Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for beans:

beans: CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: The seeds or pods of certain leguminous plants of the family Fabaceae and important to man since the beginning of food production. Most modern beans are of the genus Phaseolus, different species of which occur wild in two hemispheres. Their cultivation commenced at an early date in both. These species all originated in Mexico and South America, spreading to the Old World after Columbus. The earliest finds of cultivated Phaseolus beans are from 6th millennium BC Peru and Mexico. Vicia faba, the ancestor of the broad bean, was confined to the Old World, and was already being grown in the Neolithic Near East. Later in the Neolithic, the species appeared in Spain, Portugal, and eastern Europe. During the Bronze Age, the field bean grew in southern and central Europe, and by the Iron Age it reached Britain.
Ayacucho complex: CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A valley in southern Peru, north of the city of Ayacucho, with a series of caves -- notably Pikimachay (Flea) Cave and Jayamachay (Pepper) Cave -- which were the site of a complex of unifacial chipped tools (basalt and chert core tools, choppers, unifacial projectile points) and bone artifacts (horse, camel, giant sloth) dating between 15,000-11,000 BC. A human presence has been suggested in the Ayacucho Basin at that time, which would correspond with the first wave" of immigrants to the New World. Succeeding levels contain burins blades fishtail points and manos and metates. Gourds squash cotton lucuma and seed plants such as quinoa and amaranth were cultivated in the Ayacucho Basin before 3000 BC; corn and beans within the next millennium. There were also ground stone implements for milling seeds. It has been claimed that llamas and guinea pigs were domesticated within the complex. "
Banpo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of an early Yangshao Neolithic village, now a museum at Xi'an, China, in the basin of the confluence of the Yellow River (Huang Ho), the Fen Ho, and Kuei Shui. Radiocarbon dates range from c 4800-4300 BC. The settlement was about 50,000 sq. meters and included a cemetery and pottery kilns outside a ditch that surrounded the residences. Dogs, cattle, sheep, chicken and pigs were domesticated and millet, rice, kaoling, and possibly soybeans grown. The horse and silkworm may also have been raised. Unpainted pottery was cord-marked or stamped, and fine ceremonial" pottery vessels were painted in black or red with some simple geometric patterns and drawings of fish turtles deer and faces. There were some elaborately worked objects in jade as well as everyday objects made from flint bone and groundstone. Sites with similar remains have been excavated at nearby Jiangzhai Baoji Beishouling and Hua Xian Yuanjunmiao. These sites all exhibit the first evidence of food production in China."
Bat Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in southern New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns National Park, notable for its evidence of prehistoric plant cultivation. The site of Bat Cave has produced specimens of a type of primitive corn that is also known from the Flacco phase in Tamaulipas at 2000 BC but that is here in association with a Chiricahua assemblage from which Cochise materials (maize and squash) have been dated at about 1000 BC. Evidence of beans (dated to 1000-400 BC) was found in association with San Pedro materials. Early levels indicate the use of primitive pod corn (dated c 3500 BC), but a cultivated form of maize was in use by 2500 BC, the earliest date for cultigens in the American Southwest. During the summer a colony of several million bats inhabits the cave.
Belverde: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Bronze Age site of the Apennine near Cetona in Tuscany, Italy. There are indications that it may have been a ritual site, with rocks carved to form tiers of seats and other shapes. Complete pottery vessels filled with acorns, beans, and carbonized grain were placed into fissures in the rocks, perhaps as offerings to a deity.
cacao: CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: The tropical American tree and its fruit from which cocoa and chocolate are made. Chocolate was the favored drink of the nobility of many Mesoamerican cultures. It grows in only in tropical lowlands was therefore considered a luxury item by the Aztec and Maya. Depictions on Izapan sculpture give its first use as the Pre-Classic period. The Codex Mendoza indicates that the beans were a medium of exchange and tribute in Aztec times. Cocoa beans were taken to Europe in the 16th century, where cocoa and chocolate were developed.
