Charles H Miksicek
Currently working on the Anderson - Cutler Corn Collection at Missouri Botanical Garden. Charlie Miksicek is a semi-retired archaeobotanist who worked in the US Southwest, California, Mesoamerica, South America, and the Mediterranean region. His research interests include maize, agave, incipient domesticates, the Origins of Agriculture, traditional agriculture, ethnobotany, medicinal plants, foraging, and germplasm conservation. I probably won't ever have shelf space in an archive somewhere devoted to my work, but as long as we have Academia, I'll have something.
Supervisors: Hugh C. Cutler, Leonard Blake, Patty Jo Watson, Paul S. Martin, Alan Solomon, and Dave Browman
Phone: 13143526140
Address: St Louis, Missouri, United States
Supervisors: Hugh C. Cutler, Leonard Blake, Patty Jo Watson, Paul S. Martin, Alan Solomon, and Dave Browman
Phone: 13143526140
Address: St Louis, Missouri, United States
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Videos by Charles H Miksicek
An animated series of maps showing the distribution of Little Barley (Hordeum pusillum) for the last 10,000 years. Link to descriptive text, raw data, and sources -https://www.academia.edu/51377909/Mapping_Ancient_Little_Barley_Hordeum_pusillum_Nutt_In_Time_and_Space
Leave a message and we'll provide a link for downloading the video.
Tales from the Corn Crypt by Charles H Miksicek
I notice in his response there is a little mention of the "Mummy Seeds" problem; pod corn, one of the usual suspects.
Dr Van Asdall and I did get up to see him at Cornville, AZ about a year before he passed away. Dr Van and I tried to arrange an honorary doctorate for him from University of Arizona, but they didn't go for it. I guess you had to be a large donor to the football team or something to get one of those. We never did get a group of students up to Hopi. We did however take them to an Inter-Tribal gathering closer to Tucson. - posted 12/29/2024
The NAU archives contain an extensive collection of Whiting's field notes, traditional Hopi recipes, etc. Ears of Corn collected by Whiting, Volney Jones, and Edmund Nequaptewa during the 1931 to 1935 Hopi Crop Survey are currently curated at the University of Michigan Museum of Archaeological Anthropology (see link below). The NAU archives have measurements (row, length, diameter) for some of the ears in the Michigan collection (matching catalog numbers).
Seventeen of these collections were used in the Maize Microsatellite study: Matsuoka, Yoshihiro, Yves Vigouroux, Major M. Goodman, Jesus Sanchez G., Edward Buckler, and John Doebley 2002 A single domestication for maize shown by multilocus microsatellite genotyping. PNAS 99(9): 6080 - 6084.
This is a poster prepared for the "7 Millionth Specimen Celebration" held at Missouri Botanical Garden July 14th 2023 honoring the 7 Millionth Specimen added to the MBG Herbarium.
Raw data for this study are posted in the link below.
1/27/2024 Update: 17 of these collections were used in the study by:
Matsuoka, Yoshihiro, Yves Vigouroux, Major M. Goodman, Jesus Sanchez G., Edward Buckler, and John Doebley
2002 A single domestication for maize shown by multilocus microsatellite genotyping. PNAS 99(9): 6080 - 6084.
Most of them cluster closely with the other US Southwest collections, but four (P2 Cochiti White, P30 Zia Red, P33 Navajo White, and P59 Mojave White) group with Northern Mexican landraces like Azul, Apachito, Gordo, Palomero Chihuahua, Cristalino Chihuahua, and Tuxpeno Norteno. This probably represents post Pueblo Rebellion (1680) introduction of germplasm from further south in Mexico like Tuxpeno. I'm not sure why Mojave would cluster with these.
Many of the Eastern US collections in Matsuoka et al came from a 1954 donation to the USDA by the Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Company, Johnston, Iowa (the PI 213... series). Quapaw Red, Potowatomi, and Cherokee White cluster with the Southwest group.
The Southwestern Material is included in Crow Canyon's Maize Database https://www.crowcanyon.org/projects/maize_database_project/
I had technical difficulties the day of the scheduled presentation, but we recorded a version later and uploaded it on YouTube (see link below)
I am presently photographing the collection and entering the data in the Garden's online herbarium. You can view the collection by going to tropicos.org and under Specimens > Collections > Collection Search > Use Keyword "Corn Collection" (no quotes) > Click "Search" . You might want to Click the "Show Only Collections with Images" Box if you just want to browse the images.
The video is posted, see link below. I need to learn to stop saying "and stuff like that . . ."
A little FaceBook promo for the Corn Collection (made when the Tic Toc ""It's Corn" video was popular 32M viewers), see link below.
Salt Gila Project (Hohokam) by Charles H Miksicek
Christmas Morning, 2024. Mayahuel came to me in a dream this morning. She reminded me I still need to try roasting and fermenting some sunchokes (Helianthus tuberosus, Jerusalem artichokes) which have the same carbohydrate storage system (inulin) as agaves. We couldn't really call it "mescal", what could we call it?
During this project I focused on large data sets (580 float samples total), the stages between unmodified, wild, gathered plants and full domesticates, and tried to add some statistical rigor to archaeobotanical analysis. It was during this project that I proposed that century plants (Agave) were cultivated by the Hohokam, but when I was writing this report I was being cautious and referred to agave and little barley (Hordeum pusillum) as "semi-cultivated".
Several of my colleagues objected strongly to my attempt at extrapolating climatic data for the lower desert from published tree ring chronologies for the Colorado Plateau. This did however, stimulate Don Graybill, Dave Gregory, and Fred Nials to develop better Streamflow Reconstructions for the Salt River for the Las Colinas Project, several years later.
Citation: 1984. In Hohokam Archaeology Along the Salt Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project. ed. by L. S. Teague and P. L. Crown, A. S. M. Arch. Ser. No. 150: Vol. VII: Environment and Subsistence. Methodology: Salt Gila Project Archaeobotanical Analysis. pp. 17 - 19. Historic Desertification, Prehistoric Vegetation Change, and Hohokam Subsistence in the Salt Gila Basin. pp. 53 - 80.
