New Evidence Unearthed for the Origins of the Maya

Topic: Early origins

Photograph courtesy Takeshi Inomata
Archaeologists excavate through the A-24 platform to reach the foundations, dated to about 1,000 B.C.

Civilizations rise and fall, often in dramatic fashion. Their origins, though, are subtler and tend to be overlooked or poorly understood.

In the case of the Maya, a new paper in Science magazine sheds surprising light on that murky early period.

The classic period of the lowland Maya in Mesoamerica (A.D. 300 to 950) is a popular topic in archaeology, but little is known about the early preclassic era (before 1000 B.C.). Scientists are typically split between two theories on the subject: Either the Maya developed directly from an older “mother culture” known as the Olmec, or they sprang into existence independently.

Takeshi Inomata, professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona and a National Geographic research grantee, disagrees with both theories. In his work at the archaeological site of Ceibal in Guatemala, he has unearthed evidence for a more complex origin story.

Early Ritual Spaces

The Maya are usually associated with monumental architecture. Massive pyramids and immense plazas testify to a complex and fascinating culture. One can hardly hear the word “Maya” without imagining elaborately decorated kings and priests climbing the long, steep stairs of pyramids like those at Tikal.

But pyramids don’t just spring out of the jungle overnight, nor does a complex culture merely appear. Inomata and his team dug below the monumental architecture at Ceibal to see how such structures began.

Inomata assumed that the now iconic classic architecture probably stood on earlier sites used for similar purposes. His assumption turned out to be correct. He found smaller platforms built of earth beneath the pyramids of stone, signaling a formal ritual complex at Ceibal dating to around 1000 B.C.

The presence of ritual architecture early in the development of the Maya is an indication of a settled lifestyle with complex agriculture, religion, and a stratified society—all of which add up to a unified culture and the beginnings of a larger civilization.

Redefining the Olmec Connection

Experts have traditionally believed that when the Olmec were busy building their civilization at large sites such as La Venta, near the Gulf coast in modern Mexico, the people who would become the Maya were living in loosely associated nomadic groups in the jungles to the east and southeast. This theory holds that the Maya derived their entire society—including their architecture and social structure—directly from the Olmec.

But Inomata’s work has revealed that the Olmec is not an older civilization. In fact, Ceibal pre-dates La Venta by as long as two centuries. And although some Olmec cities are indeed older than both La Venta and Ceibal, they likely did not interact with the Maya.

“This does not mean that the Maya developed independently,” Inomata says. Instead, he believes, the influence flowed both ways. La Venta and Ceibal appear to have developed in tandem in a great cultural shift throughout the region. “It seems more likely that there was a broad history of interactions across these regions, and through these interactions, a new form of society developed.”

More Flexible Definitions

To further complicate matters, Inomata stresses that the evidence doesn’t show clear distinctions between the Olmec and Maya at the preclassic stage.

The two civilizations are easy to differentiate during the classic period, since the Maya had by then developed a distinct language and culture. But the period between 1000 and 700 B.C. is more transitional. With La Venta and Ceibal freely trading ideas, technologies, cultural elements, and perhaps even population, it’s difficult to call one Olmec and the other Maya.

“Determining labels for these early people is quite a tricky question—we’re not sure if residents of early Ceibal were wholly Mayan,” says Inomata. “We have decided to take a much more flexible approach, avoiding fixed labels in favor of looking at patterns of interaction and how more stable identities developed.”

An Agricultural Revolution

Inomata and his team will spend the next three years analyzing the findings from Ceibal. They will then begin to excavate outside the site’s center, hoping to gain an understanding of what day-to-day life was like in the preclassic period.

The peripheral areas, separated from the ritual plazas and temples, could hold more keys to the origins of the Maya. Inomata believes that the residential and agricultural areas are particularly important.

Around 1000 B.C. the previously nomadic groups that became the Maya began to build urban ritual areas. “Instead of starting with villages,” Inomata says, “they made a ceremonial center.” The idea for that may have come from the people who later created La Venta.

A radical shift in agriculture at that time may also have played an important role in the move to a more settled lifestyle. Corn, the principal crop of the Maya, “became much more productive,” says Inomata. “And then it made sense to cut down forests and increase agriculture.”

