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Identity of Archaeologic Grain Amaranths from the Valley of Tehuacan, Puebla, Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Jonathan D. Sauer
Jonathan D. Sauer*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles, California
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Abstract

Coxcatlán Cave has yielded the earliest records of two domesticated species still grown as minor grain crops in Mexico. Amaranthus cruentus, previously unknown archaeologically, is tentatively identified from a level dated at about 4000 B.C. and positively identified from six levels dated between about 2500 B.C. and the time of the Conquest. Amaranthus hypochondriacus was found at two levels dated about A.D. 500. There is no evidence that either species was domesticated locally.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , January 1969 , pp. 80 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1969

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