Developoment Of A New Subsistence Adaptation In Middle America

科罗拉多大学博尔德分校的Gerardo gutisamurez博士将与一个由美国和墨西哥学者组成的跨学科团队合作，调查公元前3500年至600年墨西哥南部人类群体从高度流动的猎人和采集者转变为定居在永久村庄的农业工作者期间所经历的经济和意识形态变化。这是美洲人类历史上的一个关键时刻，因为构成我们现在粮食生产经济的许多植物（如玉米或玉米）都是在这一时期驯化的。由于古代食物不能很好地保存下来，这种文化转变在北美大陆上并没有得到有效的理解。为什么一些采集者群体用早期的栽培植物进行实验，并开始依赖栽培植物？他们的信仰和社会结构如何反映或鼓励经济变化？对墨西哥南部一个洞穴的考古探索，应该能让我们更好地了解玉米是如何被采纳为新大陆的主要谷物作物的（如今，在旧大陆的许多地方，玉米也是一种重要的作物）。洞穴的大部分都覆盖着这个过渡时期的壁画（古晚期和奥尔梅克风格），可能画于公元前3500-600年之间。这些画作提供了一个绝佳的机会，让我们深入了解人们是如何看待从每个人都或多或少平等的简单社会向少数人支配多数人的更大社会的转变的。gutisamurez和他的团队将探索一个干燥的洞穴，该洞穴提供了人类在从觅食经济向农业经济过渡期间居住的证据。该洞穴的沉积物将被分析，以发现已知在干燥洞穴中保存良好的植物遗骸，并评估它们对居住在该地区的人们不断变化的饮食的重要性。研究人员还将获得壁画艺术的科学日期，并确定古代颜料的化学成分，以评估颜料的来源、颜色的应用和所代表的风格。经过充分研究，这些壁画将为人类向农业过渡的意识形态和社会信仰提供一个不同寻常的窗口。这项研究将在墨西哥南部的巴尔萨斯河流域进行，这是西半球最早有玉米驯化证据的地区。一个由考古学家、古植物学家、地貌学家、艺术史学家和修复学家组成的团队将进行地面调查、无人机测绘、x射线荧光分析、挖掘、黑曜石来源以及微观和宏观植物遗迹的研究。这些研究将产生新的定量和比较数据，以调查景观、粮食生产、资源消耗和交换网络的形成方面的变化，以严格评估新世界农业和社会复杂性的出现。这项研究将为美国和墨西哥学生提供科学方法培训的机会，同时促进墨西哥和美国学术界之间的合作和理解。

Dr. Gerardo Gutiérrez, of the University of Colorado-Boulder, in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of US and Mexican scholars, will investigate the economic and ideological changes that human groups underwent during their transition from highly mobile hunter and gatherers to settled agriculturalists in permanent villages, between 3500 to 600 BC in southern Mexico. This is a key moment in the human history of the Americas because many of the plants that comprise our present food production economy (such as maize, or corn) were domesticated during this period. Because ancient foods do not preserve well, this cultural transition is not effectively understood for the North American continent. Why did some forager groups experiment with early cultigens and begin to rely on cultivated plants? How were economic changes reflected in or encouraged by their beliefs and social structures? Archaeological exploration in a cave in southern Mexico should provide a better understanding of the adoption of maize as the primary cereal crop of the New World (and today, a significant crop in many parts of the Old World). Much of the cave is covered with mural paintings from this transitional period (Late Archaic and Olmec style) probably painted between 3500-600 BC. These paintings provide a remarkable opportunity for insight into what people perceived about the transition from simple societies in which everyone was more or less equal to much larger societies in which a few people held sway over many.Dr. Gutiérrez and his team will explore a dry cave that offers evidence of human occupation during the transition from a foraging to an agricultural economy. Sediments in this cave will be analyzed to uncover plant remains which are known to preserve well in dry caves and evaluate their importance in the changing diet of the people who inhabited the area. The researchers will also obtain scientific dates for the mural art and determine the chemical composition of the ancient paints to assess the sources of their pigments, the application of colors, and the styles represented. When fully studied, these murals will offer an unusual window into the ideologies and social beliefs of humans making the transition to agriculture. This research will be conducted in the Balsas River Basin of southern Mexico, the region of the Western Hemisphere with the earliest evidence of corn domestication. A team of archaeologists, paleobotanists, geomorphologists, art historians and restorers will undertake surface survey, mapping with unmanned aerial vehicles, x-ray fluorescence analysis, excavation, obsidian sourcing, and the study of micro- and macro-botanical remains. These studies will generate new quantitative and comparative data to investigate changes in landscapes, food production, resource consumption and the formation of exchange networks to evaluate rigorously the emergence of agriculture and social complexity in the New World. This research will provide opportunities for US and Mexican students to be trained in scientific methods, while promoting cooperation and understanding between academic communities of Mexico and the US.