Root Crop Agriculture, Land Use, and Authority Outside of the Ceren Village, El Salvador

萨尔瓦多 Ceren 村外的块根作物农业、土地使用和权力

• 批准号: 1115775
• 负责人: Payson Sheets
• 金额: $ 7.52万
• 依托单位: University of Colorado at Boulder
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-06-01 至 2013-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1115775&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Root; Crop; Agriculture; Land; Use

Supported by the National Science Foundation, Dr. Payson Sheets (Anthropology, University of Colorado) and an international team of researchers will conduct archaeological investigations in El Salvador. The team consists of specialists in ancient botany and graduate students from the U.S., and agricultural engineers and archaeology students from El Salvador. The team will follow up on the recent discovery of an agricultural system of the ancient Maya that hitherto was unknown. About 200 meters south of the ancient Maya village of Ceren, very large sloping planting beds were discovered, preserved to an extraordinary degree by the eruption of the Loma Caldera volcanic vent in about AD 600. Test excavations done in 2009, also supported by NSF, encountered many planting beds that had been harvested of the manioc, a root crop, that had been growing there for at least a year. Most of the roots had been removed during harvesting, but some remained and were encountered as hollow spaces, which the researchers cast with dental plaster to preserve them in perpetuity. Some of the beds had been replanted with stem cuttings for the next cycle of growth. Both the stems and the tubers of the ancient Maya were more robust than those grown by peasant farmers in El Salvador today.One goal of the research is to understand the means by which ancient farmers were more successful than present-day farmers in growing manioc. Salvadoran agricultural engineers are essential in helping to explore the possibilities, and three have been proposed so far. (1) Manioc tubers grow best in loose soils, and the ancient planting beds are superior to the present practice of planting in flat fields. (2) Wild and domesticated manioc grows best in semi-arid areas, as too much moisture inhibits growth, so the sloping of the ancient beds facilitates drainage. That is not done by contemporary farmers. (3) The ancient fields were carefully weeded, also a procedure that is not followed today. Because El Salvador is the most crowded Central American country, that passed food self-sufficiency some five decades ago, and is beset by unemployment, it is an ideal location to use ancient successes to improve present-day agricultural practices. Test plots will be initiated by three farmers to compare ancient and traditional contemporary manioc cultivation, to demonstrate and quantify the differences.The research focuses on issues of ancient Maya agriculture. Scholars have long debated whether agriculture was under elite control or influence, or whether it was essentially independent from higher authority. Land-use lines were discovered in 2009 that strictly separated different farmer's plots. Excavations will focus on whether those boundaries were locally established, or emanated from the Ceren village, or possibly from San Andres which is the city under elite control to the south of the fields. And because Ceren receives abundant rainfall, at the moist end of the continuum that manioc can stand, it appears that manioc would have been more suitable for cultivation in dryer areas of the Maya lowlands than at Ceren. Therefore project members are developing multiple durable indicators of manioc cultivation and processing that can be found in archaeological sites that lack the unusual preservation of Ceren.

在国家科学基金会的支持下，佩森希茨博士（人类学，科罗拉多大学）和一个国际研究小组将在萨尔瓦多萨尔瓦多进行考古调查。 该团队由古代植物学专家和来自美国的研究生组成，以及来自萨尔瓦多的农业工程师和考古学学生。 该小组将跟踪最近发现的迄今为止未知的古玛雅农业系统。 在古老的玛雅村庄Ceren以南约200米处，发现了非常大的倾斜种植床，大约在公元600年，洛马火山口的火山口喷发将其保存到了一个非凡的程度。 2009年进行的测试挖掘也得到了NSF的支持，发现许多种植床已经收获了木薯，木薯是一种块根作物，已经在那里生长了至少一年。 大部分的根在收获过程中被移除，但有些仍然存在，并被发现为中空空间，研究人员用牙科石膏将其永久保存。 一些苗床已经重新种植了插枝，以备下一轮生长。 古代玛雅人的茎和块茎都比今天萨尔瓦多农民种植的更健壮。这项研究的一个目标是了解古代农民比现在的农民种植木薯更成功的方法。 萨尔瓦多的农业工程师在帮助探索各种可能性方面发挥了重要作用，迄今已提出了三项建议。 (1)曼尼奥克块茎在疏松的土壤中生长最好，古代的种植床比现在在平地上种植的做法优越上级。 (2)野生和驯化的木薯在半干旱地区生长得最好，因为太多的水分会抑制生长，所以古老河床的倾斜有利于排水。 这是当代农民所不能做到的。 (3)古代的田地被仔细地除草，这也是今天不遵循的程序。 由于萨尔瓦多是中美洲人口最稠密的国家，大约50年前就已经过了粮食自给自足的阶段，而且失业率很高，因此它是利用古代成功经验改进现代农业做法的理想地点。 三位农民将在试验田中比较古代和传统的当代木薯种植，以展示和量化差异。研究重点是古代玛雅农业问题。 长期以来，学者们一直在争论农业是否受到精英的控制或影响，或者它是否基本上独立于更高的权威。 2009年发现的土地使用线将不同农民的地块严格分开。 澄清将集中在这些边界是否是当地建立的，或从塞伦村，或可能从圣安德烈斯，这是一个城市的精英控制下的南部领域。 由于塞伦岛有充足的降雨，在木薯可以忍受的连续体的潮湿端，木薯似乎更适合在玛雅低地的干燥地区种植，而不是在塞伦岛。 因此，项目成员正在开发木薯种植和加工的多种持久指标，这些指标可以在缺乏Ceren的考古遗址中找到。