Maize for the Gods

Unearthing the 9,000-Year History of Corn

Michael Blake

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English

University of California Press
28 August 2015

History of the Americas; Archaeology; Food & society; Cereal crops

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.

By: Michael Blake
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 363g
ISBN: 9780520286962
ISBN 10: 0520286960
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 28 August 2015
Audience: College/higher education , A / AS level , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

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

Michael Blake is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia who studies the origins of maize agriculture in the Americas and the emergence of sociopolitical complexity in Mesoamerica and the Northwest Coast of Canada. He is the author of Colonization, Warfare, and Exchange at the Postclassic Maya Site of Canajaste, Chiapas, Mexico and the editor of Pacific Latin America in Prehistory.