The Origins of Amazonian Cuisine: Archaeobotanical Study of Hunter-Gatherer Subsistence Systems in Limoncillos, 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.

Previously, it was thought that Amazonian Rainforests presented a barrier for the early colonists of the South American continent. Moreover, these environments were regarded as having few sources of calories and were not inhabited until food production systems were established by humans elsewhere. Recent archaeobotanical studies within NW SA have demonstrated that palms (Aceraceae family) played a central role in hunter-gatherer subsistence systems during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Palm resources within Amazonian contexts in Colombia seem to persist well into the late Holocene. Therefore, the present paper presents new archaeobotanical findings from the site of Limoncillos in San Jose del Guaviare, Colombia. The site spans the arrival of humans to the Colombian Amazon up to the very recent past. Palm resources dominate the assemblage early on, but there is a shift toward diverse forest environments toward the mid to late Holocene. Scanning Electron Microscopy analysis on Charred Multicomponent Plant Aggregates from the site attests to some of the earliest meal preparations to be studied so far in the Amazonian part of Colombia. Lastly, observations of contemporary hunter-gatherer groups from the Colombian Amazon allowed to identify from the archaeological record what possibly enabled humans to colonize these spaces with a palm-centric subsistence system.

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): 41473.0