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

粮食生产的起源是北部新热带地区复杂社会、制度不平等和社会组织出现的重要催化剂。然而，迄今为止，人们对主要作物（如玉米、木薯）最初被人类食用的时间、它们在历史上的使用程度以及野生种子和根茎作物是如何被纳入地区饮食的知之甚少。最近的进展表明，到全新世中期，大亚马逊地区的农业已经建立起来，但我们缺乏北部新热带地区的可比数据，尽管我们知道这些地区之间存在着重大的迁徙和相互作用。该项目将记录整个全新世植物食品的加工和消费，并为该地区的现代植物建立新的微植物学图书馆，以进行比较研究。许多被研究的主要作物如今都是全球重要的商品，也是新热带地区饮食的中心特征，这使得对它们起源的研究具有全球重要性。该项目将对从距今12,500至1,000 cal BP之间的考古背景中从磨石和牙石中获得的淀粉颗粒和植物岩进行微生物学分析。为了获得这些样本，项目成员将在一个阔叶新热带森林的两个偏远的岩石掩体遗址进行挖掘，那里的有机材料保存得很好，此前已被证明。将通过对木炭和骨头进行放射性碳测年来保持时间控制。微生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作物何时被纳入人类饮食。这些数据还将用于研究这些驯化动物相对于其他野生分类群的重要性变化。通过正式磋商和将已发表的文章翻译成当地语言，数据将与后代社区共享。该项目还将促进在科学领域培训妇女和代表性不足的学生。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

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.