I think this was the first SGA report I said much about Little Barley (Hordeum pusillum) pp 200 - 201. I am pretty sure I measured those seeds, but after 40 years I no longer have the notes. I also measured a lot of Plantago seeds, but that never turned into anything interesting.
Malcolm Gladwell suggests that it takes roughly 10,000 hours to become proficient at something. I think I completed my 10,000 hour apprenticeship during the Salt - Gila Project.
Citation: 1984. In Hohokam Archaeology Along the Salt Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project. ed. by L. S. Teague and P. L. Crown, A. S. M. Arch. Ser. No. 150: Vol. IV: Village Sites on Queen Creek and Siphon Draw. Macrofloral Remains from the Siphon Draw Site. pp. 179 -204.
As I glance through this, I notice a lot of elements that I later used in my Formation Processes chapter. It has a lot of information about construction materials, sampling adequacy, and feature interpretations based on recovered plant remains.
As so often happens when you do Archaeobotanical Consulting, my report was due two years before the site chronology was finalized. When it came time for revisions, they didn't have the time and budget to pay me and I was already well into the next large projects. Oh well . . . I don't think minor tweaks in the chronology would have made a major difference in the overall trends.
Reference: Miksicek, Charles H., (1984) Archaeobotanical Remains from Frogtown. In. Hohokam Archaeology Along the Salt Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project. ed. by L. S. Teague and P. L. Crown, Arizona State Museum Archaeological Series No. 150: Vol. IV: Village Sites on Queen Creek and Siphon Draw. pp. 563 590.
Reference: Miksicek, Charles H. (1984) Flotation Samples and Macrofossils from El Polveron. In Hohokam Archaeology Along the Salt Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project. ed. by L. S. Teague and P. L. Crown, Arizona State Museum Archaeological Series No. 150: Vol. IV: Village Sites on Queen Creek and Siphon Draw. pp. 333- 344.
https://core.tdar.org/document/374970/hohokam-archaeology-along-the-salt-gi
la-aqueduct-central-arizona-project-volume-iv-prehistoric-occupation-of-the
-queen-creek-delta
An animated series of maps showing the distribution of Little Barley (Hordeum pusillum) for the last 10,000 years. Link to descriptive text, raw data, and sources -https://www.academia.edu/51377909/Mapping_Ancient_Little_Barley_Hordeum_pusillum_Nutt_In_Time_and_Space
Leave a message and we'll provide a link for downloading the video.
I notice in his response there is a little mention of the "Mummy Seeds" problem; pod corn, one of the usual suspects.
Dr Van Asdall and I did get up to see him at Cornville, AZ about a year before he passed away. Dr Van and I tried to arrange an honorary doctorate for him from University of Arizona, but they didn't go for it. I guess you had to be a large donor to the football team or something to get one of those. We never did get a group of students up to Hopi. We did however take them to an Inter-Tribal gathering closer to Tucson. - posted 12/29/2024
The NAU archives contain an extensive collection of Whiting's field notes, traditional Hopi recipes, etc. Ears of Corn collected by Whiting, Volney Jones, and Edmund Nequaptewa during the 1931 to 1935 Hopi Crop Survey are currently curated at the University of Michigan Museum of Archaeological Anthropology (see link below). The NAU archives have measurements (row, length, diameter) for some of the ears in the Michigan collection (matching catalog numbers).
Seventeen of these collections were used in the Maize Microsatellite study: Matsuoka, Yoshihiro, Yves Vigouroux, Major M. Goodman, Jesus Sanchez G., Edward Buckler, and John Doebley 2002 A single domestication for maize shown by multilocus microsatellite genotyping. PNAS 99(9): 6080 - 6084.
This is a poster prepared for the "7 Millionth Specimen Celebration" held at Missouri Botanical Garden July 14th 2023 honoring the 7 Millionth Specimen added to the MBG Herbarium.
Raw data for this study are posted in the link below.
1/27/2024 Update: 17 of these collections were used in the study by:
Matsuoka, Yoshihiro, Yves Vigouroux, Major M. Goodman, Jesus Sanchez G., Edward Buckler, and John Doebley
2002 A single domestication for maize shown by multilocus microsatellite genotyping. PNAS 99(9): 6080 - 6084.
Most of them cluster closely with the other US Southwest collections, but four (P2 Cochiti White, P30 Zia Red, P33 Navajo White, and P59 Mojave White) group with Northern Mexican landraces like Azul, Apachito, Gordo, Palomero Chihuahua, Cristalino Chihuahua, and Tuxpeno Norteno. This probably represents post Pueblo Rebellion (1680) introduction of germplasm from further south in Mexico like Tuxpeno. I'm not sure why Mojave would cluster with these.
Many of the Eastern US collections in Matsuoka et al came from a 1954 donation to the USDA by the Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Company, Johnston, Iowa (the PI 213... series). Quapaw Red, Potowatomi, and Cherokee White cluster with the Southwest group.
The Southwestern Material is included in Crow Canyon's Maize Database https://www.crowcanyon.org/projects/maize_database_project/
I had technical difficulties the day of the scheduled presentation, but we recorded a version later and uploaded it on YouTube (see link below)
I am presently photographing the collection and entering the data in the Garden's online herbarium. You can view the collection by going to tropicos.org and under Specimens > Collections > Collection Search > Use Keyword "Corn Collection" (no quotes) > Click "Search" . You might want to Click the "Show Only Collections with Images" Box if you just want to browse the images.
The video is posted, see link below. I need to learn to stop saying "and stuff like that . . ."
A little FaceBook promo for the Corn Collection (made when the Tic Toc ""It's Corn" video was popular 32M viewers), see link below.
Christmas Morning, 2024. Mayahuel came to me in a dream this morning. She reminded me I still need to try roasting and fermenting some sunchokes (Helianthus tuberosus, Jerusalem artichokes) which have the same carbohydrate storage system (inulin) as agaves. We couldn't really call it "mescal", what could we call it?
