2004 Bridges Summer Research Report Shanti Morell-Hart Anthropology "Stepping Stones toward Paleoethnobotanical Analysis in the Northern Yucatan"

View of the site of T’isil, facing west. Small bumps and rocky outcrops on the landscape are, believe it or not, Pre-Hispanic structures.

Research goals and locations

Between May 24th and July 5th, enabled by travel funding from the Center for Latin American Studies, I spent four weeks at the site of T'isil, Quintana Roo (Figure 1), one week in Merida, Yucatan and the surrounding area, and one week in Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo and the surrounding area. This travel to Mexico was carried out under the auspices of the Yalahau Regional Human Ecology Project with permission from the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia. My goal was to pursue data and reference materials related to my dissertation thesis.

Essentially, my dissertation centers on the Pre-Hispanic Maya use of diverse economic plant species and the spectrum of practices they represent. I am pursuing several questions, including: How predominant were specific foods and foodways in the lives of Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican subjects? How were experience and practice interwoven into a complex dialectic of organized food procurement and production? What were the relationships between built spaces and activities related to foodways? When approaching these questions with my own archaeological data set at the site of T’isil, in Quintana Roo, it will be through the lens of documentary analogy from ethnohistoric accounts, ethnographic exploration, archaeological analogy from sites such as El Ceren in El Salvador, and contemporary experimental botanical research. I hope to interweave these data into a multidisciplinary methodology which allows me to better approach questions of Maya foodways of the past, specifically focusing on data from sediment chemical signatures (such as phosphates) and macrobotanical remains (such as seeds). My study of various activity areas relates to the investigation of hierarchical and heterarchical relationships between occupants of these site areas, in terms of food procurement and processing. Essentially, my dissertation research consists of sediment sampling the T'isil landscape for both macrobotanical and chemical signature data, following a sort of “bullseye” pattern which will stretch from the center of the site outward. I hope to examine the social concept of “cocentric zonation” when looking specifically at foodways of the past. That is, I am looking for significant differences or similarities between areas (“rings” of the “bullseye”) in relation to the central and presumed “more elite” area of the site, in order to test assumptions regarding hierarchical social relationships between the site’s Pre-Hispanic occupants.

Work at T’isil, Quintana Roo

To enable my eventual analysis of macrobotanical remains collected from archaeological contexts, the 2004 field season’s work was devoted primarily to two endeavors: mapping and investigating built space relationships, and developing macrobotanical reference collection materials.

To put it simply, in order to discuss the social lives of seeds which emerge from collected bags of dirt, I have to have some idea of the cultural context of the collection area. For this reason, under Scott Fedick (UC Riverside), I and Kathy Sorensen (UC Riverside) worked on further mapping the site of T’isil, in order to gain a site-wide view of potential sampling areas (Figure 2). We also worked on developing a classificatory system in order to contextualize the collected sediment samples of future research. We hope that by developing a reflexive dialogue with the landscape, we are better able to describe and account for the ways in which botanical remains come to arrive in the archaeological record. For instance, should cotton seeds appear in an area likely used for habitation, this tells us something very different than the appearance of cotton seeds in an area very likely used as a home garden or a marketplace.

Figure 2: Kathy Sorensen taking GPS points of a natural feature on the landscape. Photo taken at the site of T’isil.

The assembly of a reference collection forms a necessary part of the second prong of my dissertation research: the analysis of macrobotanical remains recovered from the set of sediment samples. Although I had originally planned to spend one week at the El Eden ecological research station, examining current reference collections kept at the station, I discovered that the vast majority of the botanical materials have already been sent to herbaria in Veracruz and at UC Riverside. For this reason, in lieu of passing a week at El Eden, I spent this time taking photos and collecting samples at T’isil (Figure 3) of both traditionally cultivated and traditionally non-cultivated plant species. These photos and specimens will help me to form a better ecological picture of the area immediately surrounding the archaeological site, as these plants are likely “escaped” home garden taxa. That is, it is likely that the Maya of antiquity modified their landscape, through clearing, terraforming, tending and cultivating, to the extent that many of the species currently found throughout the Northern Yucatan are actually secondary growth — the relics of both extensive and intensive practices related to culturally-selected plant species. For this reason, the species identified in the T’isil area may have played an economic role in antiquity, just as many of them have been noted ethnographically as having specific economic uses.

Figure 3: Botanical specimen of a fruit from the Fabaceae family. Collected from tree near a Pre-Hispanic structure at the site of T’isil.

Additionally, while at T’isil, I had the opportunity to (temporarily and very superficially) work with Lance Wollwage (UC Riverside) in obtaining cores from the central cenote (limestone sinkhole) at T’isil (Figure 4). His work with these core samples will provide invaluable data when analyzing my own sediment samples, in that they will form a necessary basis for comparison. His preliminary (2004) investigations already suggest an interesting sedimentary history for the site, including four depositional episodes and perhaps even cultural modification of the cenote floor.

Figure 4: Lance Wollwage making every effort to take a sediment core sample from the central cenote of T’isil. Not as easy as it looks.

