Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of text boxes
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- I Introduction
- II Origins: Species Movements in the Pleistocene
- III Across the water: Species movements by Coast and Sea
- IV Complexity: Species Movements in the Holocene
- 9 Dispersals, connectivity and indigeneity in Arabian prehistory
- 10 Reconstructing migration trajectories using ancient DNA
- 11 Out of the Fertile Crescent: The dispersal of domestic livestock through Europe and Africa
- 12 Adapting crops, landscapes, and food choices: Patterns in the dispersal of domesticated plants across Eurasia
- 13 Tracing the initial diffusion of maize in North America
- 14 Proto-globalisation and biotic exchange in the Old World
- V Invasion: The Movement of Invasive and Disease Species
- Index
- Plate section
- References
13 - Tracing the initial diffusion of maize in North America
from IV - Complexity: Species Movements in the Holocene
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2017
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of text boxes
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- I Introduction
- II Origins: Species Movements in the Pleistocene
- III Across the water: Species movements by Coast and Sea
- IV Complexity: Species Movements in the Holocene
- 9 Dispersals, connectivity and indigeneity in Arabian prehistory
- 10 Reconstructing migration trajectories using ancient DNA
- 11 Out of the Fertile Crescent: The dispersal of domestic livestock through Europe and Africa
- 12 Adapting crops, landscapes, and food choices: Patterns in the dispersal of domesticated plants across Eurasia
- 13 Tracing the initial diffusion of maize in North America
- 14 Proto-globalisation and biotic exchange in the Old World
- V Invasion: The Movement of Invasive and Disease Species
- Index
- Plate section
- References
Summary
Abstract
Domesticated from a wild teosinte grass in southern Mexico more than 6,000 years ago, maize (Zea mays ssp. mays L.) is today the world's single most important food crop. In this chapter I follow the initial diffusion of this major domesticate from its origin north through Mexico into the southwestern United States and then across the southern Plains into eastern North America, and consider its evolution under human selection during its long journey. Maize provides a well-documented example of a domesticate that was not part of a crop complex carried into new regions by expanding agricultural societies, but rather was exchanged, unaccompanied by other domesticates, from group to group.
Keywords: Maize, domestication, North America, crop diffusion
INTRODUCTION
Domesticated from a wild teosinte grass in southern Mexico more than 6,000 years ago, maize (Zea mays ssp. mays L.) is today the world's single most important food crop, with a recent annual harvest of more than 818 million metric tons (Varshney et al. 2012: Table 1). In this chapter I look at the early history of this major crop and follow its initial diffusion northward through Mexico into the southwestern United States and then across the Great Plains into the eastern woodlands of North America. A general temporal framework for the spread of maize throughout the Americas now exists, based on direct small-sample accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating of cob and kernel remains recovered from sites scattered across this vast geographical area (Blake 2006). While this general spatial-temporal map of maize diffusion is still very much a work in progress (see ancientmaize.com), it does bring into clearer focus a wide range of questions, many of which are still unanswered, regarding the rates, routes, and mechanisms of initial human diffusion of the domesticate, its evolution under human selection, its adaptation to new environments, and the wide range of different ways in which it was added into and eventually came to dominate the subsistence economies of small-scale societies throughout North America.
SOUTHERN MEXICO: THE START OF THE JOURNEY
Populations of a wild teosinte grass that grow today along the central Balsas River valley in southern Mexico (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis Iltis and Doebley) have been identified as being phylogenetically most closely allied with maize, and are considered to be the present-day descendants of its probable wild progenitor (Matsuoka et al. 2002).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Human Dispersal and Species MovementFrom Prehistory to the Present, pp. 332 - 348Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2017
References
and
2011. Patterns of plant use in the Prehistoric Central and Southern Plains. In The Subsistence Economies of Indigenous North American Societies, ed. , pp. 307–352. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman Littlefield.