During this project I focused on large data sets (580 float samples total), the stages between unmodified, wild, gathered plants and full domesticates, and tried to add some statistical rigor to archaeobotanical analysis. It was during this project that I proposed that century plants (Agave) were cultivated by the Hohokam, but when I was writing this report I was being cautious and referred to agave and little barley (Hordeum pusillum) as "semi-cultivated".
Several of my colleagues objected strongly to my attempt at extrapolating climatic data for the lower desert from published tree ring chronologies for the Colorado Plateau. This did however, stimulate Don Graybill, Dave Gregory, and Fred Nials to develop better Streamflow Reconstructions for the Salt River for the Las Colinas Project, several years later.
Citation: 1984. In Hohokam Archaeology Along the Salt Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project. ed. by L. S. Teague and P. L. Crown, A. S. M. Arch. Ser. No. 150: Vol. VII: Environment and Subsistence. Methodology: Salt Gila Project Archaeobotanical Analysis. pp. 17 - 19. Historic Desertification, Prehistoric Vegetation Change, and Hohokam Subsistence in the Salt Gila Basin. pp. 53 - 80.
I think this was the first SGA report I said much about Little Barley (Hordeum pusillum) pp 200 - 201. I am pretty sure I measured those seeds, but after 40 years I no longer have the notes. I also measured a lot of Plantago seeds, but that never turned into anything interesting.
Malcolm Gladwell suggests that it takes roughly 10,000 hours to become proficient at something. I think I completed my 10,000 hour apprenticeship during the Salt - Gila Project.
Citation: 1984. In Hohokam Archaeology Along the Salt Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project. ed. by L. S. Teague and P. L. Crown, A. S. M. Arch. Ser. No. 150: Vol. IV: Village Sites on Queen Creek and Siphon Draw. Macrofloral Remains from the Siphon Draw Site. pp. 179 -204.
As I glance through this, I notice a lot of elements that I later used in my Formation Processes chapter. It has a lot of information about construction materials, sampling adequacy, and feature interpretations based on recovered plant remains.
As so often happens when you do Archaeobotanical Consulting, my report was due two years before the site chronology was finalized. When it came time for revisions, they didn't have the time and budget to pay me and I was already well into the next large projects. Oh well . . . I don't think minor tweaks in the chronology would have made a major difference in the overall trends.
Reference: Miksicek, Charles H., (1984) Archaeobotanical Remains from Frogtown. In. Hohokam Archaeology Along the Salt Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project. ed. by L. S. Teague and P. L. Crown, Arizona State Museum Archaeological Series No. 150: Vol. IV: Village Sites on Queen Creek and Siphon Draw. pp. 563 590.
Reference: Miksicek, Charles H. (1984) Flotation Samples and Macrofossils from El Polveron. In Hohokam Archaeology Along the Salt Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project. ed. by L. S. Teague and P. L. Crown, Arizona State Museum Archaeological Series No. 150: Vol. IV: Village Sites on Queen Creek and Siphon Draw. pp. 333- 344.
https://core.tdar.org/document/374970/hohokam-archaeology-along-the-salt-gi
la-aqueduct-central-arizona-project-volume-iv-prehistoric-occupation-of-the
-queen-creek-delta
citation: 1983 Plant Remains from Smiley's Well. pp. 87 - 97. Plant Remains from Casas Pequenas. pp. 209 - 220. Plant Remains from the Ellsworth Site. pp. 315 - 322.
In Hohokam Archaeology Along the Salt Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project. ed. by L. S. Teague and P. L. Crown, A. S. M. Arch. Ser. No. 150: Vol. V: Small Habitation Sites on Queen Creek.
References:
Miksicek, Charles H.
1983a Plant Remains from Reach 4 Small Sites. In Hohokam Archaeology Along the Salt Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project. ed. by L. S. Teague and P. L. Crown, Arizona State Museum Archaeological Series. No. 150: Vol. III: Specialized Activity Sites. pp. 331-338.
1983b Plant Remains from the Chidag Site. pp. 355 - 358.
1983c Plant Remains from Rancho Sin Vacas. pp. 427 - 430.
both In Hohokam Archaeology Along the Salt Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project. ed. by L. S. Teague and P. L. Crown, Arizona State Museum Archaeological Series. No. 150: Vol. V: Small Habitation Sites on Queen Creek.
I presented a version of this paper, "A common sense approach to multivariate statistics in paleoethnobotany" at the 1985 SAA Meetings in Denver, C0. Unfortunately when you talk about complex statistics, your immediately lose 95% of your audience; their eyes glaze over in bewilderment. The few people who actually understand the stats usually respond with "Those statistics aren't appropriate for these kinds of data". My puny human brain has trouble juggling more than 3 or 4 variables at a time. I had been experimenting with multivariate statistics (mostly cluster and principal components analysis) since the late 1970's. I wasn't real satisfied with the clusters produced by the analysis. They weren't easy to interpret in terms of chronology (construction and abandonment) or spatial relations (compounds at Las Fosas). Nevertheless, I still believe multivariate approaches can be useful for pattern recognition in complex archaeobotanical data sets. It isn't always easy though to interpret those patterns. Why for example, do squash, pigweed, and globemallow often co-occur?
*Note: Vorsila Bohrer only analyzed 43 samples from the entire 1500 year occupation of Snaketown in her pioneering 1970 study, and the samples were screened before they were floated, so that certainly affected recovery. Ethnobotanical Aspects of Snaketown, a Hohokam Village in Southern Arizona. Vorsila L. Bohrer (1970) American Antiquity
Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 413-430, note about screening on p 413.
"Importance Value" never made much of an impact in Quantitative Archaeobotany, so after the Salt - Gila Project I went back to Ubiquity.
See my Tanque Verde Wash paper for a comparison of various ways of quantifying archaeobotanical data (including Importance Values) and how they might relate to a dietary reconstruction.
