Corn in Clay
Maize Paleoethnobotany in Precolumbian
Art
by Mary
Eubanks
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this Book now
Combining botany, archaeology, and art history, Corn
in Clay provides a novel approach to the study of
contact between ancient American cultures. Mary Eubanks
integrates evidence from replicas of maize on ancient
pottery vessels--from the Oaxaca region of Mexico and the
northern coast of Peru--with other biological,
archaeological, and geographic evidence to establish a
considerable degree of contact between Mesoamerica and
the Andean region in precolumbian times.
Focusing on the Zapotec of Mexico and the Moche of Peru,
Eubanks begins by telling how she gathered the physical
evidence for her study using positive casts from molds
made from actual maize ears. The clay replicas depicted
on pottery vessels created by ancient artists of these
two cultures are precise facsimiles of the botanical
specimens. By comparing measurements from the prehistoric
models to living races of maize present in Latin American
today, Eubanks identified the particular types of maize
represented--with compelling results.
Eubanks argues that the presence of South American maize
on Zapotec urns and of Mexican maize on Moche jars proves
that contact existed between these two geographically
distant cultures during the Mesoamerican Classic period
(ca. A.D. 400-750). Furthermore, she says, the wide
variety of races of maize identified on the Peruvian
pottery indicates that the northern coast of Peru was a
major center of commercial and cultural exchange that
extended from Chile throughout northern South America
into Central America and Mexico.
The interdisciplinary nature of this study will make it
valuable to botanists, geneticists, and agronomists, as
well as archaeologists and anthropologists.
Mary Eubanks, senior research scientist at Duke
University, was the first to reproduce successfully an
extinct strain of maize for cultivation. She has
contributed articles on the origin, evolution, and
cultural impact of the cultivation of corn to American
Antiquity, Economic Botany, and Theoretical and
Applied Genetics.
1999. 272pp. 6 X 9.
135 b&w photos, 8 tables, 3 appendixes, bibliography,
index.
ISBN 0-8130-1669-X Cloth, $49.95s
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"Meticulously researched, documented, and organized, and, as such, is a useful reference work on pre-Columbian maize. Provides provocative information on cultural contact and diffusion."
--
Colonial Latin American Historical Review
"Seldom are multidisciplinary approaches in archaeology presented in such an comprehensive and informative manner as to make a book of interest to the layperson as well as to the academic. Corn in Clay is just such a book." --
Society for Archaeological Sciences
"This landmark work
will be of great interest to anyone interested in corn
and its role in American prehistory."--
Anna
Roosevelt, Field Museum, Chicago
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