Abstract
This paper describes and interprets the results of multiple analyses conducted on human paleofeces from Turkey Pen Ruin, an early Ancestral Pueblo farming site in Cedar Mesa, Utah. Analyses of pollen and macroscopic contents were performed on 44 specimens; DNA testing for several faunal and botanical dietary constituents was also conducted on select samples (n = 20) using targeted PCR analysis. These data were used to assess what foods supplemented the predominant dietary staple—maize (Zea mays). Resources were evaluated based on caloric efficiency and nutritional value to gain insight into what motivated these late Basketmaker II period (ca. AD 1-400) farmers to continuously rely so heavily on corn, in lieu of incorporating a higher proportion of foraged resources into their diet. This project confirms a very high level of maize reliance (likely around 80% of the diet) as established by earlier studies. However, these results also show common inclusion of wild resources that are much less calorically efficient than the type of maize farming practiced here, including weedy plants commonly associated with agricultural fields. This suggests early farmers on Cedar Mesa were pushed by low environmental productivity to rely on farming, and to include low-ranked wild resources to calorically and nutritionally augment their maize-based diet. These findings also indicate that farmers were harvesting much more than corn from their fields, and that the productivity of the anthropogenic ecological niche created by farming activities may have influenced supplemental foraging choices, as well as the degree of labor dedicated to fields.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Note, Aasen analyzed all 28 human paleofeces for macrofossils, but only 27 for were analyzed for pollen (see Aasen 1984, 29-34)
References
Aasen DK (1984) Pollen, macrofossil, and charcoal analyses of basketmaker coprolites from Turkey Pen Ruin, Cedar Mesa, Utah. Thesis, Washington State University
Adams KR (1980) Pollen, parched seeds and prehistory: a pilot investigation of prehistoric plant remains from Salmon Ruin, a Chacoan Pueblo in Northwestern New Mexico. Contributions in Anthropology, vol. 9. Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, NM.
Adams KR (2004) Anthropogenic ecology of the North American Southwest. In: Minnis PE (ed) People and Plants in Ancient Western North America. Smithsonian Books, Washington, D.C., pp 167–204
Androy J (2003) Agriculture and mobility during the Basketmaker II period: the coprolite evidence. Thesis, Northern Arizona University
Arroyo-Kalin M (2017) Human niche construction and population growth in Pre-Columbian Amazonia. Archaeol Int 20:122–136
Bailey FL (1940) Navaho foods and cooking methods. Am Anthropol 42(2):270–290
Barlow KR (2002) Predicting maize agriculture among the Fremont: an economic comparison of farming and foraging in the American Southwest. Am Antiq 67(1):65–88
Barlow KR (2006) A formal model for predicting agriculture among the Fremont. In: Kennett DJ, Winterhalder B (eds) Behavioral Ecology and the Transition to Agriculture. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, pp 87–102
Battillo JM (2017) Supplementing maize agriculture in Basketmaker II subsistence: dietary analysis of human paleofeces from Turkey Pen Ruin (42SA3714). Dissertation, Southern Methodist University
Battillo JM (2018) The role of corn fungus in Basketmaker II diet: a paleonutrition perspective on early corn farming adaptations. J Archaeol Sci Rep 21:64–70
Battillo JM, Matson RG, Lipe WD (2019) Tale of a test pit: the research history of a midden column from the Turkey Pen site, Utah. Invited symposium paper presented at the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) meetings, Albuquerque, NM
