Chapter 8: Mounds and Maize Flashcards
Teosinte
- a wild grass found in the highlands of Mexico
- the wild ancestor of maize (corn)
Tehuacán Valley
in the Mexican highlands where excavations by Richard MacNeish recovered some of the earliest evidence of domesticated plants in Mesoamerica
Guilá Naquitz
- in Oaxaca, Mexico, that has produced the earliest evidence of domesticated plants in Mesoamerica
- oldest squash and maize seeds recovered
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating
a refined method of radiocarbon dating that makes it possible to date very small samples, including plant remains by the amount of carbon-14
Curcubita Pepo
- ancestor of squash
- earliest plant to be domesticated in Mexico
The only domesticated animal in Mesoamerica
turkeys
Cerro Juanaqueña
- an early agricultural site in northern Mexico with extensive evidence of terracing and other stone-built features
- 8km of terrace walls and 100 rock ring
Optimal Foraging Theory
- based on the assumption that the choices people make reflect rational self-interest in maximizing efficiency when collecting and processing resources
- Robert Hard and John Roney
Milagro
an early agricultural village located outside Tucson, Arizona
Las Capas
a site near Tucson, Arizona where an Archaic village and canal system have been discovered
Formative Period
pottery and domestication of beans
Poverty Point
a Late Archaic site in Louisiana with a series of six concentric embankments
Adena
- a period of intensive mound building in the Ohio River Valley
- corresponds to the EARLY Woodland culture
Hopewell
- a period of intensive mound building in the Ohio River Valley
- corresponds to the MIDDLE Woodland culture
James Griffin
suggested that there were Hopewell villages near the massive earthworks
Vacant Centre Pattern
the model that sees the Hopewell earthworks as the empty core of a dispersed settlement system
Patty Jo Watson and Mary Kennedy
- linked the seeming invisibility of people in the origins of agriculture to gender bias in our conception of the past
- men hunted women gathered plants
Bruce Smith
climate change = increase in settlements = geological changes = development of domesticated plants
