On the Emergence of Agriculture in the New World

Author(s): Dolores R. Piperno and Gayle J. Fritz

Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 35, No. 5 (Dec., 1994), pp. 637-643
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research
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638 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

lation elsewhere at an earlier time. The best commentary on her revised chronology may be her own: "Because a hearth of maize domestication has not been
found, the timing of the process is currently unknown"
(p. 308). She goes on to claim that food production every-

where in the New World appears to have begun thousands of years later than in the Old World, buttressing
this idea with the statement that "changes in critical
climatic variables in the New World date to the middle
Holocene rather than the immediately postglacial period" (p. 307).
One wonders how she has the temerity to relegate
every cultivated/domesticated plant of the tropical forest and adjacent forest margins (e.g., Sauer I950, Hawkes
i989) to a food production system that began no earlier
than mid-Hokic nt times. Many of these plants are notoriously difficult to document with the macrobotanical
record because they do not carbonize well, the tropical
climatic conditions quickly destroy plants deposited in

habitation sites, and the sites themselves are difficult to

locate and study with the traditional methods of field

archaeology. Consequently, our knowledge of the history of a host of tropical crop plants is still frustratingly
limited. However, placing the beginning of food production everywhere in the Neotropics to after 5,500 B.P.
seems injudicious and is in fact refuted by recent pollen
and phytolith studies of perennially wet areas near former occupation sites.
Furthermore, many paleoecological studies have
shown that tropical Central and South America, includ-

leading conclusions drawn solely from macrobotanical

data can be.
In Panama, over i rockshelters and open-air sites
with occupations dating to between IO,OOO B.P. and A.D.
400 have been excavated (Cooke and Ranere i992). At
all of these sites, soils were screened and floated using
standard techniques. The macrobotanical record is depauperate and obviously deficient. Carbonized cobs and

kernels first appear between ca. 2,000 B.P. and 1,500 B.P.,
when village life is first established. Even the charred
remains from two early-ceramic-phase (Monagrillo) occupations (ca. 5,000 B.P.-3,000 B.P.) give no hint that
maize was grown before the time of Christ (Cooke and
Ranere i992). However, Norr's (i99i, n.d.) isotopic analysis of skeletons from these same sites indicates that
maize consumption started between 7,000 B.P. and 5,ooo
B.P. This evidence is consistent with the first microfossil
(maize pollen and phytolith) data obtained from the
sites, which had indicated that maize was introduced
during the 7th millennium B.P. (Piperno et al. i985). Our
more recent analysis of lake core sediments from the
region indicates that maize pollen and phytoliths along
with evidence for field preparation by slash-and-burn
techniques (frequent burning of both woody taxa and
successional herbaceous growth accompanied by a significant reduction of mature forest and increase of secondary woody flora) are present early in the 7th millen-

nium B.P. (Piperno, Bush, and Colinvaux iggib, Piperno

perturbations led to major shifts in resource densities

and distributions and resulted in environmental instability and unpredictability during the early Holocene

n.d.). In the same region of Panama a systematic archaeological survey recorded a fifteenfold increase in sites
occupied between 7,000 B.P. and 3,000 B.P. as compared
with the pre-7,ooo B.P. period (Weiland I984, Cooke and
Ranere i992). Settlement size and occupational density
also increase dramatically at 7,000 B.P., when settlement
characteristics-dispersed hamlet clusters of several
families-suggest analogies with the organization of
modern shifting cultivators.
What kind of evidence should be used, then, to study
the origins of agriculture in Panama? Macrobotanical remains or the pollen/phytolith/vegetational reconstruction/bone isotope analysis/archaeological site survey/
other excavation data, of which the latter are strong and

(Piperno, Bush, and Colinvaux iggib) which are widely

concordant on the issue?

ing the areas now covered by lowland forest, witnessed

climatic and vegetational changes between I I,000 B.P.

and 9,500 B.P. no less profound than those experienced
at higher latitudes and, like those of southwestern Asia
(Wright I993), often characterized by an abrupt transition from cooler and drier to warmer and wetter conditions (e.g., Leyden I984, I985; Markgraf I989; Bush and
Colinvaux I990; Absy et al. I99I; Piperno, Bush, and

