NSF award 1450562
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1450562
Dr. Gerardo Gutiérrez, of the University of Colorado-Boulder, in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of US and Mexican scholars, investigated the economic and ideological changes that human groups underwent during their transition from highly mobile hunter and gatherers to settled agriculturalists in permanent villages, between 3500 to 600 BC in southern Mexico. This is a key moment in the human history of the Americas because many of the plants that comprise our present food production economy (such as maize, or corn) were domesticated during this period. Because ancient foods do not preserve well, this cultural transition is not effectively understood for the North American continent. Why did some forager groups experiment with early cultigens and begin to rely on cultivated plants? How were economic changes reflected in or encouraged by their beliefs and social structures? Archaeological exploration in a cave in southern Mexico should provide a better understanding of the adoption of maize as the primary cereal crop of the New World (and today, a significant crop in many parts of the Old World). Much of the cave is covered with mural paintings from this transitional period (Late Archaic and Olmec style) probably painted between 3500-600 BC. These paintings provide a remarkable opportunity for insight into what people perceived about the transition from simple societies in which everyone was more or less equal to much larger societies in which a few people held sway over many.
Dr. Gutiérrez and his team explored caves that offer evidence of human occupation during the transition from a foraging to an agricultural economy. The researchers also obtained scientific dates for the mural art and determined the chemical composition of the ancient paints to assess the sources of their pigments, the application of colors, and the styles represented. This research was conducted in the Balsas River Basin of southern Mexico, the region of the Western Hemisphere with the earliest evidence of corn domestication.