2005. First Farmers. Oxford: Blackwell.
2001. Archaeological evidence of teosinte domestication from Guilá Naquitz, Oaxaca. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
98: 2104–2106.Google Scholar
, , , and
2006. El Riego and early maize agricultural evolution. In Histories of Maize, ed. , , and , pp. 73–83. New York: Academic Press.
2006. Dating the initial spread of Zea mays
. In Histories of Maize, ed. , , and , pp. 55–68. New York: Academic Press.
, , and
2012. Old World globalization and the Columbian exchange: comparison and contrast. World Archaeology
44 (3): 452–469
Google Scholar
(ed.) 1967. The Prehistory of the Tehuacan Valley. Volume 1: Environment and Subsistence. Austin: University of Texas Press.
, , and
2006. Pre-contact maize from Ontario, Canada: context, chronology, variation, and plant association. In Histories of Maize, ed. , , and , pp. 549–563. New York: Academic Press.
and
1996. Migration in prehistory: Princess Point and the Northern Iroquoian case. American Antiquity
61: 782–790.Google Scholar
, , and
1997. Dating the entry of Corn (Zea mays) into the lower Great Lakes. American Antiquity
62: 112–119.Google Scholar
1952. A preliminary survey of plant remains of Tularosa Cave. In Mogollon Cultural Continuity and Change: The Stratigraphic Analysis of Tularosa and Cordova Caves, ed. , , , , and , FIeldiana Anthropology 40, pp. 461–479. Chicago: Chicago Natural History Museum.
and
2006. Environmental mosaics, agricultural diversity, and the evolutionary adoption of maize in the American Southwest. In Histories of Maize, ed. , , and , pp. 109–121. New York: Academic Press.
(ed.) 1986. Guilá Naquitz: Archaic Foraging and Early Agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico. Orlando: Academic Press.
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and
2014. The origin and evolution of maize in the American Southwest. Nature Plants 1(14003).
1985. Patterns of prehistoric food production in North America. In Prehistoric Food Production in North America, ed. pp. 341–364. Museum of Anthropology Anthropological Papers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan,
2011. The role of “tropical” crops in early North American agriculture. In The Subsistence Economies of Indigenous North American Societies, ed. , pp. 503–517. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman Littlefield.
1994. Modern variability and patterns of maize movement in Mesoamerica. In Corn and Culture in the Prehistoric New World, ed. and , pp. 135–157. Boulder: Westview Press.
2011. Prehistoric Plant Procurement, Food Production, and Land Use in Southwestern Tamaulipas, Mexico. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.
2001. Maize, matrilocality, migration and Northern Iroquoian evolution. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
8: 151–182.Google Scholar
, , and
2007. Extending the phytolith evidence for early maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) and squash (Cucurbita sp.) in Central New York. American Antiquity
72: 563–583.Google Scholar
1962. The greater American Southwest. In Courses toward Urban Life, ed. and , pp. 106–131. Chicago: Aldine.
1976. The Hohokam: Desert Farmers and Craftsmen. Excavations at Snaketown, 1964–1965. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
2001. Proto-Uto-Aztecan: a community of cultivators in central Mexico?
American Anthropologist
103: 913–934.Google Scholar
, , and
2007. Identification of teosinte, maize, and Tripsacum in Mesoamerica by using pollen, starch grains, and phytoliths. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
104: 17608–17613.Google Scholar
2006. Ancient maize in the American Southwest: what does it look like and what does it tell us? In Histories of Maize, ed. , , and , pp. 97–109. New York: Academic Press.
, , , , , , and
2003. Early allelic selection in maize as revealed by ancient DNA. Science
302: 1206–1208.Google Scholar
and
2006. Ancient DNA and the integration of archaeological and genetic approaches to the study of maize domestication. In Histories of Maize: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Prehistory, Biogeography, Domestication, and Evolution of Maize, ed. , , and , pp. 83–95. San Diego: Elsevier.