Work in Merida, Yucatan and surrounding area

Along with my work at T’isil, I spent one week in Merida, Yucatan to do work at the Centro de Investigacion Cientifica de Yucatan (CICY). At this facility, along with volunteer Burcu Tung (UC Berkeley), I had the opportunity to examine the available botanical resources, explore the botanical garden specimens and take reference photos and notes of plant taxa related to my dissertation work (Figure 5). The invaluable data collected from this botanical research facility has been filed on compact discs for use by myself and other researchers (detailed below in the “post-field season” section).

Figure 5: Burcu Tung carefully touching the spiny trunk of the Ceiba pentranda tree. Photo taken at the botanical gardens of the Centro de Investigaciones Cientificas de Yucatan, in Merida.

While in Merida, we also re-explored the Museo de Antropologia in Merida, Yucatan, to obtain photos and notes of Classic Maya media representations of plants, and in some cases even the practices associated with them. These photos (Figure 6) will also be integrated into the collection of reference materials, to help broaden understanding of plants identified in and represented by the various artistic media of Pre-Hispanic Maya people. Exploring such archaeological representations serves to strengthen or alter our ethnographically — and ethnohistorically — constructed conceptions of plant uses in the past. In other words, the way we envision the process of maize consumption, from seed to field to table, could be compared with actual Pre-Hispanic representations of tamales.

Figure 6: Classic Maya period ceramic representations of flower buds or fruit pods and a ceramic vessel. Photo taken at the Museo Arqueologico in Merida, Yucatan.

Work in Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo and surrounding area

While aiding in the set-up for the Trinity University field school with Jennifer Mathews (Trinity University), I had the opportunity to spend a day in the Dr. Alfredo Barrera Marin Botanical Garden, taking photos and notes of identified species (Figure 7), obtaining books on the ecology and botany of Yucatan and viewing spider monkeys (although these are not actually related to my dissertation work). These materials will be integrated into the larger collection of reference materials, in the same way as those obtained from the CICY in Merida.

Figure 7: Living Cephalocereus gaumeri specimen, its identification tag, and measuring-tape for scale. Photo taken at the botanical gardens of Dr. Alfredo Barrera Marin, in Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo.

Work in the post-field season

Since my return from Mexico, I have devoted multiple weeks to the development of the reference database. Listed by plant taxa, this Microsoft Access (tm) database ties together modern ecology, ethnographic practices associated with these taxa, archaeological instances of these taxa, related modern botanical reference collection materials and photographic documentation. This framework forms the structure for the application of multidisciplinary approaches to the quantitative and qualitative data to be obtained from my future ethnographic and archaeological field work. Though an acknowledged work-in-progress, I have begun to distribute this preliminary version of the database to researchers here and in Mexico. Also currently in-process is the complete integration of the collected botanical specimens into the reference collection of the Paleoethnobotanical Laboratory here at UC Berkeley. (A few of these specimens remain to be identified before they can be labeled, boxed and placed in their new home.)

Subsequent field seasons will find me collecting sediment samples from different landscape contexts at the site of T’isil. Once collected and semi-processed, one portion of these samples will be transported to the U.S. for chemical and archaeobotanical compositional analysis. This sampling will be utilized not only in the obtaining information regarding chemical signatures and botanical assemblages but also for the collection of archival sediment samples. The sediment archives will be used in future field seasons for the investigation of other remains also left by past human activity.

The CLAS grant served to generously fund travel directly related to data and reference material collection for my dissertation research. I hope, through this and continued work in Mexico, to fill “holes” in the archaeological knowledge surrounding economic plant species in the Yucatan and to help answer questions related to the Pre-Hispanic use of diverse plant taxa and their associated activities. This research will be contrasted with other lines of evidence, including settlement pattern data, pollen core data and ceramic data. Such a multidisciplinary approach reveals a more complete picture when approaching questions regarding the foodways and daily practices of past Maya peoples (Figure 8). As the interaction between history and anthropology in the Maya area has led to the emergence of an archaeology which is increasingly historical, and an ethnography which is increasingly historicized, the CLAS funding has been an enormous aid not only in my own research, but in the general endeavor to further interweave these two branches of human study into a more holistic view of the past.

Figure 8: Ingredients, and perhaps even recipes, dating from Pre-Hispanic times. Clockwise are: one pitahaya fruit and a glass of agua de pitahaya, one salbute, two panuchos, two types of salsa, salt, and one leaf-wrapped tamal. Photo taken in Merida, Yucatan.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to the Center for Latin American Studies, Sigma Xi, the Department of Anthropology, and the Lowie-Olson fund for their financial support of my research. My thanks to Rosemary Joyce, Christine Hastorf and Bill Hanks for their perpetual help in developing my research plans and mental faculties. My thanks to Scott Fedick, Jennifer Mathews and Kathy Sorensen for their support and the opportunity to work with them and their projects this year. My thanks to the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (I.N.A.H.) and Mike and Theresa Baker for their continued support of the Yalahau Project and permission to pursue investigations on the lovely Rancho Santa Maria. My thanks to Burcu, Scott, Cruz, Paul, Patricia, Jeffrey, Alfredo, Bugi, Brian, Sean, Shannon, Lesvia, Alberto, Thania, Talia, Emir, Christie, Brandon, Erica, Brad, and many others, for all of their in-field support and/or guidance in every capacity.