farming, hunting, and fishing
in the olmec world
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The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies
This series was made possible through the generosity of
William C. Nowlin, Jr., and Bettye H. Nowlin,
the National Endowment for the Humanities,
and various individual donors.
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farming, hunting,
and fishing in
the olmec world
amber m. vanderwarker
university of texas press
Austin
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Copyright © 2006 by the University of Texas Press
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First edition, 2006
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Chapter 4 66
farming, gardening, and tree management:
analysis of the plant data
Chapter 5 116
hunting, fishing, and trapping:
analysis of the animal data
Chapter 6 182
eating plants and animals: stable isotopic
analysis of human, dog, and deer bones
Chapter 7 193
farming, hunting, and fishing in the olmec
world: a model of olmec subsistence economy
notes
205
bibliography 207
index 233
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acknowledgments
I would like to recognize those who have helped to bring this project
to fruition, for it is through the help of many different individuals that
the conception and completion of this work was possible. Foremost, I
acknowledge the National Science Foundation (grant no. 9912271) for
funding this project. I would like to express my gratitude to my husband,
Greg Wilson, whose support and encouragement kept me going daily.
Greg helped in so many ways, from proofreading my writing and trouble-
shooting my ideas to calming me down and installing an air-conditioning
unit in my office. I would also like to acknowledge my mentor, Margaret
Scarry, whose guidance and levelheadedness kept me focused. I could not
have asked for a better mentor.

Abby Schuler, Matthew Edison, Nichole Doub, and Lauren Downs for
their assistance on this project. Thanks to Kandi Detwiler for help with
some preliminary archaeobotanical sorting and to Elizabeth Driscoll for
consulting on some human remains. Seth Murray, Greg Wilson, and Jen-
nifer Ringberg graciously assisted with many of the illustrations. Thanks
also to Mark Rees for theoretical conversations about circumscription.
I have several colleagues who work in Gulf Coastal Mexico that de-
serve recognition for the many ways in which they contributed to this
book. Christopher Pool assisted in procuring the Bezuapan floral and fau-
nal materials, and gave me access to field notes and site maps. He was al-
ways available to answer my numerous questions and discuss ideas and in-
terpretations. Robert Krueger took me on an adventure through the wilds
of the Gulf lowlands to collect modern plant specimens for comparison
—I could not have identified the archaeological plant specimens without
reference to this comparative collection. I am also grateful to Rob and his
wonderful family for hosting me during my stay in Jalapa. Thanks to Va-
lerie McCormack for many conversations about La Joya. I am also grate-
ful to all the people at INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e His-
toria) who helped me access the La Joya and Bezuapan collections.
Mark Schurr of the Fluoride Dating Service at the University of Notre
Dame assisted with conducting the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic
analysis on the samples used in this work. Laura Cahue prepared and ran
the samples and was very helpful in interpreting the results. Thanks also
to Lee Newsom for consulting with me on some difficult plant specimens.
I could not have completed this project without the support of family
and friends. Thanks to my mom for her unconditional love and friendship,
to my dad for his unswerving faith in me, to my sister for always making
me laugh just when I need it most, and to Hester, Ophelia, and K.B. for
bringing joy into my life. I also thank Bram Tucker, Celeste Gagnon,
x farming, hunting, and fishing in the olmec world

lands of the Olmec hinterland during a period of political formation. To
address the relationship between the development of agriculture and the
emergence of complex political formations (e.g., chiefdoms and states),
I consider subsistence data from two sites spanning the Formative period:
La Joya and Bezuapan, located in the Sierra de los Tuxtlas approximately
100 km from the lowland Olmec centers.
The Tuxtla region is well suited for exploring this relationship. Settle-
ment data from the region indicate that Early Formative groups were
egalitarian and semi-sedentary (Arnold 2000; McCormack 2002; Santley
et al. 1997). By the Middle Formative period, people had settled into
more permanent villages, maintaining a relatively egalitarian social orga-
nization (Arnold 2000; McCormack 2002; Santley et al. 1997). The sub-
sequent Late and Terminal Formative periods were marked by the emer-
gence of a regional site hierarchy and increasing social differentiation,
though the manifestation of social inequality in the Tuxtlas was not as
pronounced as among lowland Olmec groups (Santley et al. 1997; Stark
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and Arnold 1997a). Thus, analysis of the available subsistence data makes
it possible to consider farming strategies as they developed alongside
sedentism and chiefdom formation.
In order to understand an agricultural system, we need to understand
the subsistence system as a whole. This requires that we answer basic ques-
tions regarding local and regional subsistence practices. What foods were
people eating? To what extent did people rely on domesticated versus wild
foods and how did this vary through time? Did people narrow or diver-
sify their resource base through time? How varied were subsistence prac-
tices through time and across space? How predictable were plant and an-
imal resources throughout the region? How did volcanic eruptions affect
the distribution and predictability of these resources? Once these basic
questions are answered, we can begin to address more complex questions

