LISS.398A TECHNOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT and HUMAN ADAPTATION:
PART II PRE-EUROPEAN
MESOAMERICA
VALLEY OF OAXACA: EARLY-MIDDLE FORMATIVE; INTENSIFICATION OF AGRICULTURE
People living in the hamlets of the Tierras Largas Phase probably had already come to rely on agriculture for more than half their food
supply. Food crops included staples of maize, beans, squash supplemented by avocado, chiles and a kind of small green tomato. Hunting
-gathering (acorns, nopales, white-tailed deer, peccary) furnished the rest and continued, with diminishing significance, to supplement
other food sources through succeeding periods up to recent times. Evidence is provided by remains from household floors and associated
storage pits such as those at
San José Mogote .
Subsistence agriculture, as it was probably practiced in the Valley during this period, is a complex technology whose component activities
include:
- Field Preparation
- Almost certainly
slash-and-burn
techniques were employed during this period in the Valley as evidenced by stone ax heads found near some settlements.
- Planting
- Probably effected with a pointed digging stick called a coa.
- Cultivation
- Mainly keeping the weeds out of the fields during the growing season
- Water provision
- Initially rainfall was the only source, but most occupations were situated where irrigation would have been a feasible option -- pot
irrigation in the alluvium and canal irrigation in the piedmont arroyos. Evidence of walk-in wells associated with pot-irrigation in this
period appears in excavations at
Mitla
and Abasalo.
- Harvesting
- Possibly using containers like baskets made of perishable material which does not survive in the archaeological record.
- Storage
- Bell-shaped underground pits near residential structures such as those at
San José Mogote .
served both for storage of food for the dry season as well as seed for the next year’s planting.
- Food Preparation
- Remains of stone grinding tools,
metate and mano,
used to pulverize maize seed (and possibly others)
are evident at many occupations from as early as the Tierras Largas Phase. Initially, pulverized maize was probably mixed with water and
consumed in the form of something like a
gruel
or
tamale.
Late in the Rosario Phase remains of ceramic plates --
comales
used for cooking
tortillias
begin to appear for the first time in the archaeological record.
Colorado School of Mines
Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies
Dr. Joseph D. Sneed
jsneed@mines.edu
