Collaborative Research: Origins of food production in the northern neotropical lowlands

粮食生产的起源是北方新热带地区出现复杂社会、制度不平等和社会组织的重要催化剂。 然而，到目前为止，人们对关键作物（即，玉米、木薯）最初是由人类消费的，随着时间的推移，它们的使用有多密集，以及野生种子和块根作物是如何融入区域饮食的。最近的进展表明，农业是建立在全新世中期在大亚马逊河流域，但我们缺乏可比的数据在北方新热带地区，即使我们知道有显着的迁移和这些地区之间的相互作用。该项目将记录整个全新世植物食品的加工和消费，并制作该地区现代植物的新微植物库，以供比较研究。研究的许多关键作物是当今全球重要的商品，也是新热带地区饮食的核心特征，因此研究它们的起源具有全球重要性。 该项目将对从距今12，500至1，000卡的考古背景中的磨石和牙垢中获得的淀粉粒和植硅体进行微植物学分析。 为了获得这些样品，项目成员将在新热带阔叶林中的两个偏远的岩石掩蔽点进行挖掘，那里以前已经证明有机材料的保存良好。将通过木炭和骨骼上的放射性碳年代测定来保持年代控制。微植物学数据将用于确定驯化和野生植物食品的加工和消费，并确定玉米和木薯等特定栽培物何时被纳入人类饮食。这些数据也将被用来研究这些驯化相对于其他野生类群的重要性变化。 将通过正式协商和将发表的文章翻译成当地语言，与后代社区分享数据。该项目还将促进妇女和代表性不足的学生在科学方面的培训，该奖项反映了国家科学基金会的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

The origin of food production was an important catalyst for the emergence of complex societies, institutional inequality, and social organization in the northern neotropics. Yet, to date, there is little understanding of when key crops (i.e., maize, manioc) were first consumed by humans, how intensively they were used through time, and how wild seed and root crops were integrated into a regional diet. Recent advances suggest that agriculture was well established by the middle Holocene in greater Amazonia, but we lack comparable data in the northern neotropics, even though we know there was significant migration and interaction between these regions. The project will document the processing and consumption of plant foods throughout the Holocene and produce new microbotanical libraries of modern plants from the region for comparative research. Many of the key crops studied are today globally important commodities and central features of diets across neotropical contexts making the study of their origins a matter of global importance. This project will carry out microbotanical analysis of starch grains and phytoliths obtained from grinding stones and dental calculus from archaeological contexts dating between 12,500 and 1,000 cal BP. To obtain these samples project members will conduct excavations at two remote rockshelter sites in a broadleaf neotropical forest where excellent preservation of organic materials has been previously demonstrated. Chronological control will be maintained with radiocarbon dates on charcoal and bone. Microbotanical data will be used to identify processing and consumption of domesticated and wild plant foods and to determine when specific cultigens such as maize and manioc were incorporated into the human diet. These data will also be used to study the changing importance of these domesticates relative to other wild taxa. Data will be shared with descendent communities though formal consultations and translations of published articles into local languages. This project will also promote the training of women and underrepresented students in the sciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.