The Corn That We Eat: Feasting on Maize and Maize Diversity in the Early Formative Community of Etlatongo, in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent excavations at Etlatongo recovered one of the largest analyzed macrobotanical samples for Early Formative Mesoamerica. We have explored the significant richness of species identified at the site, asserting that full-time agriculture was in place in the Highlands as early as the fourteenth century BCE. Here we turn specifically to maize, as the main staple crop in the community, to explore its interconnectedness with politics and social identities in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca. To do so, our work takes a contextual approach, providing information on the consumption of maize between two fundamentally different but complementary institutions at the site: the ballgame and its multifunctional nature for the development of public life and the family, centered in household cuisines. Our analysis documents different consumption patterns across the site, the cultivation of different maize varieties, some of them likely specific to the region, and the probable offering of maize in public ritual. Our work aims to provide a richer and novel understanding of maize, as one of the most culturally significant plants in Mesoamerica, and its role in the constitution of social relationships, returning Oaxaca to its crucial role in the understanding of the rise of agriculture and early sociopolitical complexity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part II   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37192.0