TERMINAL PLEISTOCENE THROUGH MIDDLE HOLOCENE OCCUPATIONS IN SOUTHEASTERN MESOAMERICA: LINKING ECOLOGY AND CULTURE IN THE CONTEXT OF NEOTROPICAL FORAGERS AND EARLY FARMERS
TERMINAL PLEISTOCENE THROUGH MIDDLE HOLOCENE OCCUPATIONS IN SOUTHEASTERN MESOAMERICA: LINKING ECOLOGY AND CULTURE IN THE CONTEXT OF NEOTROPICAL FORAGERS AND EARLY FARMERS
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DOI：
10.1017/s0956536121000195
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发表时间：
2021
影响因子：
0.7
通讯作者：
Keith M. Prufer;Mark Robinson;D. Kennett
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Keith M. Prufer;Mark Robinson;D. Kennett
Abstract Data from rock shelters in southern Belize show evidence of tool making, hunting, and aquatic resource exploitation by 10,500 cal b.c.; the shelters functioned as mortuary sites between 7600 and 2000 cal b.c. Early Holocene contexts contain stemmed and barbed bifaces as part of a tradition found broadly throughout the neotropics. After around 6000 cal b.c., bifacial tools largely disappear from the record, likely reflecting a shift to increasing reliance on plant foods, around the same time that the earliest domesticates appear in the archaeological record in the neotropics. We suggest that people living in southern Belize maintained close ties with neighbors to the south during the Early Holocene, but lagged behind in innovating new crops and farming technologies during the Middle Holocene. Maize farming in Belize intensified between 2750–2050 cal b.c. as maize became a dietary staple, 1000–1300 years later than in South America. Overall, we argue from multiple lines of data that the Neotropics of Central and South America were an area of shared information and technologies that heavily influenced cultural developments in southeastern Mesoamerica during the Early and Middle Holocene.