I wonder what the "Large Solanaceae" seeds from Features 1 and 5 were (p 696)? These were later mentioned by Vorsila Bohrer in a paper on encouraged and cultivated plants used by the Hohokam. Chile has since been identified from a small site near the Marana Platform Mound (by me) and Paquime / Casas Grandes by Paul Minnis. All three sites date to roughly the same time period. It would be worth going back to look at these seeds, if they could be located, or analyzing more soil from these features.
Citation: 1983 In Hohokam Archaeology Along the Salt Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project. ed. by L. S. Teague and P. L. Crown, A. S. M. Arch. Ser. No. 150: Vol. VI: Habitation Sites on the Gila River. Archaeobotanical Remains from the Jones Ruin. pp. 133 - 146. Archaeobotanical Remains from the Junkyard Site. pp. 473 - 482.
This may have been the first time I experimented with Importance Value (an average of two or more abundance measures) to quantify charred plant remains. To the best of my knowledge no one else has used this measure so its usefulness has yet to be determined.
Citations: 1983. In Hohokam Archaeology Along the Salt Gila Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project. ed. by L. S. Teague and P. L. Crown, A. S. M. Arch. Ser. No. 150: Vol. VI: Habitation Sites on the Gila River. Carbonized Plant Remains from the Dust Bowl Site and the Saguaro Site. pp. 265 - 276. Archaeobotanical Remains from the Gopherette Site. pp. 353 - 366.
1. Are they secondary refuse deposited into agricultural features after abandonment? These should be moderately rich, similar to material found in other trash - filled features, and should be associated with other artifacts (sherds, lithics, bone).
2. Do they represent a "background scatter", tertiary refuse dispersed by wind and water around any human habitation? These should be small, eroded, and fairly sparse.
3. Do they represent ash used as fertilizer in field areas? These might be expected to be relatively well preserved and contain taxa not likely to be found in field areas.
4. Are they remains left behind by canal or field clearance using fire? Most of the Salt - Gila remains seem to fall into this category - with maize stems, charred weedy taxa, grass stems, and wood charcoal being most common.
Includes reservoirs at AZ U:14:73, AZ U:15:61, and AZ U:15:98.
This posted version also contains maps and feature profiles from elsewhere in the volume.
See pollen analysis by Suzanne K Fish for complementary results. The whole volume is available at TDAR (see URL below).
A complete list of Salt - Gila reports is in my CV.
Digital copies of slides added 29 May 2021. The illustrations are mostly digital copies of 35 mm slides taken directly from a computer monitor, created using Harvard Graphics an extinct presentation software program. This is another "Lost Manuscript" recovered by the Wizards at https://retrofloppy.com/ .
"On the Cusp of History" has an expanded discussion of this topic.
We would welcome any suggestions for places to publish this study; one that could handle video, text, and supplemental information.
One reviewer has already pointed out that we tended to rely on secondary references. This was only a matter of expediency, and hopefully the secondaries will lead you to the primaries.
Updated versions will be posted as suggestions come in.
Comments from the Discussion Session (which are normally hidden from readers after the discussion session closes) were uploaded 4 Dec 2021. We appreciate all those comments.
3/21/2024 update. Spreadsheet for Archaeological Barley Measurements uploaded
After publishing this paper, I added "Tertiary Refuse" - the background scatter of highly redeposited charred plant remains that accumulates around any locus of human activity. These are often very small and fragmentary. I also looked at the problem of poor preservation in large sites (Casa Grande Monument) and sorting out culturally significant material from the residue left by natural fires (Cleveland Fire).
The bottom line is that if you want to look at archaeologically interesting questions like status, trade, subsistence change, environmental fluctuations, etc, you have to make sure the patterns you are seeing aren't due to differential preservation, disturbance, or analytical methods.
The attached photos show Hugh C Cutler demonstrating flotation (the swirl and pour method) at Point of Pines Field School, AZ W:10:78, Room 179, 6/23/1959. Photo by Emil W. Haury. Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Negatives 5359 and 5360. Prints by Helga Tewes. I always intended to include one of these photos with this paper.
The first file contains two photos of Hugh Cutler. The second is the chapter itself.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20210089
25 May 2022. I replaced the reprint with a better copy.
Recent Research On Tucson Basin Prehistory: Proceedings of the Second Tucson Basin Conference. William H. Doelle, Paul R. Fish, Linda Gregonis (1988) pp. 47 - 56, Institute for American Research Anthropological Papers No. 10, Tucson.
https://core.tdar.org/document/56677/recent-research-on-tucson-basin-prehistory-proceedings-of-the-second-tucson-basin-conference
Easy online Binomial Probability Calculator - https://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx
As mentioned on pages 486 - 487, the Snaketown results from Vorsila Bohrer's pioneering 1970 study stand out from later datasets. The Snaketown samples were screened through 1/16 mesh before they were floated. I still see occasional mentions of screening before floating, but this can skew the results, damaging fragile charred material. Rocks and large artifacts can be hand picked from the sample before floating, and smaller artifacts, shell, bone, etc. can be retrieved from the heavy fraction.
This report uses binomial probabilities to look at which collections have fewer or more occurrences of various taxa; an approach that I think should be used more often in archaeobotany.
In the Spring of 92 my daughter was born, I was teaching Mesoamerican Archaeology at UCSC, and I still managed to crank out a bunch of contract reports (7). I'm not quite sure how I managed that. Her mom was an Assistant Professor at UCSC, so we split the childcare pretty evenly. I did skip the conference circuit that year. My daughter had 3 automatic baby swings, one in my office, one in her mom's, and one at home. I brought her into work with me until she started roaming around and pulling the bookkeepers' binders off the shelf. After that I started working from home more often (she was in half time childcare).
Citation: The Verde Bridge Project: A View from the Float Tank. In Prehistoric and Historic Occupation of the Verde River Valley: The State Route 87 Verde Bridge Project. by Mark R. Hackbarth, pp. 311-338, Northland Research, Inc., Tempe, AZ.
I also used the "A View from the Float Tank" title in my Pulltrouser Swamp report.