Inomata believes this agricultural revolution may have been rooted in genetic changes in the corn plant itself. But this, like so many other ideas about the rise and fall of the Maya civilization, still requires much more evidence to prove.

Original article:
nationalgeographic
By Nicholas Mott, April 25, 2013

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Early 17th Century Jamestown Cellar Yields Well Preserved Ovens

Topic: Jamestown Ovens

The ovens, excavated in an early colonial cellar, open another window on the first successful English colony in America.

Archaeologists at the early 17th century English colonial site of Jamestown in Virginia have been steadily unearthing a 25-foot-long L-shaped cellar located inside the enclosed area of the original “footprint” of the 1607 James Fort, uncovering two remarkably well preserved brick ovens that show evidence of extensive use before they were abandoned to time.

“These are some of the most intact ovens we’ve ever excavated here at Jamestown,” said archaeologist Mary Anna Richardson.[1]

What is more, they seem to have retained features that would, at least theoretically, permit a person today to use the ovens for baking. According to senior staff archaeologist Danny Schmidt, “these two now we could fire right up today” [1]. In addition to the brickwork constituting their foundations, they feature roofs that remain partly intact, almost as they may have been left by the early colonists.

More significant still, particularly for archaeologists, is what was left behind in and around the ovens, which may answer questions about how they were used and their significance within the context in which they were found. “We’ve got a good deposit on the floor from during their usage. Excavating that occupation layer will be the payoff to help us answer that,” said Dr. William M. Kelso, who leads archaeological research at Historic Jamestown under the Jamestown Rediscovery Archaeological Project. [1]

Examination of the framing arch on at least one oven suggests that it had a wooden door about 2 inches thick. Why a wooden door, which could easily burn? According to Kelso, a person could start the oven fire with the door open, then remove the coals and place food inside once the oven interior had reached the appropriate temperature, and then immediately close the door to contain the heat inside for the baking process.

Two similar ovens, determined to have been used for baking bread, were discovered in 2007 in a blacksmith shop/bakery cellar at another location within the Fort space, but these cellars were found much less intact.
Original article:
popular archaeology
Dec 14, 2022

There is also interesting information at a site devoted to Jamestown.

The Dig: December 2012–Historic Jamestowne

Where are We Digging Now?

Sturgeon Scutes in Front of the East Oven in Structure 191The sturgeon bones layered across the floor of the L-shaped cellar illuminate how important the river was as a source of food for early James Fort colonists.

Much has been written about Captain John Smith’s negotiations with the Powhatan Indians for corn, but we know that in 1608-09 the colonists were also working with sturgeon.

Sturgeon have long bodies, no scales, and can grow to 12 feet in length. They are bottom-feeders in the rivers and coastline of North America, spawning in fresh water and then feeding in the brackish waters of estuaries.

Smith mentions sturgeon early in the colony’s story: “From May to September [1607], those that escaped lived upon sturgeon and sea crabs” but by the fall “was all our provision spent, the sturgeon gone, all help abandoned. . . .”

VCU Ichthyologist Matthew Balazik with a Live SturgeonVirginia Commonwealth University ichthyologist Matthew Balazik said spring run adult sturgeon usually enter James River in late March and leave by June and some fall spawning Atlantic sturgeon can be in the river from late July to early October. He has studied sturgeon remains from early Jamestown and published a report in 2010 showing sturgeon from that era grew more slowly than sturgeon today, which may reflect today’s lower population density or higher water temperatures.

Balazik visited the L-shaped cellar December 14 and was excited to see the evidence of sturgeon from which he could estimate that they were between five and eight feet long. The sturgeon pieces are scattered on the floor near one of two brick ovens in the L-shaped cellar.

Smith wrote that in early 1609, “We had more sturgeon than could be devoured by dog and man, of which the industrious by drying and pounding, mingled with caviar, sorrel, and other wholesome herbs, would make bread and good meat. Others would gather as much tockwhogh roots in a day as would make them bread a week, so that those wild fruits and what we caught we lived very well in regard of such a diet.”