Cachi: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Archaeological complex dating from 3000-1750 BC in the Ayacucho valley of Peru. It showed the first evidence of an economic system in which products of lower-elevation villages and camps (corn, beans, squash, gourd, chile, coca) were exchanged for potatoes, quinoa, and camelids of the seasonally nomadic herders of the higher elevations.
cultivation: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The raising of plants by man for his use; deliberate propagation of a species primarily for its fruit, seed, leaf, or fiber. Cultivation greatly increased and stabilized man's food supply. The change from food gathering to food production has been called the Neolithic Revolution, and was one of the most important advances in human development. The first among Old World crops were wheat and barley, developed as cultivated species c 7th millennium BC. To these were added oats and rye in Europe, millet in Asia, and sorghum in Africa. In the Americas, the process was equally slow. First crops included beans, cotton, gourds, maize, manioc, potatoes, and squashes.
Egolzwil: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of Neolithic sites around former Lake Wauwil in Switzerland from the earliest phase of the Neolithic in that area. Most of them belong to the Cortaillod culture and have well-preserved organic material. The site of Egolzwil 4 had ten rectangular wooden houses placed close together. Food remains include cereals, lentils, beans, and flax, and wild strawberries and chestnuts; animal remains include both domesticated and wild animals, and duck, salmon, perch, and carp from the lake. The earliest settlement, Egolzwil 3 dated to the late 5th or early 4th millennium BC.
El Paraiso: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chuquitanta
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large ceremonial site in the Chillón Valley on the central coast of Peru,) dating to the Late Preceramic and Initial Period. It has a massive architectural complex of 6-7 mounds, courts, and rooms interconnected by corridors. Five to six building phases are evident in the constructions of fieldstone masonry laid in clay. No pottery or maize has been found, but twined and woven textiles are common in burials and domesticated beans and squash remains have also been recovered.
Fremont culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An agricultural Puebloan people found throughout much of present-day Utah between 400-1350 AD. There is some similarity to the Anasazi in pottery types and pithouse architecture. Hunting and gathering was most important, supplemented by the growing of maize, beans, and squash.
Guitarrero Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A stratified cave site of long occupation in the Callejón de Huaylas in northern Peru. It was occupied in the Preceramic period (c 12,500-6000 years ago) and continued through later ceramic periods, showing domesticated lima and common beans by c 8000 BC. A wide variety of artifacts, lithic and organic, in Guitarrero I (10,610 @ 360 bc) contains flaked tools similar to the Ayacucho complex and Tagua-Tagua. Stemmed points similar to those in Lauricocha II were found in the same level. There is evidence that the site was occupied by hunter-gatherers and that the subsistence was transhumance. The dates of some human bones, if dated correctly, represent the earliest human remains yet found in South America. Guitarrero II has produced a series of radiocarbon dates covering the period c 8500-5700 BC and contains bone and wood artifacts, basketry an loosely woven textiles, and the willow-leaf projectile point.
Huaca Prieta: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Huaca Prieta de Chicama; Chicama
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Preceramic site on the desert coast of north Peru with a radiocarbon date of c 2300 BC and probably occupied from c 3500-1800 BC. It was the first preceramic village to be excavated in the country and one of the first sites dated by the radiocarbon method. Evidence of a sedentary life is seen in subterranean houses, gourd containers, and reliance on sea food, wild plants, and cultivated beans, peppers, and squashes -- the earliest agriculture in South America. The people made patterned cotton textiles by twining without the aid of a loom and also produced basketry.
Hunam-ri: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: [Hunamni]
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Mumun pottery site in Korea with pit houses dated to between 3280-2520 bp. The houses yielded carbonized rice, foxtail millet, barley, sorghum, and soybeans -- probably the earliest agricultural remains on the peninsula.
maize: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: corn
CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: A tall cereal grass widely grown in Mexico, South America, and the US which originated as a staple food in Mexico about 9000 years ago. A field of maize is a milpa. No wild maize appears to exist today. The plant originated in the Central Mexican Highlands, where pollen belonging to maize, or one of its near relatives, has been found in cores from Mexico City, dated to between 60,000-80,000 bp. The earliest macrofossils of maize appear in the Tehuacan Valley in Mexico between 7000-5000 BC. These early finds have very small cobs and kernels and it has been suggested that they come from wild maize. Archaeologically, the oldest cultivated maize in Mexico is from the Coxcatlan period in the Tehuacan Valley (4800-3500 BC), and maize appears in the caves of Tamaulipas, northeast Mexico, around 3200 BC. In South America, the oldest direct evidence comes from the Valdivia culture of Ecuador, around 3000, though maize phytoliths were found in the preceding Vegas period, c 6000 BC. It was in fairly general use in the southwestern US by 1000 BC, though it did not reach the eastern Woodlands until about the time of Christ. It was an important early domesticated food plant in the New World and one of the trio which provided a balanced diet for early American farmers (the other two being beans and squash).
