Radiocarbon Chronology for the Late Archaic and Formative Periods on the Pacific Coast of Southeastern Mesoamerica

1995 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 161-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Blake ◽  
John E. Clark ◽  
Barbara Voorhies ◽  
George Michaels ◽  
Michael W. Love ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Pacific Coast ◽  
Gulf Coast ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Cultivated Plants ◽  
Late Archaic ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Radiocarbon Chronology ◽  
Middle Formative

AbstractArchaeological excavations carried out during the past five years along the Pacific coast of Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador have recovered 79 new 14C dates for the Late Archaic and Early to Middle Formative periods. We analyze these new dates along with 25 previously published dates to refine a sequence of 10 archaeological phases spanning almost three and a half millennia, from ca. 4000 to 650 B.C. The phases are summarized with a brief description of their most salient characteristics. We include illustrations of the Early Formative period ceramics and figurines from the Mazatan region. The sequence of phases reveals a trajectory of cultural evolution beginning in the Archaic period with the mobile hunting, fishing, and gathering Chantuto people. By 1550 B.C., the first ceramic-using sedentary communities appeared on the coast of Chiapas. They were hunter-fisher-gatherers who supplemented their food supply with cultivated plants, including maize and beans. We suggest that by the Locona phase (1400–1250 B.C.) in Chiapas, they began the transition from egalitarian sociopolitical organization to simple chiefdoms, leaving behind evidence of large-scale architectural constructions, long-distance imports such as obsidian and jade, and elaborately crafted prestige goods. Also in Chiapas, during the Cherla phase (1100–1000 B.C.), ceramic and figurine styles, nearly identical to those found at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan on the Gulf Coast, made their first appearance. Many of the local artifact styles were gradually replaced by styles that became increasingly widespread in Mesoamerica. The chronology presented here shows that these changes were roughly contemporaneous with similar ones in neighboring regions of Mesoamerica.

The Color of Influence: A Provenance Study of Hematite-Based Paints on Early Olmec Carved Pottery

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clarus J. Backes ◽  
David Cheetham ◽  
Hector Neff
Keyword(s):  
Inductively Coupled Plasma ◽  
Pacific Coast ◽  
Gulf Coast ◽  
San Lorenzo ◽  
Inductively Coupled ◽  
Provenance Data ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Icp Ms ◽  
Plasma Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Coast Site

AbstractRecent research and debates regarding the origin and spread of Olmec iconography during the Early Formative have centered on provenance and stylistic analyses of carved and incised pottery. Studies by instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) have indicated that Gulf Coast-style carved-incised pots were exported extensively from the area of the first Olmec capital, San Lorenzo, to several other regions of Mesoamerica. More recently, excavations at the Pacific Coast site of Cantón Corralito have shown that carved-incised pottery and other Olmec-style artifacts dominate strata contemporary with Early Olmec, suggesting the site may represent a settlement enclave of Gulf Olmec peoples. In this study we provide additional evidence of exchange between the Gulf Olmec and the Pacific Coast region by using laser ablation time-of-flight inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-TOF-ICP-MS) to characterize hematite-based paints on Olmec-style pottery from Cantón Corralito, and to compare these paints to raw hematite recovered from Cantón Corralito and San Lorenzo. When examined in combination with sherd provenance data, the LA-TOF-ICP-MS data demonstrate that Olmec vessels were decorated in the San Lorenzo region before being exported to the Pacific Coast, and that Gulf Coast hematite was exported to Cantón Corralito, where it was used to enhance Olmec-style symbolism on locally produced vessels.

POTTERY TRADE AND THE FORMATION OF EARLY AND MIDDLE FORMATIVE STYLE HORIZONS AS SEEN FROM CENTRAL MEXICO

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley D. Stoner ◽  
Deborah L. Nichols
Keyword(s):  
Gulf Coast ◽  
Petrographic Analysis ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Late Formative ◽  
Middle Formative ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Distance Interaction ◽  
Early Formative

AbstractWe explore the relationship between long-distance pottery trade and the formation of Early and Middle Formative style horizons in Mesoamerica. A sample of 1,154 ceramics mostly from Early and Middle Formative contexts in the central Mexican highlands was irradiated at the University of Missouri Research Reactor with a subsample (n = 313) for petrographic analysis. We conclude that: (1) most sites and regions display more than one process for making pottery; (2) there is a small amount of intraregional exchange among central Mexican sites, with the southeastern Basin of Mexico making the largest portion of pottery intended for trade within the region; and (3) interregional imports found at several sites likely come from the metamorphic region of southwestern Puebla with smaller numbers imported from the southern Gulf Coast, Morelos, and possibly Oaxaca. The trend over time from Early Formative to the end of the Middle Formative is one of decreasing intensity of long-distance interaction and decreasing geographic range of trade. These two trends contribute to the regional divergence of ceramic styles that peaks by the Late Formative in Mesoamerica.