Citation: Miksicek, Charles H. (1995) Canal Mollusks and Plant Remains. In Archaeology at the Head of the Scottsdale Canal System, Vol 3: Canal and Synthetic Studies, edited by M. R. Hackbarth, T. K. Henderson, and D. B. Craig, pp. 121-132, Northland Research, Inc., Anthropological Papers 95-1, Tempe, AZ.
Citation: Miksicek, Charles H. (1995) Interaction Within the McDowell-to-Shea Community: An Archaeobotanical Perspective. In Archaeology at the Head of the Scottsdale Canal System, Vol 2: Studies of Artifacts and Biological Remains, edited by T. K. Henderson and M. R. Hackbarth, pp. 185-200, Northland Research, Inc., Anthropological Papers 95-1, Tempe, AZ.
Full Reference: Archaeological Investigations of Portions of the Las Acequias - Los Muerteros Irrigation System: Testing and Partial Data Recovery within the Tempe Section of the Outer Loop Freeway System, Maricopa County, Arizona. ed by W. Bruce Masse. Cultural Resource Management Division, Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona. 1987. Archaeological Series 176. pp 169 - 187.
Two papers for the price of one.
Unfortunately we lost geomorphologist Keith L Katzer to a freak car accident in northern Nevada, while he was doing fieldwork, before this volume went to press. Keith could make the dirt sing, he is greatly missed.
Many archaeobotanists (and project directors) would have considered these float samples "unproductive" and would have only analyzed a small subset.
posted 6/19/17
In addition to my long association with Desert Archaeology, I was fortunate to work with Kathy Henderson of Northland Research multiple times. The first time was for the Marana Project when she was affiliated with Arizona State University. Being an independent consulting archaeobotanist, I was often included on proposals for companies bidding against each other. Since I was seldom privy to any confidential information, there really wasn't a conflict of interest.
Posting number 50, 6/24/17
I left the project when analysis was about 80% complete. Then Bob Gasser was hired to finish. When Bob left to fulfill other obligations, I was rehired to write the report.
Relatively few volumes of the Colinas report were ever printed and most of them wound up in a closet in the CRM Division. The rest of this volume can be found online at core.tdar.org.
Citation: 1993 Macrofossil Remains. In Archaeological Investigations at Los Guanacos: Exploring Cultural Changes in Late Hohokam Society. by Todd L. Howell, pp. 117-130. Northland Research, Inc., Tempe, AZ.
Citation: 1995 Archaeobotanical Analysis. In The Prehistoric Archaeology of Heritage Square by T. K. Henderson, pp. 166-171, Pueblo Grande Museum Anthropological Papers 3, Phoenix, AZ.
Citation: 1997 Archaeobotanical Remains from the Troon Site (AZ U:5:3). Technical report submitted to SWCA, Phoenix, AZ.
At the time I was calling my Consulting Archaeobotanical Practice "O.R.C.A. (Organic Remains and Charcoal Analysis)".
The Grewe Site is located just outside the boundaries of Casa Grande National Monument (see my Casa Grande Poor Preservation posting. A map is included with the Grewe Data posting).
https://www.archaeologysouthwest.org/pdf/arch-sw-v14-no3.pdf (a popular article on the Grewe Project)
Note: Casa Grande ("big house", singular) is located near Coolidge, AZ between Phoenix and Tucson. Casas Grandes ("big houses", plural or Paquime) is in northern Chihuahua, Mexico. This is always a potential source of confusion to folks outside of the American Southwest.
Reference: In Archaeology of the Ak Chin Indian Community West Side Farms Project: Subsistence Studies and Synthesis and Interpretation, 5. Robert E. Gasser, Christine K. Robinson, Cory Dale Breternitz. Soil Systems Publications in Archaeology ,9. Phoenix, Arizona: Soil Systems, Inc. 1990 ( tDAR id: 377924) ; doi:10.6067/XCV8K0755F
I also included a brief introduction to the project by Douglas Craig and Mark Hackbarth as well as Susan Smiths pollen report.
Sometimes it is just as import to publish our negative results as well as some of the more successful projects.
Full Reference: Prehistoric and Historic Land Use on the Florence Military Reservation, Pinal County, Arizona. edited by Douglas B. Craig and Mark R. Hackbarth. Anthropological Papers No 97-1, Northland Research, Inc. 1997, pp 121 - 124
The attached image is the Marana chile seed along with a modern chiltepine seed.
Miksicek, Charles H. (1987) Late Sedentary - Early Classic Period Hohokam Agriculture: Plant Remains from the Marana Community Complex. In Studies in the Hohokam Community of Marana. Ed by Glen E. Rice, pp 197 - 216 (chile pp 208 - 209). Anthropological Field Studies Number 15, Office of Cultural Resource Management, Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ.
Citation: Fish, Paul R., Suzanne K. Fish, John H. Madsen, Charles H. Miksicek, Christine R. Szuter (1992) The Dairy Site: Occupational Continuity on an Alluvial Fan. In The Marana Community in the Hohokam World. Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona No. 56, pp 64-72, Tucson.
This report was written in Arizona in 1987 and neither Owen or I had a chance to visit the sites and collect comparative material. Owen had been given a bunch of soil samples from Infotec for pollen analysis, which turned out to be negative. Owen knew I did flotation samples and asked me to look at that material. Having read some California ethnography, I was expecting a lot of acorns, but only found a few fragments. In retrospect the sites were quite obviously occupied before the prime nut gathering season.
A little over a year later, Owen and I did a second California project together, the sites in the Fresno area. This time we got to visit the sites. Similar results though, lot's of oak charcoal, few acorns.
For a more complete project description, see: Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology | Vol. 34, No. 2 (2014) | pp. 247–272 Takelma Prehistory: Perspectives from
Archaeology in the Elk Creek Dam Project in Southwest Oregon by RICK MINOR.
I also included a short report on a site in the Willamette Valley, my only other Oregon project.
Citation: Miksicek, Charles H.1994 Archaeobotanical Remains from Logtown (CA-ELD-851). Technical Report Submitted to Caltrans District 3, Marysville, CA.
