The Early and Middle Formative site of Chiquiuitan is located on the Pacific coast of Guatemala and is distinguished as the earliest known site in the southeastern coastal region, dating to 1450-600 B.C. Yet, the site has received little consideration in the scholarship of this crucial time in Mesoamerican prehistory, when important transitions were taking place in sedentism, subsistence, trade, and social organization. These transitions laid the groundwork for subsequent high cultural systems such as the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec, and thus are central to understanding the foundations of Mesoamerican cultural systems.
Under the supervision of Dr. William R. Fowler, Jr., Molly Morgan will evaluate subsistence transitions by studying plant and animal remains and obtaining radiocarbon dates from previously recovered deposits at Chiquiuitan. Morgan's 2006 and 2007 excavations focused on household contexts, providing ample evidence for domestic choices made by the inhabitants of this village, including those related to food procurement. The result of the new research will be a detailed reconstruction of subsistence diversity and change during and immediately following Chiquiuitan's initial settlement.
The intellectual merit of this project lies in the important contribution that will be made to the archaeology of a crucial period in early Mesoamerican prehistory. Through gathering multiple types of subsistence-related evidence, this research will clarify resource exploitation choices at Chiquiuitan by examining variable components of the diet and how they changed through time.
This research will employ three materials analyses: (1) paleobotanical research aimed at identifying plant species, (2) analysis of archaeofauna to identify animal remains, and (3) AMS radiocarbon dating to enhance the chronological reconstruction of deposits from Chiquiuitan. These studies will be conducted by experienced specialists in the field, namely Dr. Andrew Wyatt at the University of Illinois at Chicago for paleoethnobotany, and Dr. Kitty Emery at the Florida Museum of Natural History for archaeofauna. Determining the extent of food production and if a subsistence economy was adapted before the Middle Formative (950-600 BC) will be primary goals. In summary, the approach taken by this project combines zoological and botanical perspectives of human-environment interactions with the dynamic perception gained through absolute dating methods.
The broader impacts resulting from this research will be threefold: this project will assist in graduate student training, foster a greater exchange of information between U.S. and Latin American scholars, and contribute to the wider study of how human groups procure food. By bolstering the data collected from the site of Chiquiuitan, this work will significantly enhance the interpretations made regarding early social transitions proposed in Morgan"s dissertation. The information gained will contribute to the general understanding among New World scholars of the transition to complex society by providing a detailed model for the adoption of agriculture to which other areas may be compared. Lastly, in an age of slow food revolutions, the call for a return to natural and organic food production methods, and a heightened concern for where our food is coming from, this study will explain how an ancient group dealt with issues of subsistence in their time, offering ideas for how we might explore our own challenges in food procurement.
