Maize for the Gods - Unearthing the 9,000-Year History of Corn

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-0-520-27687-1
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 280 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 158 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 500 g

Maize is the world’s most productive food and industrial crop, grown in more than 160 countries and on every continent except Antarctica. If by some catastrophe maize were to disappear from our food supply chain, vast numbers of people would starve and global economies would rapidly collapse. How did we come to be so dependent on this one plant?

Maize for the Gods brings together new research by archaeologists, archaeobotanists, plant geneticists, and a host of other specialists to explore the complex ways that this single plant and the peoples who domesticated it came to be inextricably entangled with one another over the past nine millennia. Tracing maize from its first appearance and domestication in ancient campsites and settlements in Mexico to its intercontinental journey through most of North and South America, this history also tells the story of the artistic creativity, technological prowess, and social, political, and economic resilience of America’s first peoples.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Blake, Michael

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Ökotrophologie (Ernährungs- und Haushaltswissenschaften)
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Umweltgeschichte & Umweltarchäologie
• Naturwissenschaften Agrarwissenschaften Ackerbaukunde, Pflanzenbau Nutzpflanzen: Biologie, Genetik, Pflanzenzüchtung
• Geowissenschaften Geologie Paläobotanik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. The Archaeology of Maize
2. The Place of Maize in (Agri)cultural Origin Stories
3. Old Puzzles and New Questions about Maize’s Origins and Spread
4. Timing Is Everything: Dating Maize
5. Maize through a Magnifying Glass: Macroremains
6. Maize through a Microscope: Microremains
7. Elemental Maize: Tracing Maize Isotopically
8. Genetically Modifi ed Maize the Old Way—By Agriculture
9. Daily Tools and Sacred Symbols

Notes
Glossary
References
Index
Contents

Über Autor(innen)

Michael Blake is Professor and Head of the Anthropology Department at the University of British Columbia. He studies the archaeology of Mesoamerica and the Northwest Coast of Canada and is the author of Colonization, Warfare, and Exchange at the Postclassic Maya Site of Canajasté, Chiapas, Mexico (2010) and the editor of Pacific Latin America in Prehistory (1999).