Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling of Early Maize in the Eastern Woodlands

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Maize was ubiquitous in eastern North America at the time of European contact; however, the timing and trajectory of its introduction and adoption by communities across the region remain unclear. Recent redating of collections previously reported to support Middle Woodland maize have rejected original interpretations by either yielding dates centuries younger or δ13C values inconsistent with maize. Yet while these projects have pushed maize introduction centuries later, residue analyses support maize presence centuries earlier than the macrobotanical record in the Great Lakes and central Plains. The challenge for archaeological interpretation of early maize posed by these contrasting proxies is compounded by the absence of formal statistical modeling of dated maize proxies. Instead, a reliance is placed upon calibrated medians and visual inspection. I present a hierarchical Bayesian model for maize introduction constructed from an extensive database of directly accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dated specimens which considers chronometric hygiene and differential archaeological sampling intensity across sites. Such formal modeling is a necessary component of testing hypotheses related to the ways in which maize became or did not become a focal resource, and how maize introduction temporally articulates with a constellation of cultural and environmental changes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36399.0