Bohrer VL (1975) The prehistoric and historic role of the cool-season grasses in the Southwest. Econ Bot 29:199–207
Boivin NL, Zeder MA, Fuller DQ, Crowther A, Larson G, Erlandson JM, Denham T, Petraglia MD (2016) Human shaping of global species distributions. PNAS 113(23):6388–6396. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1525200113
Burrillo RE (2015) Beans, baskets, and Basketmakers testing the assumption that ceramics were necessary for the adoption of bean cultivation on the prehistoric Colorado Plateau. J Anthropol Archaeol 3(1):1–22. https://doi.org/10.15640/jaa.v3n1a1
Bye RA Jr (1981) Quelites—ethnoecology of edible greens—past, present, and future. J Ethnobiol 1(1):109–123
Bye RA Jr (1985) Botanical perspectives of ethnobotany of the greater Southwest. Econ Bot 39(4):375–386
Charnov EL, Orians GH, Hyatt K (1976) Ecological implications of resource depression. Am Nat 110:247–259
Coltrain JB, Janetski JC (2013) The stable and radio-isotope chemistry of southeastern Utah Basketmaker II burials: dietary analysis using the linear mixing model SISUS, age and sex patterning, geolocation and temporal patterning. J Archaeol Sci 40(12):4711–4730
Coltrain JB, Janetski JC, Carlyle S (2006) The stable and radioisotope chemistry of eastern Basketmaker and Pueblo groups in the Four Corners regions of the American Southwest: implications for Anasazi diets, origins and abandonments. In: Staller J, Tykot R, Benz B (eds) Stories of Maize: Multidisciplinary approaches to the prehistory, biogeography, domestication and evolution of maize. Elsevier, San Diego, pp 276–287
Coltrain JB, Janetski JC, Carlyle S (2007) The stable- and radio-isotope chemistry of western Basketmaker burials: implications for early Puebloan diets and origins. Am Antiq 72(2):311–321
Cooper C, Lupo KD, Matson RG, Lipe WD, Smith C, Richards MP (2016) Short-term variability of human diet at Basketmaker II Turkey Pen Ruins, Utah: insights into domesticate use and supplementation from bulk and single amino acid isotope analysis of hair. J Archaeol Sci Rep 5:10–18
Cordas E (2000) The analysis of macroplant remains from a midden deposit in Turkey Pen Ruin in Cedar Mesa, Utah. Thesis, University of British Columbia
Cummings LS (1994) Anasazi diet: variety in the Hoy House and Lion House coprolite record and nutritional analysis. In: Paleonutrition: the Diet and Health of Prehistoric Americans, KD Sobolik, ed., Occasional Paper, vol. 22. Center for Archeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Carbondale, IL, pp. 134–150.
Daubenmire RF (1943) Vegetational zonation in the Rocky Mountains. Bot Rev 9(6):325–393
Deagle BE, Chiaradia A, McInnes J, Jarman SN (2010) Pyrosequencing faecal DNA to determine diet of little penguins: is what goes in what comes out? Conserv Genet 11(5):2039–2048
Diehl MW (1997) Rational behavior, the adoption of agriculture, and the organization of subsistence during the Late Archaic Period in the Greater Tucson Basin. Arch Pap Am Anthropol Assoc 7(1):251–265
Dohm KM (1994) The search for Anasazi village origins: Basketmaker II dwelling aggregation on Cedar Mesa. Kiva 60(2):257–277
Drake BL, Wills WH, Erhardt EB (2012) The 5.1 ka aridization event, expansion of piñon-juniper woodlands, and the introduction of maize (Zea mays) in the American Southwest. The Holocene 22(12):1–8
Ellwood EC, Scott MP, Lipe WD, Matson RG, Jones JG (2013) Stone-boiling maize with limestone: experimental results and implications for nutrition among SE Utah pre-ceramic groups. J Archaeol Sci 40(1):35–44
Ferguson JR (2007) A seasonal foraging model for food resource utilization in Central California and the Eastern Woodlands. Dissertation, University of Colorado
Ford RI (1968) An ecological analysis involving the population of San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico. Dissertation, University of Michigan.
