The Farmed and the Hunted: Integrating Floral and Faunal Data from Tres Zapotes, Veracruz

Regional Variation in the Importance and uses of Maize in the Early and Middle Formative Olmec Heartland: New Archaeobotanical Data from the San Carlos Homestead, Southern Veracruz

“…If maize were an important staple crop for the populations dependant on San Lorenzo, one would expect a much more intense presence of maize there. In the case of Tres Zapotes, conclusive data are still lacking for Early Formative population densities in the vicinity, though initial studies do not suggest a dense population there (Loughlin 2012; Pool 2003;Pool and Ortiz Ceballos 2008;Pool et al 2010). Given these patterns it is difficult to defend the idea that maize was adopted around these political centers as an adaptation to local wild food scarcity during the Early Formative.…”

“…Published analyses of macrobotanical remains from Early and Middle Formative contexts include data from La Joya and Tres Zapotes (Peres et al 2010;VanDerwarker 2006VanDerwarker ,2012. Located approximately 60 km northwest of San Lorenzo in the neighboring Sierra de los Tuxtlas, La Joya represents a multicomponent village with a maximum extension of around 20 ha, located in the Upper Catemaco River valley at an altitude of approximately 200 m asl (Arnold 1999(Arnold ,2000(Arnold ,2003.…”

“…Tres Zapotes is situated approximately 30 km from La Joya in the lowlands just beyond the western foothills of the Tuxtlas and is well known as a Late/Terminal Formative political center-but this site was also inhabited during the Early and Middle Formative periods, with the latter occupation fairly substantial in size (Pool 2000(Pool ,2007Pool and Ortiz Ceballos 2008;Pool et al 2010). The Early Formative occupation at Tres Zapotes corresponds with the San Lorenzo B phase and represents the period during which Arnold (2009) argues that maize production would have increased.…”

“…Pool reports evidence for Early Formative Arroyo phase settlement distributed across several sections of the site, with an estimated size of between 7.5 and 17 ha-though we cannot currently rule out a larger population there, now hidden under meters of alluvium and later occupational deposition. Some researchers have suggested that the two colossal heads found at the site (monuments A and Q) belong to the Early Formative occupation (Clewlow 1974:26, 28;Drucker 1981:39-40;Lowe 1989:43, 51), though Pool (2007Pool ( :249-251, 2010Pool and Ortiz Ceballos 2008;Pool et al 2010) believes that they more likely date to the beginning of the Middle Formative period. Several settlement pattern surveys in nearby areas of the eastern lowland Papaloapan River basin paint a general picture of scattered villages and hamlets, most of them no larger than a couple of hectares in size across the landscape during the Early and Middle Formative periods (Kruszczynski 2001;Leon Perez 2003;Loughlin 2004;summarized in Pool et al 2010; see also Loughlin 2012).…”

“…In order to understand the relative importance of maize in the San Carlos diet, we make comparisons with published data from Early and Middle Formative plant assemblages from La Joya and Tres Zapotes (see Peres et al 2010;VanDerwarker 2006VanDerwarker ,2012. The macrobotanical data sets from La Joya and Tres Zapotes are comparable in the sense that the data were collected in the same manner and analyzed by VanDerwarker (2006,2012) using the same methods.…”