Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Broad Scale Integration Of Agricultural Production

The goal of this doctoral dissertation research project is to use archaeological and paleoethnobotanical methods to investigate whether grand-scale geopolitical changes influenced local foodways during prehistory. The co-PI will study the effects of the growth of a regional market center and associated infrastructure on community agricultural practice and food security.

This is an important step toward understanding political economies of subsistence goods. How did residents of small communities navigate their proximity to a market center and the construction of an adjacent monumental causeway? What can household food security strategies inform about the level of integration and dependence people experienced in food systems of the past?

Paleoethnobotany, the study of ancient plant remains from archaeological contexts, provides a high resolution of data necessary to deduce household- and activity area-level patterns, allowing for greater understanding of interactions between local and regional phenomena. Ancient foodways are also relevant to discussions of heritage and identity in the present, in addition to applied dimensions of archaeological research on food security.

In addition to training a doctoral student, the research will provide opportunities to exchange ideas with local community members about agriculture, foodways, and paleoethnobotany.

The research will be centered at a site along a monumental causeway that was built during the Late Classic period. The research asks, did the local household economy become embedded in the growing regional market economy, and if so, how did this affect food security? The co-PI will conduct excavations and collect paleoethnobotanical samples from agricultural and household spaces in order to understand patterns of plant species diversity in food production and consumption through time, in addition to resource access.

Quantitative and qualitative data reflected in these patterns will elucidate whether the causeway became an avenue of access to new food resources, or, alternatively, undermined local control over food choice. More broadly the project will investigate local involvement in regional food systems, and how this was mediated by infrastructural projects.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.