Colinvaux I99 ia, b; Leyden et al. I993). The New World

Many other lake and swamp sequences stretching

from Belize to Colombia and Ecuador are recording
maize and/or substantial forest clearing starting between 7,000 B.P. and 4,700 B.P., before or contemporary

seen as keys to the initiation of food production (e.g.,

Henry I989, McCorriston and Hole I99I, Flannery
i986a). By comparison, mid-Holocene climatic and corresponding vegetational changes were negligible (e.g.,
Leyden I984, I985; Vaughn et al. I985; Frost I988; Bush
and Colinvaux I988; Markgraf I989; Bush et al. I992). In
short, Pleistocene/Holocene climatic oscillations would
have been far more likely to result in significant economic reorientations in Central and South America than
any of the mid-Holocene perturbations.
Fritz largely bases her new model on the belief that
only directly dated macrobotanical remains from archaeological sites can be used to study the beginnings
of food production. However, my colleagues and I, work-

areas this developed swidden agriculture was preceded

by a long phase of simpler horticulture (Harris I972) associated with tuberous plants and/or seed crops like
squash. Indeed, the Panamanian lake records evidence
smaller-scale but systematic ecosystem manipulation
by humans beginning at the start of the Holocene and
greatly accelerating at 8,600 B.P. (Piperno, Bush, and Co-

ing in central Pacific Panama over the past i 5 years,

linvaux iggib, Piperno n.d.), which may represent dis-

agricultural origins, with results showing how mis-

tivation" (Harris T977).

Fritz's discussion of the relevance of pollen and phy-

and others laboring in the Neotropics have employed

multidisciplinary research to investigate the question of

with the earliest Tehuacain Valley maize (e.g., Monsalve

i985, Bray et al. I987, Bush, Piperno, and Colinvaux
i989, Rue i989, Jones I994). One envisions that in some

turbance associated with the development of "protocul-

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Volume 35, Number 5, December I994 | 639

tolith data consists of a single sentence in a footnote (p.

307) dismissing all of them out of hand. This is not good
academic practice, and it will hardly advance the dialogue and consensus building by which most debates
arrive at some resolution. Part of the problem may be
that Fritz distrusts the chronologies from lake sequences
because individual phytoliths and pollen from cultivars
cannot be directly dated. However, lake sequences provide infinitely less possibility for serious chronological
distortion than do archaeological sites, and root penetration and postdepositional disturbances can be identified
by visual and X-ray inspection (Bush et al. i992; discussion in Piperno n.d.). Moreover, what is being documented in lake studies besides the appearance of individual crop plants is transformations of whole plant
communities, representing a statistically large proportion of the pollen and phytolith sets, as they respond to
activities associated with food production. A series of

internally consistent 14C dates on small bits of lake sediment from below, with, and above the very pollen and
phytoliths evidencing early cultigens and forest clearing
strongly indicates that the chronology of the plant sequence obtained from the core is accurate.
Finally, on theoretical grounds a most problematic aspect of the paper is Fritz's portrait of an early American
agriculture very similar to the Old World southern Levant version-one that was preceded by sedentism, storage, and complex social organization and soon led to
villages of substantial size and complexity. In fact, the
plants, their spatial densities, and their ecological niches
could not have been more different in the two hemispheres, and this has important implications for pre- and
postagricultural cultural development. For example,
wild barley and wheat, adapted to the Mediterranean
climate, matured simultaneously in dense stands and
could be mass-harvested, mass-stored, mass-planted,
and mass-selected (Iltis I987). Early exploitation of these
abundant hard-seeded plants encouraged effective storage, sedentism, and fairly dense settlement (e.g., Henry
i989). Genetic and phenotypic changes after cultivation
began, leading to domesticated status and improved
varieties, were relatively straightforward and probably
fairly rapid (Zohary I989).
By contrast, the plants that fed early Central and
South American societies (e.g., maize, beans, squashes,
the various roots and tubers) are mesophytes and are
tended, planted, and harvested one by one (Sauer i965).
Some were exploited for their seed and some for their
less durable, underground structures. Exploitation of
their wild relatives, which except for teosinte grew at
low densities over the landscape and often were not particularly easy to locate, would have encouraged neither
storage nor residential stability to the same degree as did
the Old World wild cereal harvests. Indeed, the simplest
technique of tuber "storage" is leaving plants unharvested, which may induce people to stay longer at or
return more frequently to specific sites during the
course of the year but hardly calls to mind the loss of
residential mobility and elaboration of social mechanisms associated with Old World cereal exploitation. It
is likely, too, that characteristics of New World crop

