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6 An Ecological Model for the Origins of Maize-Based Food Production on the Pacific Coast of Southern Mexico Douglas J. Kennett, Barbara Voorhies, and Dean Martorana 103 Maize-based food production was well-established on the Pacific coast of southwestern Mexico by 2600 B.P.1 , the beginning of the Late Formative Period. Biogeographical and genetic studies indicate that this cultigen was originally domesticated in Central Mexico by 9200 B.P., and microbotanical studies suggest that it was widely dispersed to people living in several parts of Mexico and Central America by 7500 B.P. People living in the Soconusco region during the Archaic Period (7500–3500 B.P.) were foragers that may have supplemented their diets by cultivating morphologically wild plant species and some cultigens. Microbotanical studies suggest that people in this region added maize to their diets between 6000 and 5000 B.P., but a commitment to maizebased food production did not occur until 2400 years later (2600 B.P.). Based on the paleoecological record for the region and central place foraging theory, we develop a subsistence-settlement model for pre-village, Archaic Period, forager-horticulturalists and evaluate this model with the available archaeological evidence for this interval. We then use an adapted form of the LotkaVolterra predator-prey model, cultivator-cultigen, to explore the initial adoption of maize and the development of more intensive forms of maizebased food production in the area. Based on this analysis, we argue that the long-term delay between the introduction of maize and maize-based food production resulted from the relatively low energetic returns of early maize relative to other resources available in the region. The emergence of food production is inarguably one of the most significant developments in the environmental history of our planet (Redman 1999; Roberts 1998; Dincauze 2000) and a fundamental turning point in human history (Childe 1951; Cohen 1977; Cowan and Watson 1992; Flannery 1973, 1986a; Gebauer and Price 1992a; Gremillion 1996a; Harris 1996b; Hayden 1990; Henry 1989; O’Brien and Wilson 1988; Price 2000a; Price and Gebauer 1995a; Rindos 1980, 1984; Smith 1998, 2001a; Watson 1989; 1995; Zeder 1995; Zohary and Hopf 2000). Originally characterized as a “revolution” (Childe 1951), and more recently as a transition (Price and Gebauer 1995b), true dependence on food production was often preceded by the low-level use of domesticated plants and animals by people who were essentially foragers (Smith 2001a). Mixed foraging and farming, still practiced today by the Mikea of Madagascar (Tucker, this volume), persisted for millennia in some regions, well after the domestication of key cultigens, and is considered to be a stable and highly successful subsistence strategy within certain ecological contexts. Nevertheless, the persistence of lowlevel food production often did give way, at different times, to the development of more intensive forms of agriculture involving terracing, irrigation (Doolittle 1990), and other more sophisticated agroecological techniques (e.g., raised fields; Fedick 1996). Once more intensive food production, with its associated surpluses , was established it fueled the development of socially stratified, politically centralized, and technologically innovative state-level societies (Diamond 1997; Nichols and Charlton 1997; Zeder 1991). It also underpins the exponential population growth, urbanization, and environmental destruction evident throughout the world today. Intense human-plant interaction resulting in changes in the distribution and genetic make-up of plant populations influenced prehistoric foraging and horticultural strategies long before the emergence of intensive agriculture and the reliance upon a few key cultigens (Rindos 1984; Price and Gebauer 1995a; Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Watson 1995). However , the most successful cultigens were often domesticated in primary centers and dispersed into other regions where prehistoric foragers and horticulturalists were living (Diamond and Bellwood 2003; Hastorf 1999; Smith 1998; Wills 1995). It is important to understand how and why prehistoric foragers in various parts of the world incorporated key cultigens into their subsistence regimes (Winterhalder and Goland 1993, 1997), and how these shifts in subsistence altered prehistoric settlement strategies and land use. In some cases, it is clear from the archaeological record that agriculturalists migrated into the territories of hunter-gatherers and ultimately replaced or subsumed them into their economies (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1984; Bogucki and Grygiel 1993; Cavalli-Sforza 1996; Diamond and Bellwood 2003). However, the transmission of domesticates through preexisting exchange networks also accounts for the rapid spread of domesticated plants and animals into many regions (Gregg 1988; Hastorf 1999, Piperno and Pearsall 1998). Recent studies suggest that the details of this transformation varied greatly throughout the world (Barton et...

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