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

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Payson Sheets博士(科罗拉多大学人类学)和一个国际研究小组将在萨尔瓦多进行考古调查。该团队由来自美国的古代植物学专家和研究生，以及来自萨尔瓦多的农业工程师和考古学学生组成。该团队将跟进最近发现的一种迄今未知的古代玛雅人的农业系统。在古玛雅村庄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年洛马火山口的喷发保存了很大程度的植物。2009年进行的试验挖掘也得到了国家科学基金会的支持，发现许多种植地都是从木薯上收获的，木薯是一种根茎作物，已经在那里生长了至少一年。大部分树根在收获期间被移走了，但也有一些保留了下来，成为中空的空间，研究人员用牙膏浇注这些空间，以永久保存它们。一些苗床已经重新种植了茎插条，以备下一个生长周期之用。古代玛雅人的茎和块茎都比今天萨尔瓦多农民种植的木薯更健壮。这项研究的目标之一是了解古代农民为什么比今天的农民更成功地种植木薯。萨尔瓦多农业工程师在帮助探索这些可能性方面至关重要，到目前为止已经提出了三项建议。(1)木薯在松散的土壤中生长最好，古代的种植床优于现在的平地种植。(2)野生和驯化的木薯在半干旱地区生长得最好，因为太多的水分抑制了生长，所以古河床的倾斜有利于排水。这不是当代农民做的。(3)古代田野被仔细地除草，这也是今天没有遵循的程序。由于萨尔瓦多是中美洲人口最多的国家，在大约50年前实现了粮食自给自足，并受到失业问题的困扰，因此它是利用古老的成功来改进当今农业实践的理想地点。试验田将由三名农民发起，以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的问题。长期以来，学者们一直在争论农业是否处于精英的控制或影响之下，或者它是否基本上独立于更高的权力之外。2009年发现了严格区分不同农民地块的土地使用线。挖掘的重点将是这些边界是在当地确立的，还是来自Ceren村，或者可能来自圣安德烈斯，这是田野以南的精英控制的城市。由于Ceren有充足的降雨，在木薯所能站立的连续体的潮湿一端，似乎比Ceren更适合在玛雅低地的干旱地区种植木薯。因此，项目成员正在开发木薯种植和加工的多种持久指标，可以在缺乏Ceren不同寻常保存的考古遗址中找到这些指标。

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.