Ford RI (1984) Ecological consequences of early agriculture in the Southwest. In: Plog S, Powell S (eds) Papers on the Archaeology of Black Mesa, Arizona, Vol. 2. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, pp 127–138
Ford RI (2000) Human disturbance and biodiversity: a case study from northern New Mexico. In: Minnis P, Elisens WJ (eds) Biodiversity and Native America. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, pp 207–222
Fowler CS, Lepofsky D (2011) Traditional resource and environmental management. In: Anderson EN, Pearsall D, Hunn E, Turner N (eds) Ethnobiology. Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken NJ, pp 285–304
Geib PR (2011) Foragers and farmers of the Northern Kayenta Region: excavations along the Navajo Mountain Road. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City
Gottfried GJ, Swetnam T, Allen CD, Betancourt J, Chung-MacCoubrey AL (1995) Chapter 6: Pinyon-Juniper Woodlands. In: Finch DM, Tainter JA (eds) Ecology, Diversity, and Sustainability of the Middle Rio Grande Basin. Fort Collins, USDA Forest Service Technical Report, pp 95–132
Gremillion KJ (2004) Seed processing and the origins of food production in eastern North America. Am Antiq 69:215–234
Gremillion KJ, Piperno DR (2009) Human behavioral ecology, phenotypic (developmental) plasticity, and agricultural origins: insights from the emerging evolutionary synthesis. Curr Anthropol 50(5):615–619
Hall SA (2010) Early maize pollen from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, USA. Palynology 34(1):125–137
Hard RJ, Maudlin RP, Raymond GR (1996) Mano size, stable carbon isotopes, and macrobotanical remains as multiple lines of evidence for maize dependence in the American Southwest. J Archaeol Method Theory 3(4):253–318
Huber EK, Van West C (eds) (2005) Archaeological data recovery in the New Mexico transportation corridor and first five-year permit area, Fence Lake Coal Mine Project, Catron County, New Mexico, 5 Vols, Technical Series 84. Statistical Research Incorporated (SRI), Tucson
Huckell LW (2006) Ancient maize in the American Southwest. In: Staller JE, Tykot RH, Benz BF (eds) Histories of Maize: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Prehistory, Biogeography, Domestication, and Evolution of Maize. Elsevier, San Diego, pp 97–107
Hurst W, Smiley FE, Robins MR (2011) Early farmers at the earth’s backbone: Basketmaker II in the Comb Ridge area. Southwestern Lore 77(2):89–101
Jensen K, Mayntz D, Toft S, Clissold FJ, Hunt J, Raubenheimer D, Simpson SJ (2012) Optimal foraging for specific nutrients in predatory beetles. Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 279:2212–2218
Kahl H (2008) Allelopathic effects in the maize-quelites-agroecosystem of the Tarahumara Indians. J Agron Crop Sci 158(1):56–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-037X.1987.tb00612.x
Kelso GK (1976) Absolute pollen frequencies applied to the interpretation of human activities in northern Arizona. Dissertation, University of Arizona
Kennett DJ, Winterhalder B (eds) (2006) Behavioral ecology and the transition to agriculture. University of California Press, Berkeley
Kohler TA, Reese K (2012) Long and spatially variable Neolithic demographic transition in the North American Southwest. PNAS 111(28):10101–10106
LeBlanc SA, Cobb Kreisman LS, Kemp BM, Smiley FE, Carlyle SW, Dhody AN, Benjamin T (2007) Quids and aprons: ancient DNA from artifacts from the American Southwest. J Field Archaeol 32(2):161–175
Lepofsky D (1986) Preliminary analyses of flotation samples from the Turkey Pen Ruin, Cedar Mesa. Laboratory of Archaeology, University of British Columbia, Utah. Manuscript on file
Lipe WD, Matson RG, Kemp BM (2011) New insights from old collections: Cedar Mesa, Utah, revisited. Southwestern Lore. J Colorado Archaeol 77(2):103–111
Lipe WD, Bocinsky RK, Chisholm BS, Lyle R, Dove DM, Matson RG, Jarvis E, Judd K, Kemp BM (2016) Cultural and genetic contexts for early turkey domestication in the northern Southwest. Am Antiq 81(1):97–113
Lupo KD (2007) Evolutionary foraging models in zooarchaeological analysis: recent applications and future challenges. J Archaeol Res 15:143–189
Matson RG (1991) The Origins of Southwestern Agriculture. University of Arizona Press, Tucson
Matson RG (2006) What is BMII? Kiva 72(2):149–165
Matson RG (2016) The nutritional context of the Pueblo III depopulation of the northern San Juan: too much maize? J Archaeol Sci Rep 5:622–631
Matson RG, Chisholm B (2007) Basketmaker II subsistence. Poster presented at the annual Society for American Archaeology meeting, Austin, Texas, April 25-29.