Mimbres: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Regional variant of the Mogollon culture, centered in south-central New Mexico, and dated to 1000-1200 AD. The Mimbres people are particularly renowned for the black-on-white painted pottery bowls which they made especially to be put in burials. The pottery is decorated with abstract designs and with pictures of people, bears, rabbits, and other animals. Farmers grew maize and gathering beans and acorns; hunting deer, antelope, and rabbits. The culture also evidences a strong Anasazi influence.
Minaean: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Minaeans, Ma'in
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: One of the kingdoms of southern Arabia in the 1st millennium BC, contemporary with the Sabeans, Qatabaneans and Hadramis. The Minaean kingdom lasted from the 4th to the 2nd century BC and was predominantly a trading organization that, for the period, monopolized the trade routes. They seem to be loosely associated with the 'Amir people to the north of the Minaean capital of Qarnaw (now Ma'in), which is at the eastern end of the Wadi Al-Jawf and on the western border of the Sayhad sands. The Minaeans had a second town surrounded by impressive and still extant walls at Yathill, and they had trading establishments at Dedan and in the Qatabanian and Hadramite capitals. The overwhelming majority of Minaean inscriptions come from Qarnaw, Yathill, and Dedan.
Mississippian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mississippi tradition
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: A group of cultures which arose in southeastern North America -- especially the central and lower Mississippi Valley -- after 700 AD into the historic period. It spread over a great area of the Southeast and the mid-continent, in the river valleys of what are now the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, with scattered extensions northward into Wisconsin and Minnesota and westward into the Great Plains. It stands in contrast to the Woodland Tradition with three new traits -- building of rectangular, flat-topped mounds as bases for temples; burial mounds becoming less prominent; and radical pottery changes (pulverized shell rather than grit used for temper). New pottery shapes and forms, such as olla, and new types of decoration (burnishing, painting) appeared. Maize became the predominant crop, accompanied by beans and squash, which supplemented hunting and gathering. The largest of the earthworks is Monks Mound, in the Cahokia Mounds near Collinsville, Illinois. The Mississippian is divided into the periods Temple Mound I (700-1200 AD) and Temple Mound II (1200-1700 AD). It was the last major cultural tradition in prehistoric North America. By the late 17th century, all the major centers had been abandoned.
Moche: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mochica
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The major culture of the northern coast of Peru during the Early Intermediate Period. It originated in the Moche and Chicama Valleys and later spread by conquest as far south as the Santa and Nepeña Rivers. The culture developed around the start of the Christian era and lasted until c 700 AD. Dominant during the Early Intermediate Period (c 400 BC-600 AD), it is best known for its irrigation works, its massive adobe temple-platforms, and for its pottery. Especially famous are the modeled vessels and portrait head vases, and the jars, often with stirrup spouts, painted in reddish brown with scenes of religion, war, and everyday life. The pottery sequence has five phases which are identified by the details of the spout formation on the stirrup-necked bottles and it is used for relative dating of the sites (c 300-700 AD). The Moche culture was the major contributor to the subsequent Chimú culture of the north coast. Huge structures at the ceremonial center include a large, terraced, truncated pyramid, Huaca del Sol, and the smaller Huaca de la Luna, on top of which is a series of courtyards and rooms, some with wall paintings. Huaca del Sol was perhaps the largest single construction of the prehistoric Andean region. Grave goods in gold, silver and copper display a fairly advanced metalworking technology. Archaeologists excavated a site called Huaca Rajada and found the elaborate, jewelry-filled tomb of a Moche warrior-priest. Several more burial chambers containing the remains of Moche royalty have been excavated, all dating from about 300 AD, whose finds greatly aided the understanding of Moche society, religion, and culture. Incised lines on lima beans have recently been interpreted as a form of nonverbal communication similar in concept to the quipu. Developing out of Cupisnique, Gallinazo and Salinar, Moche survived into the Middle Horizon but appears ultimately to have been overtaken by the Huari culture. In the last phase (Moche V), the southern part of the Moche territory was abandoned and a new capital established in the north, at Pampa Grande.
