Archaeologist challenging the idea that prehistoric people in the Southwest subsisted on maize

[Judi Lynn]

Last edited Thu Nov 30, 2017, 12:39 AM - Edit history (1)

November 27, 2017 by Michael Miller



Corn that prehistoric people grew in the Southwest 1,000 years ago looked nothing like the sweet corn people eat today. Credit: Joseph Fuqua II/UC Creative Services


Conventional wisdom holds that prehistoric villagers planted corn, and lots of it, to survive the dry and hostile conditions of the American Southwest.

But University of Cincinnati archaeology professor Alan Sullivan is challenging that long-standing idea, arguing instead that people routinely burned the understory of forests to grow wild crops 1,000 years ago.

"There has been this orthodoxy about the importance of corn," said Sullivan, director of graduate studies in UC's Department of Anthropology in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences. "It's been widely considered that prehistoric peoples of Arizona between A.D. 900 to 1200 were dependent on it.

"But if corn is lurking out there in the Grand Canyon, it's hiding successfully because we've looked all over and haven't found it."

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-11-archaeologist-idea-prehistoric-people-southwest.html#jCp

[Brother Buzz]

1. Good read, but I believe the headline is somewhat misleading

While native peoples elsewhere in the Southwest relied on corn, Sullivan's work focused on the Upper Basin diet; residents of the Upper Basin relied on wild food—and used fire to cultivate it.


At least, that's my takeaway.