Looking for Evidence of Corn Processing (Nixtamalization) at Angel Mounds

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Advancing the Archaeology of Indigenous Agriculture in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Mississippian peoples (circa eleventh–fourteenth centuries CE) in the midwestern and southeastern United States have long been proven to be and defined by their maize agricultural practices. Due to the nutritional deficiencies of subsisting solely on maize as a crop when unprocessed, researchers have linked all maize agricultural communities found archaeologically to subsist on maize to this processing step, although direct evidence in all regions has not been fully examined. Known in ethnohistoric contexts, most particularly in Mesoamerican cultures, nixtamalization is the processing of maize in an alkaline solution to break down the complex carbohydrates in maize to get the most nutrition from indigenous corn varieties found archaeologically in the region (Benchley, Elizabeth D., 2003, Mississippian Alkali Processing of Corn, Wisconsin Archeologist 84:127–137). In certain Mississippian communities, specialized artifact types have been identified for this processing, primarily identified by a lime residue present on the exterior of the artifacts (e.g., Betzenhauser, Alleen, Victoria Potter, and Sarah Harken, 2017, Investigating Stumpware: Evidence for Pre-Mississippian Nixtamalization in Illinois, SAA Proceedings 74:44). This study looks for similar specialized equipment and traces on artifacts at the Mississippian mound center of Angel Mounds near Evansville, Indiana.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Advancing the Archaeology of Indigenous Agriculture in North America   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37183.0