But when Samuel Argall arrived with two supply ships in July, he found many of the colonists hungry because they refused to sow their own crops. Many settlers had been “dispersed in the savages towns, living upon their alms for an ounce of copper a day,” and even Smith admitted that “our necessities was such as enforced us to take” the fish, wine, and biscuits onboard Argall’s ships.

Part of Argall’s mission was to find out how good the fishing was in the waters off Virginia’s coast. Fish were a valuable commodity to the English: their ships had been fishing off Newfoundland for decades before Jamestown was founded.

In the cellar, the Jamestown colonists may have been processing sturgeon for the home market. Sturgeons and whales are actually royal fish in England. According to a law enacted by Edward II (who reigned 1307 to 1327) they are the personal property of the monarch when caught and brought to English shores.

Argall returned to England and reported favorably. “[F]or fishing proved so plentiful, especially of sturgeon, of which sort he could have loaded many ships if he had had some man of skill to pickle and prepare it for keeping, whereof he brought sufficient testimony both of the flesh and caviary, that no discreet man will question the truth of it.”

That fall, the Jamestown colonists did not take care of the seasonal nature of the sturgeon food supply. A mysterious gunpowder explosion sent Smith back to England in November 1609, and the arguing factions he left behind in James Fort did not prepare well for the coming winter.

Colony Secretary William Strachey wrote of this time, “There is a great store of fish in the river, especially of sturgeon, but our men provided no more of them than for present necessity, not barreling up any store against that season the sturgeon returned to the sea. And not to dissemble their folly, they suffered 14 nets (which was all they had) to rot and spoil which by orderly drying and mending might have been preserved. But being lost, all help of fishing perished.”

That winter of 1609-10 became known as “The Starving Time.” Almost three-fourths of the colonists inside the fort died, and that spring the colony came within a few days of being abandoned. It appears that by June of 1610 the L-shaped cellar now being explored by the Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists was no longer in use.

The cellar is 25 feet long and aligns with James Fort’s first well, which sits 10 feet away to the west and at the same angle.

Original article:
historic Jamestown

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Multiple factors, including climate change, led to collapse and depopulation of ancient Maya

Topic: Mayan Collapse

 

 

Multiple factors, including climate change, led to collapse and depopulation of ancient Maya.

 

Original Article:

eurekalert.org

August 21, 2012

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Evidence from archaeological digs reveals Chinook wealth

Topic: Chinook Village

Chinook Lodge

onside a Chinook lodge 1847

When you’re dealing with the bits and pieces civilizations leave behind, the stories you think you know are always changing.

Portland State University anthropology professor Kenneth Ames and archaeologist Doug Wilson of Fort Vancouver addressed the mysteries and myths around four separate Chinook village sites as a part of the Columbia Forum lecture series Wednesday night in Astoria.

“I’m always impressed we know as much as we do,” Ames said afterward. “We’re trying to understand what people did from things they left behind.”

Archaeologists work with ever-evolving systems and techniques, peeling back layers, cataloguing, organizing, cross-referencing, revisiting information again and again and again.

“We know a lot and we’re adding stuff every day,” Ames said. 

“Sometimes you’re finished,” he added, “but you’re never done.”

Ames has spent a number of years researching the “household archaeology” of the Chinook people who lived in the Wapato Valley, also known as the Portland Basin. The work has focused around two sites out toward Scappoose: Meier and Cathlapotle.

Wilson talked about his work at Station Camp, across the Columbia River, where Lewis and Clark stopped briefly and where, many, many years later, people uncovered the remains of a Chinook village and an abundance of fur-trade goods.

He also talked about the search for a village historical texts refer to as “Chenooke.”  

One of the myths both men addressed was that of population. 

This wasn’t an empty, purely wild land, they said. 

The Wapato Valley, for example, was a rich, highly-populated, highly-productive land, Ames said, with close to 19 villages and towns whose individual populations ranged from 100 people to 1,800 according to fur-trade estimates.

Across the river, the Chinook villages Wilson studies were rolling in wealth: beads, copper items, buttons, high-end houses.

At the Meier and Cathlapotle sites, where anyone else might see (and disregard) what look like muddy holes in the ground, Ames and other archaeologists see the imprints from baskets, or the posts that were a part of the traditional plank houses of the region.