plants and their ecological niches contributed to delays

in the development of integrated and specialized agricultural systems and hence of full-fledged village life after

cultivation began (Harris I972, I977; Flannery I986b;

Iltis I987). Notably, in the case of maize, even after an
exposed kernel was produced via either phenotypic
change having little to do with human selection (Iltis
i989) or gene frequency responses under cultivation
(Dortweiler, Stec, and Doebley I993), subsequent improvement in the plant may well have had a complex
and protracted history (Iltis I987).
In conclusion, it is clear that views of early food production in the New World are still colored by a temperate-zone and arid-land bias when the evidence is compelling that the hearths of many important crop plants,
including maize (Doebley i990), were the warmer and
seasonally moist (or dry, if you prefer) lands stretching
from southwestern Mexico to the southern Amazon
rim.

Macrobotanical remains in and of themselves are unlikely to elucidate the origins of food production in the
American Tropics and Subtropics. Although microfossil
plant studies from off-site, perennially wet contexts cannot reveal much about the actual process of domestication (e.g., how individual plants were manipulated and
changed morphologically), they can and do document
early tropical agriculture and its ecological effects. Macrobotanical specialists need to pay more attention to
these studies articulating archaeology with the natural
sciences-which is, after all, how macrobotanical studies had their beginnings.

Reply
GAYLE J. FRITZ

Department of Anthropology, Campus Box I114,

Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. 63130, U.S.A.
22 VII 94

Disagreeing with me that the first American farmers are

getting younger, Piperno emphasizes the phytolith and
pollen evidence for 5,000-7,ooo-year-old agriculture in
the New World tropics. As she notes, I focused on the
lack of macrobotanical evidence for domesticated plants
predating ca. 5,500 B.P. (3500 B.C.) in Mesoamerica. My
brief report concentrated on maize and cucurbits from
well-known rock-shelter sites in the central and southern Mexican highlands, since most models for plant domestication in the Western Hemisphere rely heavily on
desiccated plant material from those sites. Piperno's
complaint about this bias is valid, and her critique
makes it possible to address the equally problematic
phytolith and pollen data and to expand my argument to
the tropical lowlands of Central America and northern
South America. I remain unconvinced by claims that
maize farming had spread into these areas before 5,500
B.P., the early end of the dendrocalibrated range for directly AMS-dated cobs from rock-shelters in the Tehuacain Valley of Mexico (Long et al. 1989).

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640 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

Phytolith and pollen studies have enormously increased our knowledge about past environments, including agricultural landscapes, but their potential for pinning down the timing of processes or events such as
agricultural beginnings is incompletely realized at best.
The problem is not only that intrusive grains may not
be detectable by direct radiocarbon dating but also that
many cores are published with only a few radiocarbon
dates and uncritical extrapolation to derive age estimates for samples falling above, between, or below dated
levels. Archaeologists who spend entire field seasons
trying to understand the complex stratigraphy of handexcavated units cannot be expected blindly to trust the
context of a few grains of maize pollen from a narrow
lake core that may be several meters long and from
which only a few radiocarbon dates have been provided.
I agree with Piperno that "lake sequences provide infinitely less possibility for serious chronological distortion than do archaeological sites, and root penetration
and postdepositional disturbances can be identified by
visual and X-ray inspection," but observe that few palynologists mention X-ray inspection and believe that disturbance and contamination can and do occur.