Agricultural Innovation and Dispersal in Eastern North America

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kandace D. Hollenbach ◽  
Stephen B. Carmody
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Behavioral Ecology ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Behavioral Ecology ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Cultivated Plants ◽  
Plant Domestication ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Late Archaic ◽  
Native Peoples

The possibility that native peoples in eastern North America had cultivated plants prior to the introduction of maize was first raised in 1924. Scant evidence was available to support this speculation, however, until the “flotation revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s. As archaeologists involved in large-scale projects began implementing flotation, paleoethnobotanists soon had hundreds of samples and thousands of seeds that demonstrated that indigenous peoples grew a suite of crops, including cucurbit squashes and gourds, sunflower, sumpweed, and chenopod, which displayed signs of domestication. The application of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating to cucurbit rinds and seeds in the 1980s placed the domestication of these four crops in the Late Archaic period 5000–3800 bp. The presence of wild cucurbits during earlier Archaic periods lent weight to the argument that native peoples in eastern North America domesticated these plants independently of early cultivators in Mesoamerica. Analyses of DNA from chenopods and cucurbits in the 2010s definitively demonstrated that these crops developed from local lineages. With evidence in hand that refuted notions of the diffusion of plant domestication from Mesoamerica, models developed in the 1980s for the transition from foraging to farming in the Eastern Woodlands emphasized the coevolutionary relationship between people and these crop plants. As Archaic-period groups began to occupy river valleys more intensively, in part due to changing climatic patterns during the mid-Holocene that created more stable river systems, their activities created disturbed areas in which these weedy plants thrive. With these useful plants available as more productive stands in closer proximity to base camps, people increasingly used the plants, which in turn responded to people’s selection. Critics noted that these models left little room for intentionality or innovation on the part of early farmers. Models derived from human behavioral ecology explore the circumstances in which foragers choose to start using these small-seeded plants in greater quantities. In contrast to the resource-rich valley settings of the coevolutionary models, human behavioral ecology models posit that foragers would only use these plants, which provide relatively few calories per time spent obtaining them, when existing resources could no longer support growing populations. In these scenarios, Late Archaic peoples cultivated these crops as insurance against shortages in nut supplies. Despite their apparent differences, current iterations of both models recognize humans as agents who actively change their environments, with intentional and unintentional results. Both also are concerned with understanding the social and ecological contexts within which people began cultivating and eventually domesticating plants. The “when” and “where” questions of domestication in eastern North America are relatively well established, although researchers continue to fill significant gaps in geographic data. These primarily include regions where large-scale contract archaeology projects have not been conducted. Researchers are also actively debating the “how” and “why” of domestication, but the cultural ramifications of the transition from foraging to farming have yet to be meaningfully incorporated into the archaeological understanding of the region. The significance of these native crops to the economies of Late Archaic and subsequent Early and Middle Woodland peoples is poorly understood and often woefully underestimated by researchers. The socioeconomic roles of these native crops to past peoples, as well as the possibilities for farmers and cooks to incorporate them into their practices in the early 21st century, are exciting areas for new research.

The Thorny Oyster and the Origins of Empire: Implications of Recently Uncovered Spondylus Imagery from Chan Chan, Peru

1996 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 313-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Pillsbury
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Coast ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Critical Element ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
Trade And Exchange ◽  
Exchange Network

The acquisition and use of exotic, valuable, and ritually important elite goods is a prominent feature of many imperial political economies. After an extensive review of the archaeological and documentary sources on one specific valuable in the empire of Chimor, this paper analyzes the visual representation of such goods, an aspect seldom addressed by archaeologists. An architectural relief recently excavated at Chan Chan, the capital of Chimor, sheds new light on the use of exotic materials and long-distance trade and exchange along the Pacific coast of South America in the late Prehispanic period. This relief, named "Los Buceadores" (The Divers) for the principal imagery depicting Spondylus divers, is important for elucidating the role of this valuable in the early development of the Chimú empire. It is argued that the Chimú rulers sponsored a long-distance exchange network during an early stage of the expansion of the Chimú polity and that the fruits of this network, particularly Spondylus, formed a critical element in the formation and maintenance of the ritual and economic basis of power for the expanding state.

scholarly journals Microbial community of recently discovered Auka vent field sheds light on vent biogeography and evolutionary history of thermophily

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daan R Speth ◽  
Feiqiao B Yu ◽  
Stephanie A Connon ◽  
Sujung Lim ◽  
John S Magyar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Microbial Community ◽  
16S Rrna ◽  
Hydrothermal Vent ◽  
Gulf Of California ◽  
Hydrothermal Vents ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Optimal Growth ◽  
Metabolic Reconstruction ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The Pacific

