The Age of Common Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) in the Northern Eastern Woodlands of North America

在国家科学基金会的支持下，约翰·哈特博士将收集在北美东部考古遗址挖掘的史前普通豆(Phaseolus Common Garis)的样本，并将它们提交给亚利桑那大学AMS放射性碳实验室进行计时测年。由于样本量要求较小，AMS允许直接确定单个豆子的日期。这与其他方法形成鲜明对比，在其他方法中，较大的样本量要求排除了这种类型的直接测年。农业的传播问题引起了许多考古学家的极大兴趣。当欧洲人到达北美时，他们发现大多数美洲原住民依赖农业，通常玉米、豆类和南瓜都是在一块田里种植的，这些作物一起提供了必要的基本营养。虽然玉米和南瓜的扩散相对来说是众所周知的，但对豆类的研究却少得多。它们很可能是在中美洲驯化的，它们传播的路径和时间都不清楚，初步数据令人惊讶地表明，它们到达北美东部的时间有很大不同。考虑到饮食中的互补作用，人们可能会认为这三种家养动物之间的联系相对较早，但事实似乎并非如此。考古学家通常认为，文化复杂性的发展和农业的传播是同时发生的，驯养家畜提供的可靠和丰富的生存在这一过程中发挥了因果作用。但在北美，情况似乎并非如此，农业比复杂社会的发展早了很长一段时间。因此，考古学家希望了解驯养动物何时以及如何传播，从而在坚实的年代学基础上探讨生存复杂性问题。哈特博士获得的日期将提供急需的信息。这一结果将引起许多考古学家的兴趣，并被广泛使用。它们将为了解美洲原住民的史前历史提供重要的新线索。

With National Science Foundation support Dr. John Hart will collect samples of prehistoric common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) excavated in archaeological sites in Eastern North America and submit them to the University of Arizona AMS radiocarbon laboratory for chronometric dating. Because of small sample size requirements, AMS permits individual beans to be directly dated. This stands in contrast to other methods where larger sample size requirements preclude direct dating of this type. The issue of the spread of agriculture is of great interest to many archaeologists. When Europeans arrived in North America they found that most Native Americans relied on agriculture and that normally maize, beans and squash were cultivated in single fields and together these provided the necessary essential nutrients. While the diffusion of maize and squash are relatively well known, considerable less work has focused on beans. Likely domesticated in Middle America neither the path nor timing of their spread is understood and preliminary data surprisingly suggest their arrival at significantly different times in Eastern North America. Given the complementary role in the diet one would expect that the association between the three domesticates would be relatively old, but such appears not to be the case. Archaeologists have generally assumed that the development of cultural complexity and spread of agriculture occurred together and that the reliable and rich subsistence provided by domesticates played a causal role in this process. However in North America such appears not to be true and agriculture predates the growth of complex society by a significant interval. Thus archaeologists wish to understand when and how domesticates spread and thus approach the subsistence-complexity question on solid chronological ground. The dates obtained by Dr. Hart will provide much needed information. The results will be of interest to, and widely used by, many archaeologists. They will shed important new light on the prehistory of Native American peoples.