Researchers grappling with agricultural beginnings

have been troubled by ambiguous pollen dating for many
years. The five famous pollen grains identified as maize
(Barghoorn, Wolfe, and Clisby I954) found in a drilling
core from Mexico City at a depth of 70 m and given an

estimated age of 2 s,ooo-80,000 years have recently been

argued to be either teosinte rather than maize (Beadle
I98I), 2,ooo years old rather than 8o,ooo years old (Sears
I982), or modern contaminants (Beadle 198I; see also
discussion in McClung de Tapia i992:I47). Even when
contamination of a core is not suspected, maize pollen
from inadequately dated contexts has been used as a
benchmark for the earliest regional maize agriculture,
for example, in southeastern Virginia (Whitehead i965).
Looking closely at cores from lake beds in Mesoamerica, Central America, and South America, it is not necessary to dismiss early maize pollen grains or phytoliths as intrusive. Although Piperno contends that a
pOst-5, 500 B.P. date for earliest food production in the
Neotropics "is in fact refuted by recent pollen and phytolith studies of perennially wet areas near former occupation sites," my survey of the relevant literature uncovers only two project areas with claims for greater
antiquity. Both suffer from dating ambiguities that
make the early age estimates dubious.
In the Calima region of Colombia, for example, maize
pollen was identified in samples from two cores (Bray et

al. I985, I987; Monsalve I985). The pollen profile from

the Hacienda El Dorado core shows the earliest maize
pollen at a depth of approximately 9i-95 cm, bracketed

by uncalibrated radiocarbon assays of I,870 ? I40 B.P.

dendrocalibration, Bray et al. (I987:445) state, "A little

maize pollen, with no significant forest clearance, ap-

pears in Pollen Zone sA, firmly dated to the mid-fifth

millennium B.C. in the El Dorado Core (Fig. 3), and this
is followed by a major episode of deforestation and a
sharp rise in Gramineae and in maize." Because the date

of 6,680 ? 230 B.P. is shown at the base of Zone sA,

below the maize pollen, and because Zone sA represents
nearly s,ooo years of deposition in a 30-cm core segment, I find the claim for introduction of maize as early
as the 7th millennium B.P. unconvincing.
The Hacienda Lusitania core from the same Calima
project area may have yielded earlier maize pollen, but
only one of its radiocarbon determinations falls within
the Holocene epoch. This date-5,I5o ? I80 B.P.-iS
shown on the pollen profile at a depth of ca. 7I-75 cm,
in sub-zone sA (Monsalve i985). The earliest maize pol-

len was found at a depth of go cm. A date of I4,580 +

200 B.P. is shown at a depth of ca. IOI-5 cm. Monsalve
(i985) does not mention any of the radiocarbon dates,
nor does he address chronological implications. Therefore, the case for 7th-millennium B.P. maize pollen from
the Calima region is far from well-documented, and additional chronometric evidence and explanation are
needed.
The only other early age estimate for maize from a
sediment core comes from Lake Ayauch, Ecuador, in the
western Amazon basin (Bush and Colinvaux i988, Bush,

Piperno, and Colinvaux i989). The longest core, raised

from beneath 2o m of water, was 3.26 m in length. The
four uncalibrated radiocarbon dates include a determination of 2,440 ? 80 B.P. at the I.44-I.5I m level, 3,3Io
? 30 B.P. at I.90-I.95 m, 4,570 ? 80 B.P. at 2.26-2.34

m, and 7,0IO ? I30 B.P. at 2.83-2.go m. Maize pollen

and phytoliths were both found at 2.4 m, just below the

level of the third "4C age determination (4,570 ? 80 B.P.).

By extrapolating downward to the lowest 14C date (7,0IO
? I30 B.P.), Bush, Piperno, and Colinvaux (i989) assign
this earliest maize "an interpreted age of 5,300 B.P." and
then apply a calibration procedure that "gives a calendar

age of ca. 5,970-6,Igo years B.P."