Hydrothermal vents have been key to our understanding of the limits of life, and the metabolic and phylogenetic diversity of thermophilic organisms. Here we used environmental metagenomics combined with analysis of physico-chemical data and 16S rRNA amplicons to characterize the diversity, temperature optima, and biogeographic distribution of sediment-hosted microorganisms at the recently discovered Auka vents in the Gulf of California, the deepest known hydrothermal vent field in the Pacific Ocean. We recovered 325 metagenome assembled genomes (MAGs) representing 54 phyla, over 1/3 of the currently known phylum diversity, showing the microbial community in Auka hydrothermal sediments is highly diverse. Large scale 16S rRNA amplicon screening of 227 sediment samples across the vent field indicates that the MAGs are largely representative of the microbial community. Metabolic reconstruction of a vent-specific, deeply branching clade within the Desulfobacterota (Tharpobacteria) suggests these organisms metabolize sulfur using novel octaheme cytochrome-c proteins related to hydroxylamine oxidoreductase. Community-wide comparison of the average nucleotide identity of the Auka MAGs with MAGs from the Guaymas Basin vent field, found 400 km to the Northwest, revealed a remarkable 20% species-level overlap between vent sites, suggestive of long-distance species transfer and sediment colonization. An adapted version of a recently developed model for predicting optimal growth temperature to the Auka and Guaymas MAGs indicates several of these uncultured microorganisms could grow at temperatures exceeding the currently known upper limit of life. Extending this analysis to reference data shows that thermophily is a trait that has evolved frequently among Bacteria and Archaea. Combined, our results show that Auka vent field offers new perspectives on our understanding of hydrothermal vent microbiology.

scholarly journals Using oxygen and hydrogen stable isotopes to track the migratory movement of Sharp-shinned Hawks (Accipiter striatus) along Western Flyways of North America

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. e0226318
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Wommack ◽  
Lisa C. Marrack ◽  
Stefania Mambelli ◽  
Joshua M. Hull ◽  
Todd E. Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Stable Isotope ◽  
North America ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Pacific Coast ◽  
Isotope Analysis ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Migration Routes ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Accipiter Striatus ◽  
Hydrogen And Oxygen Isotope

The large-scale patterns of movement for the Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus), a small forest hawk found throughout western North America, are largely unknown. However, based on field observations we set out to test the hypothesis that juvenile migratory A. striatus caught along two distinct migration routes on opposite sides of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of North America (Pacific Coast and Intermountain Migratory Flyways) come from geographically different natal populations. We applied stable isotope analysis of hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) of feathers, and large scale models of spatial isotopic variation (isoscapes) to formulate spatially explicit predictions of the origin of the migrant birds. Novel relationships were assessed between the measured hydrogen and oxygen isotope values of feathers from A. striatus museum specimens of known origin and the isoscape modeled hydrogen and oxygen isotope values of precipitation at those known locations. We used these relationships to predict the origin regions for birds migrating along the two flyways from the measured isotope values of migrant’s feathers and the associated hydrogen and oxygen isotopic composition of precipitation where these feathers were formed. The birds from the two migration routes had overlap in their natal/breeding origins and did not differentiate into fully separate migratory populations, with birds from the Pacific Coast Migratory Flyway showing broader natal geographic origins than those from the Intermountain Flyway. The methodology based on oxygen isotopes had, in general, less predictive power than the one based on hydrogen. There was broad agreement between the two isotope approaches in the geographic assignment of the origins of birds migrating along the Pacific Coast Flyway, but not for those migrating along the Intermountain Migratory Flyway. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for conservation efforts of A. striatus in western North America, and the use of combined hydrogen and oxygen stable isotope analysis to track the movement of birds of prey on continental scales.

scholarly journals The genomic landscape of western South America: Andes, Amazonia and Pacific Coast

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Barbieri ◽  
Rodrigo Barquera ◽  
Leonardo Arias ◽  
José R. Sandoval ◽  
Oscar Acosta ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Pacific Coast ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Migration Route ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The Andes ◽  
Early Migration ◽  
Genomic Landscape ◽  
The Pacific

ABSTRACTStudies of Native South American genetic diversity have helped to shed light on the peopling and differentiation of the continent, but available data are sparse for the major ecogeographic domains. These include the Pacific Coast, a potential early migration route; the Andes, home to the most expansive complex societies and to one of the most spoken indigenous language families of the continent (Quechua); and Amazonia, with its understudied population structure and rich cultural diversity. Here we explore the genetic structure of 177 individuals from these three domains, genotyped with the Affymetrix Human Origins array. We infer multiple sources of ancestry within the Native American ancestry component; one with clear predominance on the Coast and in the Andes, and at least two distinct substrates in neighboring Amazonia, with a previously undetected ancestry characteristic of northern Ecuador and Colombia. Amazonian populations are also involved in recent gene-flow with each other and across ecogeographic domains, which does not accord with the traditional view of small, isolated groups. Long distance genetic connections between speakers of the same language family suggest that languages had spread not by cultural contact alone. Finally, Native American populations admixed with post-Columbian European and African sources at different times, with few cases of prolonged isolation. With our results we emphasize the importance of including under-studied regions of the continent in high-resolution genetic studies, and we illustrate the potential of SNP chip arrays for informative regional scale analysis.

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