process of agricultural intensification have their roots in discussions of
the initial process of plant domestication.
Chapter 3 presents an overview of Olmec research as it pertains to
farming and political complexity. The history of the Olmec problem is
particularly relevant because previous studies have set the stage for the
research questions pursued here. Few subsistence studies have been con-
ducted in the region, which has long hampered our understanding of Gulf
Formative agricultural systems—this is one reason why the data pre-
sented here are so crucial. Chapter 3 also provides the environmental and
archaeological background for the Tuxtlas, the region in which the study
sites are located. This chapter constructs a foundation for understanding
subsistence adaptations in the Tuxtlas, a foundation that is necessary for
proper interpretation of the archaeological data.
The second part of the book involves the presentation and analysis of
the data. These are the chapters in which I discuss specific archaeologi-
cal correlates for answering the larger questions posed above. Chapters 4
and 5 consider the archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological assemblages,
respectively. Both chapters consider temporal trends in these data, in ad-
dition to dealing with preservation and recovery biases, field recovery
techniques, field and laboratory sampling, laboratory procedures and
identification, and quantification for the subsistence data. Chapter 6 pre-
agricultural risk and intensification 3
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sents stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes for human, domestic dog, and
white-tailed deer skeletal specimens. Indeed, it is only through the anal-
ysis of multiple kinds of subsistence data that we can begin to truly un-
derstand prehistoric systems of agriculture. Finally, in Chapter 7 I tie the
analyses together and relate them to the larger research questions stated
above.
4 farming, hunting, and fishing in the olmec world

for tropical regions, where resources are more diverse and plentiful—in-
deed, this abundance of resources in tropical environments makes it diffi-
cult to envision an imbalance between people and food. For this reason,
the notion of circumscription may be less useful for understanding the
range of processes at work in tropical environments.
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Determining the relationship between population growth and agricul-
tural intensification is key to understanding the emergence of chiefdoms
and states. However, before we can hope to understand this relationship,
we must first explore the processes of intensification. Why did people in-
tensify agriculture and what were the consequences of this process? Un-
fortunately, scholars have placed more emphasis on relating the issue of
intensification to political and environmental change than to elucidat-
ing the concept of intensification itself. It is important that we infer agri-
cultural intensification directly from archaeological data on agriculture,
not from population estimates or changes in political organization. It is
not until we know the organization of an agricultural system that we can
understand its relationship to the larger political context. Thus, we must
begin by answering the smaller questions in order to lay the foundation
for answering the larger ones. What are the strategies of agricultural in-
tensification and how do they vary relative to different environments and
different crops? How do we identify these strategies archaeologically?
What risks were involved in the shift to a farming economy, and how did
people prevent and manage these risks? It is also important to understand
that the shift from foraging to farming did not necessarily mean that
people stopped collecting wild plants or hunting game. Rather, people of-
ten combined these strategies into a mixed subsistence economy (Tucker
2000; Kent 1989). Thus, when we consider agricultural intensification,
we need to ask not only how and why it may have affected farming prac-
tices, but also how and why it may have affected foraging practices.

particularly relevant to the Olmec case. Though defined as a biological
process, domestication is clearly dependent on humans through activi-
ties such as seed dispersal, tending, tilling, and transplanting (Ford 1985).
These activities can be subsumed under the term “cultivation,” defined
here as a technological process that involves the intentional preparation,
sowing, harvest, and storage of plants (Price and Gebauer 1995). Culti-
vation can occur on several different scales, from a small home garden to
large-scale, intensive monocropping. While cultivation does not necessi-
tate agriculture, agriculture does require cultivation.
Different from the biological process of domestication and the tech-
nological process of cultivation, agriculture is a decidedly social phenom-
enon.
1
Price and Gebauer (1995:6) define agriculture as
a commitment [by humans to the] relationship with plants and/or ani-
mals. It ultimately involves changes in the human use of the earth and
in the structure and organization of human society—the widespread
use of ceramic containers, the extensive clearing of the forest, the cul-
tivation of hard-shelled cereals that can be stored for long periods
of time, the invention and adoption of new technologies for farming
and/or herding, more villages and more people, and an increased pace
along the path to more complex social and political organization.
Agriculture, then, characterizes a way of life that is an outcome of the do-
mestication process coupled with fundamental changes in social structure.
Given this broad definition of agriculture, when can a society be con-
sidered agricultural? Do people have to completely rely on domesticated
foods for their survival? What about mixed subsistence strategies that
agriculture and political complexity 7
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combine foraging with farming? Can extensive slash-and-burn farming