Ames has found thousands of animal bones, thousands of seeds. The people there feasted on elk and deer. Salmon was also part of the diet, but not necessarily the mainstay we tend to think, Ames said. How does he know? He’s out there counting bones.

 A story Wilson addressed is another one people often take in stride: that alcohol (and alcoholism) was the downfall of the native population. 

By all historical accounts, the Chinook weren’t sure what to make of alcohol initially. The first time some of them became drunk, not understanding the effects of alcohol, they were frightened and hid in the woods until they were sober. 

But, according to first-hand accounts from explorers and traders, this changed.

One later report said the Chinook would do almost anything for whiskey. Wilson quoted from a 1938 account by missionary Samuel Parker who said that when they got a hold of whiskey, the Chinook became “more debased than the beasts of the earth.”

“The beautiful thing about archaeology is that it tells a story that is sometimes very different from the historical record,” Wilson said.

At the Washington sites, archaeologists found glass alcohol bottles: rum, brandy and wine, Wilson said. 

However, instead of evidence that would “indicate a bunch of drunks throwing bottles at perhaps a plank house wall, what we found was very different,” Wilson said. They found bottle bases and noticed there was abrasion all along the bottom of the bases.

“It seems quite clear that they were intentionally using these bottle bases as some sort of a tool,” Wilson said. 

They found other places where glass pieces had been used as the sort of scraper to process animal hides, he said.

“What we see is the Chinook taking new materials … and reshaping the tools to their own function,” Wilson said. Far from being degraded by contact with Euro-American culture, “what we see is that the Chinook are very alive at this time. They’re very powerful at this time period and they’re manipulating Euro-American culture to be able to adapt to it.”

Original article:

By KATIE WILSON
The Daily Astorian Daily Astorian

2/2011

dailyastorian

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Barley, First Domesticated Wild Grass

Topic Barley, Cereal Grain

Barley offering

It is said the Ancient Egyptians believed that one day Osiris, god of agriculture, made a decoction of barley that had germinated with the sacred waters of the Nile, and then distracted by other urgent affairs, left it out in the sun and forgot it. When he came back the mixture had fermented. He drank it, and thought it so good that he let mankind profit by it. This was said to be the origin of beer.

Like emmer and einkorn (ancient wheat), barley has been cultivated since the earliest of times. I say this without giving a specific date because archaeologists are at this moment pushing back the beginnings of agriculture with every find they make.

According to Wikipedia:

“Barley was the first domesticated grain in the Near East, approximately  the same time as einkorn and emmer wheat. Wild barley (H. vulgare ssp. spontaneum) ranges from North Africa and Crete in the west, to Tibet in the east.  The earliest evidence of wild barley in an archaeological context comes from the Epipaleolithic at Ohalo II  at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee. The remains were dated to about 8500 BC.  The earliest domesticated barley occurs at Aceramic Neolithic  sites, in the Near East such as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B  layers of  Tell  Abu Hureyra, in Syria. Barley has been grown in the Korean Peninsula since the Early Mumun Pottery Period (c. 1500–850 BC) along with other crops such as millet, wheat, and legumes.”

One of the earliest accounts of the distribution of barley can be found on a clay tablet from Mesopotamia, written in Cuneiform dating to 2350 BC. It called for a ration of 30-40 pints for adults and 20 pints for children.

By all accounts whether it was in Mesopotamia, Egypt or later in Greece or Rome barley had a variety of uses as it does today.

Barley is eaten in breads, soups and stews. In ancient Egypt as today it was made into porridge and sprouted barley was used as a base for beer.  Barley was and still is today a major feed crop for domestic animals. Barley was used as a type of currency to pay royal workers in Ancient Egypt.

Barley beer may have been the first fermented drink developed by Neolithic people although there is evidence that another drink,namely honey wine (or Mead as it is known), could have predated barley when man was still a hunter-gather and had not put down permanent roots and turned to agriculture. 

According to Egyptian food and Drink, by Hillery Wilson, because there was no distinction in ancient egypt between barley and wheat it is impossible to be certain which was the oldest cultivated grain; both were generally termed”corn”.

