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

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

by Michael Blake
Maize for the Gods: Unearthing the 9,000-Year History of Corn

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

by Michael Blake

Paperback(First Edition)

$29.95 
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Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780520286962
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication date: 08/28/2015
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 280
Sales rank: 268,421
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

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).
 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

1 The Archaeology of Maize 17

2 The Place of Maize in (Agri)cultural Origin Stories 37

3 Old Puzzles and New Questions about Maize's Origins and Spread 53

4 Timing Is Everything: Dating Maize 74

5 Maize through a Magnifying Glass: Macroremains 100

6 Maize through a Microscope: Microremains 115

7 Elemental Maize: Tracing Maize Isotopically 135

8 Genetically Modified Maize the Old Way-By Agriculture 154

9 Daily Tools and Sacred Symbols 176

Notes 211

Glossary 229

References 233

Index 255

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