by other foraged foods—they were annuals that yielded high returns,
tolerated a wide range of disturbed habitats, stored easily, and were ge-
netically malleable (Flannery 1973). Through time, these seed crops “re-
sponded with favorable genetic changes” that made them suitable as agri-
cultural staples (Flannery 1973:307).
Rindos (1980) explains the beginnings of domestication as a coevolu-
tionary process involving incidental dispersal and protection of plants
by people. More specifically, he defines domestication as the result of
predator-prey relationships characterized by mutualism in which both
8 farming, hunting, and fishing in the olmec world
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humans and plants/animals benefited (see also Pearsall 1995a; Watson
1995). In the process of gathering and eating plant foods, humans acted
as agents of dispersal, thereby ensuring the reproductive success of those
plant species. This process led to genetic changes in the plants that made
them more desirable to and dependent upon humans.
It is in the culmination of this process of domestication—i.e., the
adoption of domesticates as dietary staples—that the debate lies. Gener-
ally, there are three theoretical frameworks for understanding the shift to
a reliance on cultigens: coevolutionary, environmental, and sociopoliti-
cal. The coevolutionary model picks up the second part of Rindos’ model.
Rindos’ explanation for the origins of agriculture is essentially a continu-
ation of his explanation of the domestication process—plant /human in-
teractions led to the abundance of domesticates, and hence the cultivation
of domesticates. Eventually, a few domesticates became primary staples.
This reliance on a few domesticates would have resulted in subsistence in-
stability, which would have then necessitated intensification of those spe-
cies in order to produce enough food to maintain the subsistence system.
Thus, agriculture is simply the outcome of domestication.
One of the main problems with Rindos’ model is that the process by

a consideration of “immediate” variables (e.g., changes in resource abun-
dance and prey selection) before invoking broader, systemic variables
(e.g., changes in climate). In other words, we need to understand the de-
cisions that people made with respect to domestication, and why they
made them, if we are to understand the shift to agricultural production.
Winterhalder (1990) and Winterhalder and Goland (1997) explain
the transition to farming in terms of changing strategies of risk avoidance.
In a foraging economy, people avoid risk by pooling food between house-
holds. To deal with the unpredictability in yields for any specific foraging
location (an individual can only forage in one place at a time) and because
the interval between foraging episodes is relatively short (lack of long-
term storage and food preservation), foragers probably pooled resources
across households (Winterhalder 1990:67–69; Winterhalder and Go-
land 1997:140 –141). In a farming economy, people may avoid risk by
planting several dispersed fields. To deal with the unpredictability in har-
vest yields related to plot location and the possibility of crop failure, a
farmer can maintain crops in several different locations at once (Winter-
halder 1990:67–69; Winterhalder and Goland 1997:140–141). Thus,
unlike foragers who buffer against risk at the community level, farmers
can buffer against risk at the household level by combining field disper-
sion with grain storage. The transition from foraging to farming there-
fore involved a significant social shift in risk-avoidance strategies from
inter- to intra-household sharing. While this model explains how the
transition from foraging to farming might have occurred, it does not ex-
plain why.
Hence it is necessary to entertain other explanations for the transition
to farming. The earliest models for interpreting the origins of domesti-
cation were driven by environmental variables. Childe’s (1956) Oasis Hy-
pothesis posited climatic shifts toward drier conditions in the Levant.
He argued that farming began on the plains of Mesopotamia during a dry

from starvation, causing population levels to decline below the regional
carrying capacity (Cohen 1977; Redding 1988). They could have emi-
grated to a new region, unless all of the neighboring regions were already
inhabited (e.g., social circumscription) (Cohen 1977; Redding 1988). Or
they could have turned to plant cultivation as a means of producing more
food to feed to their growing population (Binford 1968; Cohen 1977;
Redding 1988). This shift to a reliance on managed resources would have
gradually increased until people were dependent on farming to meet the
bulk of their subsistence needs.
The population pressure model differs from Rindos’ coevolutionary
framework by providing tangible expectations that allow us to understand
some of the specifics of the origins of agriculture. Based on the model, we
can expect that a reliance on farming would be preceded by an increase in
population and would occur first in resource-marginal areas. Moreover,
the first domesticates should be species with the potential to be staple
agriculture and political complexity 11
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foods. Once people have begun cultivating domesticates, the relative con-
tribution of these staples should gradually increase.
Agricultural origins models that rely on environmentally driven vari-
ables such as climatic change and population pressure have been criticized
as being too functionalist (see Hayden 1992). As a result, some scholars
have turned to social models to explain the transition from foraging to
farming. Bender (1978, 1990) and Hayden (1990, 1992, 1995) see farm-
ing as a way for aspiring elites to create a surplus that can be used to fund
status-related events. For Hayden, it is not resource stress and population
pressure that are key issues but a breach in the ethic of resource sharing,
specifically food resources.
2
Beginning with the assumption that people

simply have been an additional impetus for turning feasting foods into
12 farming, hunting, and fishing in the olmec world
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