Early Use of High-Altitude Tubers in the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeobotany of Early Peopling: Plant Experimentation and Cultural Inheritance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this paper we discuss the importance of high-altitude tubers to early peopling of northern Andean area of South America and their role in the colonization of environments like Bogota plain that resulted in different ways of inhabiting and transforming the region during the early and middle Holocene. We are interested in the study of social aspects related with plant cultivation to understand the agency of hunter-gatherers in early domestication of plants, particularly their role in the establishment of high-altitude tubers as staple foods. The archaeobotanical analysis carried out at the archaeological site of Checua allows us to suggest that hunter-gatherers were collecting and cultivating plants during the time span of the occupation of the site (9500 and 5052 cal BP), as it is evidenced by the presence of starch grain morphotypes similar to those of present day cultivated plants like cubio (Tropaeolum tuberosum), ibia (Oxalis tuberosa), ulluco (Ullucus tuberosus), common bean (Phaseolus spp.) and mays (Zea mays). These data are supported by the analysis of dental calculus from human individuals buried at the site. This long cultural tradition is still present in rural areas of the Colombian Andean highlands where communities cultivate tubers as part of their cultural inheritance.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeobotany of Early Peopling: Plant Experimentation and Cultural Inheritance   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41566.0