

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): 33532