If we accept the calibrated extrapolation, pollen and
phytoliths from Lake Ayauch would appear to be several
centuries older than directly dated maize from the Tehuacan Valley. There is reason, however, not to push for
greater antiquity than ca. 5,000-5,500 B.P., even after
calibration. The evidence for earliest microfossil maize
came from a level only 6 cm below the bottom of the
sample dated to 4,570 ? 80 B.P. Combining the estimated nature of the extrapolation procedure, the availability of only four radiocarbon dates from the 3.26-m
sediment sequence, and the imprecision of radiocarbon
dating in general, I do not agree that Lake Ayauch has
yielded a credible 6,ooo-year history of Amazonian

at 75 cm and 6,68o + 230 B.P. at Io cm (Bray et al.

maize cultivation.
All the other records of microfossil maize from lake

I50 B.P. came from a depth of I40 cm. The exact depth
of the earliest maize pollen is not furnished, nor is the
number of grains. With no mention of extrapolation or

after dendrocalibration. The earliest maize phytoliths

from Gatun Lake, Panama, came from the 42-ft. (I2.8-m)

I987). Another radiocarbon age of 720 ? 90 B.P. came

from a depth of 55 cm, and a fourth date of 9,590 +

sediments cited by Piperno postdate 5,500 B.P., even

level, with an uncalibrated radiocarbon age of 4,750 +

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Volume 35, Number 5, December I994 I 64I

IOO B.P. Maize pollen from Gatun Lake postdating 4,000

B.P had been reported previously (Bartlett and Barghoorn
I973, cited in Piperno i985). The earliest occurrence of
maize pollen in cores from Lake Yojoa, Honduras, is ca.

4,500 B.P. (Rue i989), and maize pollen first appears at

approximately the same date in Cobweb Swamp, Belize
(Jones I994). Maize phytoliths in cores from Lake La
Yeguada, Panama, first occur in levels dated to ca. 4,000
B.P., and probable maize pollen follows at 3,500 B.P.
(Bush et al. i992). Piperno lists these lake-core studies,
but they hold no direct microfossil evidence for 6th- and

7th-millennium B.P. maize agriculture. In addition,

cores from five lake basins in the central Mexican states
of Michoacain, Guanajuato, and Mexico yielded no
maize pollen earlier than 3,500-4,000 B.P. (Metcalfe et
al. i989).
Outside the lake-core literature, the case for pre5,500 B.P. maize microfossils comes from archaeological sites in Ecuador and Panama (Pearsall and Piperno
I990, Piperno et al. i985). Unfortunately, the sites are
subject to all the usual postdepositional disturbances
that plague archaeologists. At Cueva de los Ladrones in
Panama, for example, the purported 7th-millennium B.P.
phytoliths and pollen came from two 30 x 30-cm columns excavated into talus slope deposits below a rock-

shelter containing io-25-cm-deep cultural deposits. No

radiocarbon dates were reported from the ca. I.6-m-deep
columns, which were excavated in i98i and i982, but
six assays were available from earlier (I974) excavations
along the talus slope. It is clear from the profile depicted
in figure I of Piperno et al. (I985:873) that boundaries
between levels were projected downslope at times and
that a few potsherds-although none in the 30 x 30-cm
columns-were found below the ceramic/preceramic

boundary, which was dated by a '4C assay of 3,870 B.P.

The earliest maize microfossils came from ca. 60 cm
below the ceramic/preceramic boundary and were dated
to 6,86o + -90 B.P. by the single preceramic 14C determination, which was taken from elsewhere in the talus
slope excavations. The five other dates from Cueva de
los Ladrones all came from the ceramic levels, ranging
from 4,800 ? IOO B.P. to 3,770 ? 80 B.P. (uncalibrated).
Any artifact or ecofact recovered from this type of
context seems too insecurely dated to be used as a candidate for the earliest of its kind in the New World. Talus
slope deposits are subject to disturbances that might
allow opaline silica bodies and pollen grains-or carbonized seeds and maize cupules, for that matter-to migrate downward. If macrobotanical remains had been recovered rather than phytoliths and pollen, AMS dating
would be demanded for confirmation of antiquity.
At site OGSE-8o, in southwestern Ecuador, two soil
samples from Late Las Vegas contexts contained phytolith assemblages including variants in proportions and
sizes classifiable as maize. One of the samples came

