Gardens of Prehistory: The Archaeology of Settlement Agriculture in Greater Mesoamerica

1. The Archaeology of Settlement Agriculture

PREFACE archaeological perspective. Areally, the volume covers recent research in northern New Mexico, the United States; Sonora and southern Veracruz , Mexico; and Belize and El Salvador, Central America (fig. P-1). The studies focus topically on the identification of cultivation practices implemented by prehistoric agriculturalists within or close to the farming settlement, generally referred to as house-lot gardens and infields. The research efforts presented in this volume are directed at using the archaeological record to diagnose the nature of agricultural production from kitchen gardens located within the residential lot to stapleproducing plots, or outfields, located at greater distances from ancient settlement zones. Identifying the structure and organization of prehistoric agriculture has always represented one of the most difficult fields of inquiry for the archaeologist. The studies included in Gardens of Prehistory present innovative methodological approaches to the identification of ancient agricultural systems from a diverse set of New World environments. In doing so they not only broaden our understanding of native American food production systems but also strengthen our framework for inferences concerning the role of agriculture in the evolution of complex society. CONTENTS This volume is the outgrowth of a symposium on prehistoric gardens and infield agricultural systems held at the fifty-second annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology held in Toronto, Canada, May 9, 1987. The edited collection is divided into four parts, which follow the preface, an introductory chapter, and a chapter on ethnographic and historic examples of settlement agriculture from lowland and highland Mesoamerica. Part I begins the analytical core of the volume and focuses on three research projects, one from the southwestern portion of the United States, another from northwestern Mexico , and a third from the highlands of central Mexico. All three studies stress the importance of residential gardens and infields to the overall spatial organization of farming around prehistoric settlements in the arid or more temperate environments of central highland Mesoamerica xiv PREFACE 4 Sonora, Mexico 5 Central Highland Mexico 6, 7 Sierra de las Tuxtlas 8 Northern Belize 9 EI Salvador 10 Central Belize Figure P-l. Geographical Loci of Volume Chapters and its northern periphery. The studies presented on northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, while technically reporting on a temperate zone of North America, are included here because the agricultural systems of these arid landscapes were based on cultigens imported from the tropical lands that are the focus of the volume. The research presented in Part I indicates higher levels of agricultural intensity and a more diverse set of horticultural and agricultural adaptations than are generally assumed for this region. In the second part of Gardens of Prehistory the focus shifts to the humid tropical environments of lowland Mesoamerica. Part II presents xv PREFACE three new studies that compare ethnoarchaeological and ethnographic models of peasant farming behavior with recently recovered archaeological data bases. These studies demonstrate how an understanding of contemporary subsistence farming and refuse disposal behavior can be used to characterize the systematic use of settlement and agricultural space by ancient cultivators and to explain the patterned distribution of ceramic and lithic artifacts that are found in and around ancient communities. Case studies come from the Gulf Coast lowlands of southern Veracruz (the Olmec heartland) and the lowland Maya region of northern Belize. Part III of the volume deals with chemical signatures and landscape modification as keys to understanding the structure and organization of settlement agriculture in prehistoric America. The first study examines the fortuitous preservation of prehistoric plants and planting surfaces adjacent to residences under a volcanic ash deposit in the Zapotitan Valley of EI Salvador. The last analytical chapter in Part III uses phosphate analysis on a larger spatial scale to examine the agricultural and other uses of intrasettlement space among a group of Classic period Maya sites in central Belize. The final section of Gardens of Prehistory is a summary and critique chapter consisting of comments by B. L. Turner II and William T. Sanders , discussants at the original symposium in Toronto. In this final chapter the authors, both of whom have made important contributions to the study of prehistoric agricultural systems in the Americas, set forth some of their recent thoughts on the study of prehispanic agriculture . Following some general observations on the present state of prehistoric agricultural studies, they take a critical look at the chapters in the volume, identifying the advantages and disadvantages of each of the approaches...