Matson RG, Lipe WD, Haase WR IV (1990) Human adaptations on Cedar Mesa, Southeastern Utah. Manuscript available at URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2376/5014.
Metcalf AM, Phillips SF, Zinsmeister AR, MacCarty RL, Beart RW, Wolff BG (1987) Simplified assessment of segmental colonic transit. Gastroenterology 92(1):40–47
Minnis PE (1989) Prehistoric diet in the northern Southwest: macroplant remains from Four Corners feces. Am Antiq 54:543–563
Minnis PE (2000) Prehistoric agriculture and anthropogenic ecology of the North American Southwest. In: Barker G, Gilbertson D (eds) The Archaeology of Drylands: Living at the Margin. Routledge, London, pp 271–287
Nagaoka L (2002) The effects of resource depression on foraging efficiency, diet breadth, and patch use in southern New Zealand. J Anthropol Archaeol 21(4):419–442
O'Connell JF, Hawkes K (1981) Alyawara plant use and optimal foraging theory. In: Winterhalder B, Smith EA (eds) Hunter-Gatherer Foraging Strategies: Ethnographic and Archaeological Analysis. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 99–125
Osborn AJ, Brown J, Burgett G, Cummings LS, Hartley RJ, Vetter S, Waters J, Zalucha T (1995) Aboriginal adaptations on the Colorado Plateau: a view from the Island-in-the-Sky, Canyonlands National Park, Utah. Occasional Studies in Anthropology (Midwest Archeological Center), no. 33, Calabrese FA, ed. Produced for the Rocky Mountain Region, United States National Park Service.
Phillips DA Jr (2009) Adoption and intensification of agriculture in the North American Southwest: notes toward a quantitative approach. Am Antiq 74(4):691–707
Powers MA (1984) The salvage of archaeological data from Turkey Pen Ruin, Grand Gulch Primitive area, San Juan County, Utah. Contributions to Anthropology Series, No. 808. Farmington, New Mexico: Division of Conservation Archaeology, San Juan County Archaeological Research Center and Library.
Radomski E (1999) Continuing analysis of bulk midden samples from Turkey Pen Ruin, Cedar Mesa, Utah. Report on file, Laboratory of Archaeology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Rainey KD, Adams KR (2004) Plant use by native peoples of the American Southwest: ethnographic documentation. Available: http://www.crowcanyon.org/plantuses. Date of use: 01 May 2019
Reinhard KJ (1988) Diet, parasitism, and anemia in the prehistoric Southwest. Dissertation, Texas A&M University
Reinhard KJ (1992) Parasitology as an interpretive tool in archaeology. Am Antiq 57(2):231–245
Reinhard KJ (2006) A coprological view of Anasazi cannibalism. Am Sci 94(3):254–262
Reinhard KJ, Edwards S, Damon TR, Meier DK (2006) Pollen concentration analysis of ancestral Pueblo dietary variation. Palaeogeogr Palaeoclimatol Palaeoecol 237:92–109
Reynold CS (2012) Meat at the origins of agriculture: faunal use and resource pressure at the origins of agriculture in the Northern U.S. Southwest. Disseration, University of Iowa
Riley T (2012) Assessing diet and seasonality in the Lower Pecos canyonlands: an evaluation of coprolite specimens as records of individual dietary decisions. J Archaeol Sci 39:145–162
Siebert SF, Belsky JM (2014) Historic livelihoods and land uses as ecological disturbances and their role in enhancing biodiversity: an example from Bhutan. Biol Conserv 177:82–89
Simms SR (1985) Acquisition costs and nutritional data on Great Basin resources. J Calif Gt Basin Anthropol 7(1):117–125
Simms SR (1987) Behavioral ecology and hunter-gatherer foraging: an example from the Great Basin. British Archaeological Reports, International Series 381, Oxford
Simpson SJ, Sibly RM, Lee KP, Behmer ST, Raubenheimer D (2004) Optimal foraging when regulating intake of multiple nutrients. Anim Behav 68(6):1299–1311
Speller CF, Kemp BM, Wyatt S, Monroe C, Lipe WD, Arndt UM, Yang D (2010) Ancient mitochondrial DNA analysis reveals complexity of indigenous North American turkey domestication. PNAS USA 107:2807–2812