We probably should not rely on the radiocarbon determination of 8,I70 B.P. to fix the exact date of
maize introduction to the Santa Elena peninsula,

however, because a nearby level 95-IIo cm b.s.

from the same stratigraphic cut yielded a date of
7,150 B.P. However, on the basis of present evidence
we can say with some confidence that the inhabitants of Site 8o began cultivating maize sometime between 6ooo and 5000 B.C.

The antiquity of the phytoliths from OGSE-8o is not as

blatantly questionable as is that of the Ladrones microfossils, although the existence of numerous root penetrations (Stothert I985:6I9, fig. 5) is troubling. Both the
8,I70 B.P. and the 7,150 B.P. date were derived from
shell, but they are consistent with all other radiocarbon
dates from the site. I can only refer to the series of
macrobotanical cultigens from Mesoamerica and North
America demonstrated by direct AMS dating to be much
more recent than expected to plead "Once bitten, twice
shy." The earliest charred maize fragments from Ecuador date to 5,200-4,500 B.P. (Pearsall and Piperno i990).
Although the microfossil data base from the Neotropics does not allow me to conclude that maize agriculture
was practiced before 5,500 B.P., it does indicate substantial forest clearance before this date, probably due to
intentional burning and other resource management activities by humans. Piperno (i989) has built a sophisticated ecological model to track subsistence-settlement
systems through time in Panama, beginning with the
earliest peopling of Central America. Small-scale, shifting food production beginning no later than 7,000 B.P. iS
central to her model, and maize is a key early cultigen,
possibly along with native root crops. It is crucial at this
time to determine whether or not agriculture was being
practiced so early. If not-and I contend that we have no
firmly dated evidence for it-the focus shifts to resource
management by fisher-gatherer-hunters. This is an exciting arena of research and one that, in many regions,
has been overshadowed by the sometimes unfounded
preoccupation with early farmers and their contributions to civilization. Activities of increasingly complex
hunter-gatherers eventually led to domestication of
many tropical crops, and proto-domesticatory manipulation and management probably began soon after the arrival of humans, as in Piperno's (i989) model. But without an early adoption of maize or early domestication
of other crops archaeologists would not describe these
people as practicing shifting horticulture.
One final point requires clarification. It is true that a
later date for domestication of maize, squashes, and

beans' brings the Mesoamerican transition to farming

more in line with the Old World Levantine transition
by beginning with less mobile populations. The chronological shift makes the New World sequence different

from level Ios-IIo of the large stratigraphic cut GH

8-9, a level that is "dated directly to 8,I70 B.P." (Pearsall

and Piperno I990:332). The second sample came from
an undated Late Las Vegas feature. Pearsall and Piperno
state (p. 33 2):

i. Kaplan (I994) continues to present AMS dates directly on several

species of beans ( Phaseolus spp.) from allegedly early levels of rockshelter sites in Mexico and South America. So far, none of the
domesticated specimens fall into the pre-5, 500 B.P. time frame.

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642 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

in other ways, however, an obvious one being its much

later inception. I appreciate Piperno's concern with recognition of regional or even subregional variation in
pathways to domestication and would not argue against
a scenario in which New World transitions were more
lengthy than those based on Old World cereals. Models
that have New World plants domesticated no later than
7,000 B.P. but village agriculture beginning no sooner
than 3,000 to 4,000 years later, however, allow far more
time than was necessary. Discussions of the rates of
both cultural and genetic change in the Western Hemisphere have been circular, heavily influenced by belief in
archaeological evidence for domesticated plants earlier
than 7,000 B.P. Now that this evidence no longer stands,
our inferences should be reformulated. At the very least,
geneticists and molecular biologists, along with anthropologists, need to stop referring to 7,000 B.P. maize from

the Tehuaca6n Valley when none of it can be trusted to

be older than 5,000 B.P. before calibration.