Barley is eaten in breads, soups and stews. In ancient Egypt as today it was made into porridge and sprouted barley was used as a base for beer.  Barley was and still is today a major feed crop for domestic animals. Barley was used as a type of currency to pay royal workers in Ancient Egypt.

Barley and other cereal grains such as emmer, einkorn and later modern wheat and rice (all members of the grass family) were the staples and probably the most important products of the world at that time or any other. The grass family with its many editable species including maze, from the new world, could be said to have created the world we know today.

Original Article:

By Joanna Linsley-Poe

Copyright 3/2011

Ancient Foods

I found this looking for images for Barley:

Ancient beer recipes found in Syria

Barley Beer Recipe-Syria

A Syrian-Belgian-British archaeological mission unearthed 3,800-year-old Babylonian beer-making instructions on cuneiform tablets at a dig in northern Syria.

Abdel-Massih Baghdo, director of the Hassakeh Archaeological Department, told The Associated Press in a telephone call that the 92 tablets were found in the 14th layer of Tell Shagher, a site just north of Hassakeh.

He said the tablets showed beer-making methods and tallied quantities of beer produced and distributed in the region.

Hassakeh, 400 miles northeast of Damascus, is known these days for its wheat production. Recent archaeological discoveries have pushed back the dates for early beer production.

Article found on:

 beliganshop.com

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Historical find at Leighton Buzzard golf course

Topic: Quern stone found at English golf course

Stone Quern for grinding grain

 

 

 

 An archaeological treasure has been unearthed on a golf course in Bedfordshire.

A quern stone was found by greenkeepers at Leighton Buzzard golf course as they dug out a new tee.

Club Captain Neil Bagshawe told BBC Three Counties Radio how they found it.

“The guys were digging the fourth tee to renew it and about a metre down they found this flat round object around 14 inches in diameter which turned out to be a quern stone” he said.

Quern stones were used for grinding corn before the introduction of mill stones, but despite this, it’s not actually that common to find one.

“Apparently only three have ever been discovered in the south of England so it is quite rare” said Mr Bagshawe, “and even rarer to find one that is completely intact.

“It’s in very good condition” he added.

“You can still see the marks that are necessary to actually effect the grinding mechanism to make sure that you do get the corn out at the end, so it’s obviously been made by man as opposed to being a natural object.”

Mr Bagshawe is an amateur archaeologist, but said that while he is very interested in the subject, he took advice from local expert Bernard Jones to assess what had actually been found.

He also explained how the stone could date back over 2,000 years from what was already known about the golf course land.

“There’s evidence going way back that there were Iron Age settlements on that land” he said, “basically small holdings after herder gatherers gave way to settlements. So it’s been inhabited from the late Iron Age which was the last century BC.”

Despite its rarity, the stone has no intrinsic value but Mr Bagshawe revealed that it will be displayed in the club house.

“It’s part of our heritage so we’re very proud of it.” he said.

Original article:

bbc.co.uk

11/4/2010

Large Quern-modern

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What plant genes tell us about crop domestication

What plant genes tell us about crop domestication | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis.

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Trophy Skulls and Beer

Topic: Andean Brewery

In the clear Peruvian mountain air, the view from the sunbaked summit of Cerro Baúl stretches 50 miles or more. The vista is dominated by dozens of arid valleys and distant Andean peaks. A thousand years ago, a person on this 2,600-foot mountain would have been standing at the southern frontier of the Wari Empire, which dominated much of what is now Peru from A.D. 600 until it disappeared around 400 years later, a period archaeologists call the Middle Horizon. The Wari likely thought of Cerro Baúl as sacred; even now, the ground here is littered with carefully arranged pebbles in the shape of houses or farms and the occasional empty bottle of liquor, left behind by locals as offerings to the spirit of the mountain. But archaeological evidence shows the mountaintop was much more than a holy place on the fringes of an empire. It may be the key to understanding how the Wari managed to control a state that stretched some 800 miles to the north.

To me, the hilltop looks like a lifeless jumble of tan boulders. But Donna Nash, an archaeologist from Chicago’s Field Museum and codirector of the Cerro Baúl Archaeological Project, sees something quite different. Striding across the bleak surface, pointing to the outlines of walls and corridors that have long since collapsed or been blown away, she conjures a vision of what once stood here–a palace complex of colorful two-story buildings. At one time, she says, hundreds of people lived up here. Everything they needed–water, food, precious stones for crafting beads, clay for making pots, and corn for brewing beer–had to be carried to the top.

