Roots of the Past: Exploring Paleoethnobotany in the Bajío Region of Mesoamerica

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Close to a century of archaeological research in the Bajío region of Mexico has revealed a long-term record of human occupation, ranging from mobile hunter-gatherers to early farming villages, state-level polities, and later colonial settlements where indigenous groups interacted with European populations. These developments were shaped in part by the region's dynamic environment, influenced by both human practices and climatic phenomena. Archaeological models analyzing cultural change in the Bajío often incorporate climatic and environmental factors (whether implicitly or explicitly) as essential components for understanding these trends. However, reconciling archaeological and paleoclimatic data can be challenging due to differences in research goals, methodologies, and interdisciplinary communication. In this paper, I discuss the importance of paleoethnobotanical research as a bridge between the social and natural/earth sciences. Drawing on examples from recent environmental research conducted by myself and students affiliated with various CNRS-sponsored excavation projects in the Bajío, I highlight what these approaches have taught us. Additionally, I explore novel types of paleoethnobotanical studies that can potentially deepen our understanding of human-landscape interactions in this culturally significant region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53784