Sometimes when you go through old computer files, you find reports you forgot you had written.
Reference: Archaeobotanical Remains from CA-MEN-2306 and CA-MEN-2307. Technical report submitted to San Jose State University, San Jose, CA. 1995
A short mention of the sites: Thomas N. Layton has been conducting archaeological and historical research in the DeHaven Valley drainage on the Mendocino coast, two miles north of Westport. Layton's earlier work sponsored by CDF (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection) at Three Chop Village led to the Frolic shipwreck
project and a continuing interest in Mendocino
County history. Fieldwork was conducted during the
summer of 1992 and additional fieldwork is scheduled for the summer of 1995. The project involves
oral history merged with archaeology examining an
entire community of a lumber mill town that was in
operation from mid 1880s to 1905. It includes interviews with a 103-year-old man who lived in the town.
The two house-pit village sites studied during this
project (CA-MEN-2306-2307) were both discovered
by RPF Brian Bishop who had recently completed
CDF's archaeological training course.
Society for California Archaeology Newsletter 29 ( 1) p 12, 1995
Wilder Ranch is now a California State Park. This site is also known as CA-SCR-38/123. The archaeobotanical assemblage from this site is very similar to Davenport Landing (CA-SCR-117) and Quiroste (CA-SMA-113, work by Rob Cuthrell).
I rather like my Table 4 which predicts (rather accurately I think) differences between "forager" and "collector" assemblages.
Citation: 1993 Plant Remains from Wilder Ranch (CA-SCR-123). Technical report submitted California Department of Parks and Recreation, Monterey, CA.
This paper focuses on plant remains identified from prehistoric levels at Wilder Ranch; an historic dairy, prehistoric site, and State Park north of Santa Cruz, CA. It came out of a pipeline trench monitoring project. It expanded to an analysis of previously excavated float samples from a project in the barn area of the ranch.
Locating this report was challenging as I no longer had a copy myself. I started looking through old 3 1/2" disk files - not there. Then I fired up my 35 year old Kaypro 84, CP/M, 64K, computer with 5 1/4" floppies, which really were "floppy". Surprisingly the computer still worked and most of the disks were still readable, but alas the file was not there either. Next I got in touch with two friends who worked as archaeologists for California State Parks - Rick Fitzgerald and Mark Hylkema. Mark was able to locate a copy. Thank you Mark and Rick
In Programmatic Treatment of Low Density Low Variability Flaked Stone Artifact Scatters and Isolated Bedrock Mortar Sites at Fort Hunter Liggett, Monterey County California: Program and Site Evaluation Results, 1993-1995. by Jefferson W. Haney and Terry L. Jones, Appendix D, Garcia and Associates, Submitted to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento District.
Jones, Terry L., 2003. Prehistoric Human Ecology of the Big Sur Coast. Contributions of the Archaeological Research Facility, No. 61.
Jones, T. L. (2003). Prehistoric Human Ecology of the Big Sur Coast. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4k06r15w accessed 4/19/19
Unlike many of my papers, which are chapters of contract reports, this one is an Appendix, so it has its own complete bibliography.
The whole reference for this report would be:
Miksicek, Charles H., 1997 In Archaeological Evaluation of CA-MNT-521, Fort Hunter Liggett, Monterey County, California. by Terry L. Jones and Jefferson W. Haney, Appendix IV, pp 267 - 284, Report Submitted to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento District, by GANDA (Garcia and Associates), Tiburon, CA.
Three radiocarbon dates from 790 - 3470 BP. https://www.canadianarchaeology.ca/sites/46520
https://www.canadianarchaeology.ca/sites/46215 (C14 dates)
Citation: 1991 Archaeobotanical Remains from 05-13-52-88 (CA-TUL-569). In Cultural Resources Inventory of the Proposed Divide Salvage Area, Tule River Ranger District, Sequoia National Forest. by B. P. Wickstrom and K. Roper Wickstrom, BioSystems Analysis, Inc., Santa Cruz, CA.
Moore et al (2008) from the USGS describe these basins as follows: "Meter-size granite basins are found in a 180-km belt extending south from the South Fork of the Kings River to Lake Isabella on the west slope of the southern Sierra Nevada, California. Their origin has long been debated. A total of 1,033 basins have been inventoried at 221 sites. The basins occur on bedrock granitic outcrops at a median elevation of 1,950 m. Median basin diameter among 30 of the basin sites varies from 89 to 170 cm, median depth is 12 to 63 cm. Eighty percent of the basin sites also contain smaller bedrock mortars (~1-2 liters in capacity) of the type used by Native Americans (American Indians) to grind acorns. Features that suggest a manmade origin for the basins are: restricted size, shape, and elevation range; common association with Indian middens and grinding mortars; a south- and west-facing aspect; presence of differing shapes in distinct localities; and location in a food-rich belt with pleasant summer weather. Volcanic ash (erupted A.D. 1240+-60) in the bottom of several of the basins indicates that they were used shortly before ~760 years ago but not thereafter. Experiments suggest that campfires built on the granite will weaken the bedrock and expedite excavation of the basins. The primary use of the basins was apparently in preparing food, including acorns and pine nuts. The basins are among the largest and most permanent artifacts remaining from the California Indian civilization." https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/sir20085210
Citation: An Assessment of the Archaeobotanical Potential of Deposits within the Coastal Branch Pipeline Right-of-Way at Santa Margarita (CA-SLO-586). In Preliminary Report on Archaeological Testing of CA-SLO-596 at Santa Margarita, California, for Coastal Branch, Phase II Project. by B. Wickstrom, J. Eidsness, T. Jackson, (1994) Appendix E, BioSystems Analysis, Inc., Submitted to California Department of Water Resources, Sacramento, CA.