Living on top of a mountain was a tremendous display of power and wealth. And mountaintop temples would have had great views of other peaks, perhaps an important element of Wari rituals. “It’s not an economically efficient production site,” Ryan Williams, the dig codirector and Nash’s husband, tells me later. “But you impress the neighbors by living closer to the gods.”

And, perhaps, by showing them a good time. The most critical building at Cerro Baúl may have been the brewery. A four-room structure about 2,500 square feet, it had all the equipment needed to make chicha, a corn-based beer still popular in the Andes. As we stand among the ruins, Nash tells me the Wari–usually thought of as a fairly bloodthirsty bunch, based on pottery painted with images of warriors, beheadings, and bound captives–may have actually wooed local leaders with a potent mix of corn beer and hallucinogens. Mountaintop palaces might have functioned like embassies, and could have played a role in a soft-power effort to impress the neighbors with great parties.

Original Article:

Archaeology.org

by Andrew Curry

December 2009

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Late Post Classic Maize Goddess Sculpture Restored

Topic: Maze Goddess

A Chicomecoatl monolith found recently in Zempoala municipality, Hidalgo, 500 years old, which represents the goddess of maize, was restored by National Institute of Anthropology and History specialists and now historical research has begun.

The archaeological finding associated to Mexica culture dated between 1430 and 1520 was found in July 2009 by employees of a private company, notifying immediately the Hidalgo INAH Center, which proceeded to remove and guard it.

The 60 centimeters tall sculpture represents the Mexica maize goddess, Chicomecoatl, linked to fertility. She carries 2 corncobs on each hand, and has an orifice in the chest, where a greenstone or “chalchiutlicue”, which represents the flower of life, was inlaid.

Archaeologist Osvaldo Sterpone, in charge of moving the piece to Pachuca and who will coordinate historical research, mentioned that the orifice was covered with red colored lime that matched the stone that has to be identified yet. He remarked the stone sculpture was found near Santa Ana Archaeological Site.

Sterpone commented that the sculpture may be dated in Late Post Classic period, when Mexica Empire controlled this region to obtain obsidian and other material that they traded.

Restoration of Chicomecoatl, which presents an excellent conservation state, was in charge of Virginia Carrasquel, from Hidalgo INAH Center, who leaded cleaning, stabilization and preservation tasks before being exposed at Zempolala Community Museum for 2 days.

After it returned to Hidalgo INAH Center, the piece was guarded at the cultural goods warehouse, where Chicomecoatl will be studied to determine the influence it had in the region.

Regarding the context of the finding, archaeologist Sterpone mentioned that no other element associated to the sculpture was found in the sand mine located at San Pedro Tlaquilpan.

“There are not regional archaeological studies about Chicomecoatl, so we will base on historical sources. In this sense, a similar sculpture was found during the 1970´s decade in Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo” concluded the archaeologist.

Original article

ArtDaily.org

August 6, 2009

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New World Cereal-Maze

Topic: Maze

Looking at Current World Archaeology, I’m both pleased and amazed; a grass that marks the beginnings of domestic corn (maze) has finally been found in Mexico. Archaeobotanist Dolores Piperno and anthropologist Anthony Ranere have found what they believe to be a large wild grass (Balsas teosinte) in Mexico’s Central Balsas River Valley that is genetically close to domesticated maze. Piperno and Ranere also found evidence from lake sediments of early agriculture and plant remains that are unique to domesticated maze. Samples were taken from shelters and caves in the area, of tools and plant remains. At one site near Xihuatoxtla, they found grinding tools containing tiny bits of domesticated maze starch in their cracks and crevices dating to 8,700 BP (before present).

Dolores Piperno believes these new findings establish tropical southwest Mexico as an important center where early agriculture occurred in the New World. She also believes this evidence puts maze in the same roster as other important cereals, (such as barley and wheat from the Middle East), that were domesticated and cultivated by 9,000 years ago. For more details see the June/July copy of World Archaeology.

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