Stephens DW, Krebs JR (1986) Foraging theory. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Swarts K, Gutaker RM, Benz B, Blake M, Bukowski R, Holland J, Kruse-Peeples M, Lepak N, Prim L, Romay MC, Ross-Ibarra J, Sanchez-Gonzalez JJ, Schmidt C, Schuenemann VJ, Krause J, Matson RG, Weigel D, Buckler ES, Burbano HA (2017) Genomic estimation of complex traits reveals ancient maize adaptation to temperate North America. Science 357(6350):512–515. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aam9425
Szuter CR (1984) Faunal exploitation and the reliance on small animals among the Hohokam. In: Hohokam Archaeology along the Salt-Gila Aqueduct Project, Volume VII: Environment and Subsistence, L Teague, P Crown, eds. Archaeological Series, 150 (tDAR id: 376387), doi:https://doi.org/10.6067/XCV8M0468H
Szuter CR (1989) Hunting by prehistoric horticulturalists in the American Southwest. Dissertation, University of Arizona
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service. 2012. USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 25. Nutrient Data Laboratory Home Page, http://www.ars.usda.gov/ba/bhnrc/ndl.
Ugan A (2005) Does size matter? Body size, mass collecting, and their implications for understanding prehistoric foraging behavior. Am Antiq 70(1):75–89
West GJ (1978) Recent palynology of the Cedar Mesa Area, Utah. Dissertation, University of California, Davis
Williams-Dean G (1978) Ethnobotany and cultural ecology of prehistoric man in southwest Texas. Dissertation, Texas A & M University
Wills WH (1992) Plant cultivation and the evolution of risk-prone economies in the prehistoric American Southwest. In Transitions to Agriculture in Prehistory, Gebauer AB, Price TD, eds. pp. 153-176. Monographs in World Archaeology No. 4. Prehistory Press, Madison WI
Winterhalder B, Kennett DJ (2006) Behavioral ecology and the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture. In: Kennett DJ, Winterhalder B (eds) Behavioral Ecology and the Transition to Agriculture. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp 1–21
Zeder M (2006) Central questions in the domestication of plants and animals. Evol Anthropol 15(3):105–117
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank both ISEM and WSU’s Museum of Anthropology for making this research possible and to thank my dissertation committee (Karen Lupo, William D. Lipe, Bonnie Jacobs, and B. Sunday Eiselt) for their guidance on this project. I would also like to thank Deborah Bolnick, Jaime Mata-Miguez, and Rick W.A. Smith for conducting the DNA analyses, and Karen Lupo, William D. Lipe, Abigail Fisher, and Lisa Duffy for their advice and edits, as well as two anonymous reviewers whose insightful comments helped me to significantly improve, contextualize, and clarify this manuscript.
Funding
This work was supported by a grant from Southern Methodist University's Institute for the Study of Earth and Man (ISEM) (2014). The specimens used in this research were provided by The Museum of Anthropology at Washington State University and were excavated as part of the Cedar Mesa Project, co-directed by William D. Lipe and R.G. Matson, and funded by the National Science Foundation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This article is part of the Topical Collection on Coprolite Research: Archaeological and Paleoenvironmental Potentials
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Battillo, J. Farmers who forage: interpreting paleofecal evidence of wild resource use by early corn farmers in the North American Southwest. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 11, 5999–6016 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-019-00944-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-019-00944-y