Paper by Jones and Fitzgerald that mentions CA-SLO-1756: https://escholarship.org/content/qt5h9684sg/qt5h9684sg_noSplash_ef93d6568f03088f67bb15ae0325d25d.pdf (The Milling Stone Horizon Revisited: New Perspectives from Northern and Central California, 1999)
Citation: Framework for Archaeological Research and Management: National Forests of the North-Central Sierra Nevada. Unit II Forest Overviews, Volume B, Overview of the Prehistory of the Stanislaus National Forest. Charles Miksicek, Kristina Roper, Dwight Simons, Jennifer Farquhar, Karen Loeffler, Jeffrey Hall, Thomas L. Jackson, Robert J. Jackson. BioSystems Analysis, Inc., Santa Cruz, CA, report submitted to USDA Forest Service, Eldorado and Stanislaus National Forests, May 1996.
The second file is Table 5 (I couldn't get Mac Pages to handle a page with different margins in one file). It is similar to Table 1 in Turner and Miksicek 1984.
I am not quite sure why I haven't posted this before.
Citation: In Pulltrouser Swamp: Ancient Maya Habitat, Agriculture, and Settlement in Northern Belize. edited by B. L. Turner II and Peter D. Harrison. pp 94 - 104. University of Texas Press, Austin.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4254608
If you read between the lines of the team report pages 21 - 22, you get the impression that all was not copasetic among members of the botanical team. Perhaps in those days I could be a bit of a prima donna. About a year later I transferred from the General Biology Department to the Office of Arid Lands Studies at the University of Arizona. If you want to know more, just ask.
The "cf cacao seed" in the list of identified seeds should be corrected to Jack Bean, Canavalia.
I must be getting old if I forget papers that I had written. Found this one after I saw my name attached to a "new" publication from the summer of 2019 (it was the eBook release of this volume). Went to the Wash U Library, found this and thought, "I remember this one". A lot of credit goes to Paul Bloom for his excellent SEM photographs, especially the "Monkey Face" vascular bundles of the maize stem.
In all honesty I had forgotten I had done this one until I saw my name mentioned in connection with the announcement of the eBook publication of its followup - Ancient Maya Wetlands Agriculture: Excavations on Albion Island, Northern Belize, by Mary Pohl (1990), Westview Press. This chapter was mostly Mary's work, she just used some of the data I generated and the Economic Botany article I did with B. L. Turner. Now to head off to the library and see what the sequel looks like. (Now I think I remember that one, it had a blue and copper cover. I moved from Tucson to Knoxville to Santa Cruz before my copy caught up with me. I wonder what else is out there with my name on it that I don't know about? Actually it is a red, black, and white paperback.)
Reference: Pohl, Mary and Charles H. Miksicek (1985) Cultivation Techniques and Crops. in Prehistoric Lowland Maya Environment and Subsistence Economy ed by Mary Pohl, pp 9 - 20. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, vol 77, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
The lone sunflower achene got caught up in the later debate about the locus of domestication of sunflowers. see Lentz 2001 https://www.academia.edu/17166256/Prehistoric_sunflower_Helianthus_Annuus_L._domestication_in_Mexico and subsequent papers. The charred achene measured 3.4mm long x 2.4mm wide and my notes say it had a "thicker shell". I didn't do an exhaustive survey of other potential Heliantheae in the area and I didn't have the ability to do any microphotographs in the field. I leave it to future archaeobotanists to sort out this problem.
The original volume of the samples was quite small. My major conclusion in the typed field report dated 30 July 1979 was "In general the samples are tantalizing, suggestive of good preservation, but the original volume of soil saved for flotation was a little too small.
The "cacao" seed from Sample A of Structure 15-1 is problematic and may actually be Jack Bean or Canavalia. The two seeds are similar in size and shape, but the tightly folded "seed leaves" or cotyledons are unlikely to survive preservation by carbonization.
While in the field with the Cihuatan Project, I also analyzed some samples from Santa Leticia, Copan, and Chapernalito. That year I also worked with the Cuello Project in Belize and the first phase of Pulltrouser Swamp (the longer field season was in 1981).
We were quite excited by the "horno" near Structure 12-1, thinking it might indicate copper smelting. A cache of copper ore was also found at the site. Radiocarbon dates however suggest it dates to the early 1800's. Archaeologist Stanley Boggs suggested that it might actually be a still, and there is a Cihuatan brand Rum produced today. I am not sure why a still would have a blow pipe. The "oven" could have been used for both purposes.
I'm including this in my Mayan section, but it should be "Greater Mesoamerica"
The whole report is available at http://www.fundar.org.sv/referencias/kelley_1988.pdf
Cihuatan is one of the Mesoamerican sites that has produced "wheeled animal figurines / toys".
After I had reviewed the galley proofs and as I was putting the manuscript back into an envelope to send it back to Nature, I noticed that the typesetter had changed the "Belize" in the title to "Brazil". Fortunately I caught the error. That would have been embarrassing .
I am not sure why this post is duplicated.
CUELLO: Resolving the Chronology Through Direct Dating of Conserved and Low Collage Bone by AMS. I A Law, R A Housley, N Hammond, and R E M Hedges. 1991. Radiocarbon 33(3): 303 - 315
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/529568
The key to successful storage in a chultun is to pack the chamber as full as possible. Slowly respiring seeds (or roots) give off carbon dioxide which kills pests. That's why the maize kernels stored in a container survived.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/280117
4/10/2021 Reina and Hill published a response 2 years later which I had never seen before Reina, R., & Hill, II, R. (1983). Response to Miksicek, Elsesser, Wuebber, Bruhns, and Hammond. American Antiquity, 48(1), 128-131. doi:10.2307/279825
The Red Ramon from Tikal mentioned in the text is most likely Brosimum guianense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brosimum_guianense 9-14-2021 update.
Wood charcoal was a real challenge. There were so many potential species I needed to develop a systematic way of recording unknowns. Standard wood keys for temperate Europe and North America start with ring porous versus diffuse porous. In the seasonally dry tropics almost everything is diffuse porous with various types of parenchyma (storage tissue). I developed the digital coding system in Table 4.5 for recording the unknowns. Then I spent the next year in Art Gibson's plant anatomy lab at University of Arizona sectioning the 50 most common local woody species, mounting them on slides, and developing a taxonomic key. Little by little I attached names to the unknowns and added species as I visited other parts of Central America.
