{"id":2251202,"date":"2020-01-08T10:08:27","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T15:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/?p=2251202"},"modified":"2020-01-08T10:08:27","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T15:08:27","slug":"nixtamalization-maize-cooking-archaeology-2251202-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/nixtamalization-maize-cooking-archaeology-2251202-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Tool detects maize cooking in archaeological record"},"content":{"rendered":"
A new method can spot a specific way of cooking maize to boost its nutrition\u2014nixtamalization\u2014in the archaeological record.<\/p>\n
Two questions motivated the research: How did people interact with plants in the past? And how did they use food as an expression of their identities?<\/p>\n
“I am particularly interested in understanding the ways that this identity and the role of food production was negotiated as societies become increasingly hierarchical, and politically and economically complex,” says paleoethnobotanist Emily Johnson, a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n
“The increased reliance on a few staple crops, such as maize, that often occur with this shift can be detrimental unless adaptations are made to the diet.”<\/p>\n
What’s nixtamalization?<\/h3>\n
Those adaptations include nixtamalization, a production process for maize known to play a significant role\u2014for thousands of years\u2014in the foodways of indigenous communities throughout North America, yet never before explicitly affirmed in the archaeological record.<\/p>\n
Johnson, based in the Integrative Subsistence Laboratory of her advisor, professor Amber VanDerwarker, has developed the first direct method to identify nixtamalization in the past. Her research appears in the Journal of Archaeological 糖心视频<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n