Chapter 8: Mounds and Maize

Question 1

Teosinte

Answer 1

• a wild grass found in the highlands of Mexico
• the wild ancestor of maize (corn)

Question 2

Tehuacán Valley

Answer 2

in the Mexican highlands where excavations by Richard MacNeish recovered some of the earliest evidence of domesticated plants in Mesoamerica

Question 3

Guilá Naquitz

Answer 3

• in Oaxaca, Mexico, that has produced the earliest evidence of domesticated plants in Mesoamerica
• oldest squash and maize seeds recovered

Question 4

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating

Answer 4

a refined method of radiocarbon dating that makes it possible to date very small samples, including plant remains by the amount of carbon-14

Question 5

Curcubita Pepo

Answer 5

• ancestor of squash
• earliest plant to be domesticated in Mexico

Question 6

The only domesticated animal in Mesoamerica

Answer 6

turkeys

Question 7

Cerro Juanaqueña

Answer 7

• an early agricultural site in northern Mexico with extensive evidence of terracing and other stone-built features
• 8km of terrace walls and 100 rock ring

Question 8

Optimal Foraging Theory

Answer 8

• based on the assumption that the choices people make reflect rational self-interest in maximizing efficiency when collecting and processing resources
• Robert Hard and John Roney

Question 9

Milagro

Answer 9

an early agricultural village located outside Tucson, Arizona

Question 10

Las Capas

Answer 10

a site near Tucson, Arizona where an Archaic village and canal system have been discovered

Question 11

Formative Period

Answer 11

pottery and domestication of beans

Question 12

Poverty Point

Answer 12

a Late Archaic site in Louisiana with a series of six concentric embankments

Question 13

Adena

Answer 13

• a period of intensive mound building in the Ohio River Valley
• corresponds to the EARLY Woodland culture

Question 14

Hopewell

Answer 14

• a period of intensive mound building in the Ohio River Valley
• corresponds to the MIDDLE Woodland culture

Question 15

James Griffin

Answer 15

suggested that there were Hopewell villages near the massive earthworks

Question 16

Vacant Centre Pattern

Answer 16

the model that sees the Hopewell earthworks as the empty core of a dispersed settlement system

Question 17

Patty Jo Watson and Mary Kennedy

Answer 17

• linked the seeming invisibility of people in the origins of agriculture to gender bias in our conception of the past
• men hunted women gathered plants

Question 18

Bruce Smith

Answer 18

climate change = increase in settlements = geological changes = development of domesticated plants