Early prehistoric sedentism and seasonal animal exploitation in the Caribbean lowlands of Colombia

San Jacinto 1 represents a special-purpose settlement that was used by late Archaic foraging groups who logistically moved from base camps to special-purpose camps in order to collect and process subsistence resources at the onset of the dry season in the Caribbean savannas of northern Colombia. Situated in an optimal location for permanent water and seasonal concentrations of dry season subsistence items, the site’s location was part of a logistic strategy in which specific task groups were moved to resources during a short season of availability. Preserved vertebrate and invertebrate faunas at San Jacinto conform to expectations about assemblage ubiquity, richness, and evenness or equitability within the early occupational strata at the site. Specific animals including turtles and fish were pursued, and may have been processed with C3 plants and grasses in ubiquitous earth ovens. Certain local aquatic invertebrates were also procured along with the collection of specific extra-local gastropods.     

Broccoli and Desire

Abstract: Tracing the commodity chain of broccoli from Nashville, Tennessee supermarkets to Maya farmers in highland Guatemala, this paper examines relations of desire and political economic power. We argue that the global broccoli trade is shot through with desires—desires of Western consumers to eat healthy foods as well as desires for Maya farmers to get ahead economically. Such desires simultaneously subvert and sustain the hegemonic constellations that anchor crucial nodes in the international broccoli trade.     

Re-Envisioning Tarascan Temporalities and Landscapes: Historical Being,Archaeological Representation,and Futurity in Past Social Processes

We apply a phenomenological perspective on landscape and geographic information system (GIS) applications in order to theorize how human perception and agency were likely implicated in processes of the formation of the late pre-Hispanic Tarascan State of West Central Mexico. The relatedness of landscape features in space or place-based perception has been well theorized; here, we further consider the relationality of places through time. In the changing landscape of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, the demographic and political core of the Tarascan State, temporality must have been vitally important to inhabitants of the basin. Utilizing GIS, we construct not only map-based analyses of the changing environment but also create viewsheds of past landscapes in order to see what past inhabitants of the basin would have seen in order to demonstrate that temporality would have been easily mapped in the landscape and its features. Finally, we discuss the role of temporality and cultural memory in an embodied landscape to model the various lake levels that past peoples could have anticipated through time based on their perceptions and memories.