Shooting down the phytolith and pollen evidence for
early maize agriculture is as unpleasant a task as publicizing the invalidity of cherished Tehuacain-based
schemes of New World agricultural origins. Phytolith
analysis has been ignored and criticized in spite of the
brilliant methodological advances pioneered by Piperno
and other colleagues. The integration of microfossil evidence into the archaeological record vastly improves our
understanding of past vegetation, climate, and subsistence. Chronometry, however, is a serious weakness in
some pollen and phytolith studies. Until dating procedures are tightened up-with AMS dating of lake cores
and far more dates per core or sediment column being
an immediate option-I cannot accept the claims for
7th- or early 6th-millennium B.P. microfossil maize.
Both archaeologists and biological scientists must work
within the confines of securely dated, preferably directly
dated, material. We all serve science best by insisting
upon and adhering to rigorous interpretation of context
and chronology.

T E R O, A N D J. G. M O N S A L V E. I 9 87. "The ancient agricultural

landscape of Calima, Colombia," in Pre-Hispanic agricultural
fields in the Andean region. Edited by W. M. Denevan, K.
Mathewson, and G. Knapp, pp. 443-8i. British Archaeological

Reports International Series 359(21.

BUSH, M. B., AND P. A. COLINVAUX. i988. A 7,ooo-year pollen record from the Amazon lowlands. Vegetatio 76:I4I-54.
. I990. A long record of climatic and vegetational change
in lowland Panama. Journal of Vegetation Science I:Io5-Ig.

BUSH, M. B., D. R. PIPERNO, AND P. A. COLINVAUX. I989. A

6,ooo-year history of Amazonian maize cultivation. Nature

340:303-5.
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DOEBLEY, j. I990. Molecular evidence and the evolution of

maize. Economic Botany 44:6-27.
DORTWEILER, J., A. STEC, AND J. DOEBLEY. I993. Teosinte

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FLANNERY, K. V. I986a. "The research problem," in Guila Naquitz: Archaic foraging and early agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico. Edited by K. V. Flannery, pp. 3-i8. Orlando: Academic
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On The Nuer Conquest

SHARON HUTCHINSON

Department of Anthropology, University of

Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. 53706-I393, U.S.A. 23 v 94

Raymond Kelly's principal objective in The Nuer Conquest: The Structure and Development of an Expansion-

ist System (i985) is to isolate that "critical set of differences" between "the Nuer" and "the Dinka" that might

account for the rapid igth-century territorial expansion

of the former at the expense of the latter. Challenging

"the general applicability" of ecological models of adaptation "based on the core concept of a self-regulating
system," Kelly attempts to show how a sociocultural
system that is highly successful in "evolutionary terms"
may nonetheless be perennially out of sync with its ecological base.
In the opening chapters, Kelly argues that all previous
attempts to resolve the historical puzzle of the Nuer
"conquest" have been based on the implicit or explicit
assumption that the conquering Nuer groups were periodically driven from their western homelands by "population pressure." He rejects this assumption on the following grounds (pp. 72-73):
If the Nuer were induced to invade Dinka territory
in order to achieve a reduction of excessively high
population density (by distributing the population
over a more extensive area), then the complete expulsion of the Dinka would logically be their prime objective. However, we have already seen that the
Nuer assimilated captives, migrants, and entire
[Dinka] communities on a massive scale during the
period of territorial expansion.... Moreover, each
successive stage of Nuer conquest significantly reduced Nuer densities and thus would have obviated
the need for further territorial appropriation
prompted by population pressure. Such pressure
therefore could not have provided a sustained impetus to Nuer expansion unless the Nuer population
was increasing at a rapid rate.

Kelly proceeds to "show," using population estimates

compiled during the early I930S and I950s, that the population density of the invaded regions remained constant between i820 and I930. Before examining this
highly problematic demonstration, I should perhaps
point out that his critique of "earlier explanations" is
founded on an implicit identification of "population
pressure" (conceived in terms of human/land ratios)
with "population growth." In other words, his discussion glosses over the possibility that "population pres-

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