Owasco tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The precursor to the Iroquois culture in New York state, dated to c 1000-1300 AD. It is characterized by ceramics with cord-wrapped paddles, smoking pipes with straight stems, and the growing of corn, beans, and squash. Their elongated houses were ancestral to the Iroquois longhouse.
Plains Village tradition: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Plains Village Indian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Name given to group of cultures of the central and eastern plains of North America between 900-1850 AD, particularly in Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Contemporaneous with Mississippian tradition of Eastern Woodlands, it represents a fusion of that tradition with the Plains variant of the Woodland tradition. The Plains Village tradition was characterized by large habitation structures in settlements that were often fortified. Subsistence dependent on hunting, farming along rivers, beans/squash/maize, and the pottery was related to Mississippian and had incised decoration and rim adornment. When drought forced abandonment of the central plains, the inhabitants moved to the Middle Missouri area (North, South Dakota) and formed the Coalescent Tradition.
Playa Hermosa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on central Peruvian coast north of Lima which has yielded an assemblage of preceramic period tools, textiles, and evidence of cultivated corn, lima beans, chili peppers c 2300-2100 BC.
seeds: CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: A variety of seeds may be preserved on archaeological sites by charring, grain impressions, or as a result of waterlogging. They may be the seeds of weed plants, fruits, pulses (see Beans), or the grains of cereals.
Signal Butte: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Great Plains site in western Nebraska occupied from c 4500 BP until historic times. It is located on a large mesa and played an important role in the initial chronological ordering of the Great Plains. There are lanceolate projectile points resembling the Folsom type in the lowest level. In the second level there are early Late Archaic materials dating c 2000 BC. The third level had a component of the Dismal River Aspect, glass beans, aboriginal artifacts, and traded copper, as well an Upper Republican Aspect component.
Spirit Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of many limestone caves in northwest Thailand, occupied from before 9000 BC till c 5500 BC, intermittently. It has yielded early evidence of cultivated plants (vegetables, beans, water chestnuts) c 9000 BC, of Neolithic polished stone tools (ground stone adzes and knives) c 7000 BC, and of pottery c 6800 BC. This Hoabinhian site show the practice of incipient forms of horticulture after hunting-and-gathering and before dependence on rice as a staple.
Tamaulipas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A state in northeastern Mexico on the Gulf of Mexico with a series of caves having evidence of incipient agriculture in the Infernillo Phase. The earliest period had crude pebble tools (preprojectile points) and overlain by the Lerma Phase c 7000 BC which had projectile points similar to those of the Old Cordilleran tradition. Desert Culture materials have been found associated with the earliest known cultivated plants in the New World. Here, in the Infernillo phase, it appears that native American squash, peppers, and perhaps beans were being cultivated as early as 6500 BC. Manos and metates are found in increasing numbers in later phases, as well as flexed, wrapped burials. An early cereal, the foxtail millet, was probably domesticated around 4000 BC in Tamaulipas, but it was superseded by primitive maize, c 3000-2200 BC, during the La Perra phase.
Torihama: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Initial-Early Jomon shell midden site in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, dating to c 5000-3500 BC. Rich organic remains have been preserved by waterlogging, including a dugout canoe, canoe paddles, hunting bows, ax handles, lacquered wooden comb, basketry, melon rinds and seeds and mung beans, and many bone and wood artifacts.
Upper Republican: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Culture of the central Plains of North America dated to 1000-1450 AD and characterized by cord-roughened pottery and semi-subterranean earth lodges. The people grew corn, beans, and squash and were hunter-gatherers.
Woodland period: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Woodland tradition
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Stage in eastern North America c 1000 BC-800 AD that is a period in Native American history and culture. It is characterized by hunter-gatherers, elaborate burial mounds, beginning of substantial agriculture (corn, beans, squash), and pottery decorated with cord or fabric impressions. It is a term restricted to the cultures of the Eastern Woodlands (south and east of Maritime Provinces of Canada to Minnesota and south to Louisiana and Texas) and important sites are Adena, Hopewell, and Effigy Mound. From c 700 AD, the southern part of the Woodland territory shows strong influence from the Mississippian culture, but elsewhere the Woodland tradition continued until the historic period.

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