2002. The role of irrigation in the transition to agriculture and sedentism in the Southwest: a risk management model. In Traditions, Transitions, and Technologies: Themes in Southwest Archaeology, ed. , pp.160–177. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
(ed.) 2008. Las Capas. Tucson, Arizona: Center for Desert Archaeology.
and
2008. Modeling the early agricultural frontier in the desert borderlands. In Archaeology Without Borders: Contact, Commerce, and Change in the U.S. Southwest and Northwestern Mexico, ed. and , pp. 55–70. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
, , , , , and
2002. A single domestication for maize shown by multilocus microsatellite genotyping. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
99: 6080–6084.Google Scholar
, , , , , , and
2009. The diffusion of maize to the southwestern United States and its impact. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
106: 21019–21026.Google Scholar
2004. The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America. London: Thames and Hudson.
2006. Caribbean maize: first farmers to Columbus. In Histories of Maize: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Prehistory, Biogeography, Domestication, and Evolution of Maize, ed. , , and , pp. 325–337. San Diego: Elsevier.
and . 2001. The earliest archaeological maize (Zea mays L.) from highland Mexico: new accelerator mass spectrometry dates and their implications. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
98: 2101–2103.Google Scholar
, , , , and
2009. The cultural and chronological context of early Holocene maize and squash domestication in the Central Balsas River Valley, Mexico. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
106: 5019–5024.Google Scholar
, , , , and
1994. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dates Confirm Early Zea mays in the Mississippi River Valley. American Antiquity
59: 490–497.Google Scholar
1993. Variability in Mississippian crop production strategies. In Foraging and Farming in the Eastern Woodlands, ed. , pp. 78–90. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
1977. Seaborne contacts between early cultures in lower southeastern United States and Middle through South America. In The Sea in the Pre-Columbian World, ed. , pp. 1–15. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks.
1982. Fort Center: An Archaeological Site in the Lake Okeechobee Basin. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
and
2006. Early maize (Zea mays L.) cultivation in Mexico: Dating sedimentary pollen records and its implications. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
103: 1147–1151.Google Scholar
1992. Rivers of Change. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
1995. Ranked agricultural societies of the eastern woodlands. In The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the New World, North American Volume, ed. and , pp. 417–488. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1997a. The initial domestication of Cucurbita pepo in the Americas 10,000 years ago. Science
276: 865–996.Google Scholar
1997b. Reconsidering the Ocampo Caves and the era of incipient cultivation. Latin American Archaeology
7: 1–43.Google Scholar
2001a. Documenting plant domestication: the consilience of biological and archaeological approaches. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
98: 1324–1326.Google Scholar
2005. Documenting the transition to food production along the borderlands. In The Late Archaic Across the Borderlands, ed. , pp. 300–317. Austin: University of Texas Press.
2006. Eastern North America as an independent center of plant domestication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
103: 12223–12228.Google Scholar
2011. General patterns of niche construction and the management of wild plant and animal resources by small-scale pre-industrial societies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
366: 836–848.Google Scholar
and
2009. Initial formation of an indigenous crop complex in eastern North America at 3800 B.P. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
106: 6561–6566.Google Scholar
1985. Adaptive strategies of Archaic Cultures of the west Gulf Coastal Plain. In Prehistoric Food Production in North America, ed. , pp. 19–56. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Museum of Anthropology. Anthropological Papers 75.
, , , and
2004. Phytolith evidence for twentieth-century B.P. maize in northern Iroquoia. Northeast Anthropology
68: 25–40.Google Scholar
, , and
2013. Challenging the evidence for prehistoric wetland maize agriculture at Fort Center, Florida. American Antiquity
78:181–193.Google Scholar
, , , , , and
2012. Can genomics boost productivity of orphan crops?
Nature Biotechnology
30: 1172–1176.Google Scholar
1987. Uses of Plants by Fort Ancient Indians. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis.
1989. The corn and cultivated beans of the Fort Ancient Indians. In New World Paleoethnobotany: Collected Papers in Honor of Leonard W. Blake, ed. and , pp. 107–135. The Missouri Archaeologist
47.
and
2008. The Mexican connection and the far west of the US Southeast. American Antiquity
73:227–277.Google Scholar
- 8
- Cited by