Today the Inside Wood Database would be a very useful tool for identifying unknown wood species:
https://insidewood.lib.ncsu.edu/search?1 - Searchable Database
https://brill.com/view/journals/iawa/32/2/article-p199_5.xml article about InsideWood
Even after 35 years, I have a nagging question about one of the seed taxa in Table 4.2 - "Hymenaea". At first I thought this might be cacao - Theobroma, but I realized that the tightly folded, deeply grooved cotyledons of cacao probably wouldn't survive carbonization, burial, and recovery is an easily recognizable form. We do have cacao charcoal from several levels at Cuello. After I worked at Cuello I spent the next decade analyzing float samples from the Hohokam area of southern Arizona. We would occasionally recover some very large leguminous seeds - Canavalia or jack bean (Hymenaea is a legume also). I became very familiar with Canavalia. Canavalia, with both edible seeds and pods is a minor crop from Mexico down to South America. The genus is distributed worldwide and the wild forms are often found in coastal tropical areas as a drift plant. Two species are cultivated in Japan. Jonathan Sauer and Lawrence Kaplan (1969) report prehistoric jack beans from Coxcatlan Cave - Tehuacan Valley, Gila Naquitz Cave – Oaxaca, and Dziblilchaltun - Yucatan. http://www.jstor.org/stable/277739 I wouldn't be at all surprised if these large - seeded legumes from Cuello didn't turn out to be Canavalia. added 4/8/2020 one cotyledon measures 13.6 x 9.5 x 4.2 mm, consistent with Jack Beans from the Southwest (data from my lab notes). I am pretty sure it is Canavalia. When I send these seeds to C Earle Smith, he thought they might be Hymenaea, even though he had already identified Canavalia from other Maya sites.
added 09 Jan 2021: If you read my section on the Cuello Chultunob (pp. 75 - 80) from the perspective of the "Anthropology of Food and Feasting", it seems quite possible that these rapidly deposited remains represent left-overs from feasts. Feature 87 also contained numerous deer, dog, armadillo, and magic toad (Bufo marinus) bones (Wing, Elizabeth S. and Sylvia J. Scudder, "The Exploitation of Animals" pp. 84 - 97, Cuello volume).
Reference: Miksicek, Charles H. 1991 The Natural and Cultural Environment of Preclassic Cuello. In Cuello: A Preclassic Maya Community in Belize, ed. by N. Hammond, pp. 70-84. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
In re-reading the report I noticed I didn't have any comparative information for the Havasupai. Perhaps someday I will post something about what I have learned about Havasupai and Hualapai maize from the Cutler - Anderson Corn Collection at Missouri Botanical Garden (Tropicos.org use Keywords Havasupai, Hualapai, or Corn Collection under "Collection Search"). See "Corn Collection Guide" below.
The photo of Havasupai Corn Diversity from a collection made by USDA Plant Explorer Guy N. Collins in 1936 is just a teaser.
Citation: 1978 Basketmaker III- Pueblo I Botanical Remains from Lupton, AZ. In The Painted Cliffs Rest Area. by A. Ferg, ASM Contribution to Highway Salvage Archaeology in Arizona No. 50, Tucson, AZ. pp. 143 - 153.
Complete reference:
Miksicek, Charles H. and Patricia L. Fall
1996 Wind Mountain Macrobotanical Plant Remains. in Mimbres Mogollon Archaeology by Anne I. Woosley and Allan J. McIntyre, Appendix 1, pp. 295 - 306. An Amerind Foundation Publication, Dragoon, AZ; University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM.
This paper was not actually presented at the Mogollon Conference held March 27-29, 1980 in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I was either on my way back, or had just returned from the 1980 Field Season in Cuello, Belize. I had submitted an abstract the previous fall intending to go to the conference. Will VanAsdall (my dissertation advisor at the time) did attend, but since he hadn't participated in the research, he had nothing to say. I wrote up this report later to be included in the Conference Volume. A longer version appeared in the Amerind Foundation report on the Wind Mountain Site.
Original manuscript titled "Palaeoethnobotany of a 14th Century Hopi Site: Homolovi II"
Citation: Miksicek, Charles H. (1985) Palaeoethnobotany of a 14th Century Hopi site: Homolovi II. In Excavation and Surface Collection of Homolovi II Ruin. ed. by Kelley Hays and E. Charles Adams, Appendix II. Archaeology Section, Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Tucson.
It was always an honor and privilege to work with the folks at Desert Archaeology. They always understood that plant remains could be just as valuable as ceramics and lithics for understanding prehistoric peoples.
I analyzed the first set of plant remains from the 1988 filed season. Marcia analyzed a second set from 1989 and then pulled together the final report.
The second file contains maps and chronological data.
Citation: 1995 Flotation Analysis. In The Historic Archaeology of Heritage Square by M. R. Hackbarth, pp. 231-240, Pueblo Grande Museum Anthropological Papers 2, Phoenix, AZ.
Citation: Plant Remains from the Gil Adobe (CA-MNT-963H). In Archeological Investigations at the José Maria Gil Adobe (CA-MNT-963H), Fort Hunter Liggett Military
Installation, California. by Rebecca Allen (1993), Appendix A, BioSystems Analysis, Inc. Submitted to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento District, Sacramento, California,
Contract No. DACA05-90-C0175.
link to historical marker https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=64416 (18 Dec 2020)
I sort of learned statistics backwards. At the time I wrote this report, I had been exposed to some basic statistics in other classes. Next I became deeply immersed in multivariate statistics through the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research at the University of Arizona. A few years later I took an actual survey course on statistics. My approach of trying to look at corn based on size categories was rather naive. I didn't understand the interplay between measurement error (an old vernier caliper with an accuracy of +/- 0.1 mm) and sampling interval. I didn't understand that differences in cob dimensions were more likely due to growing conditions (moisture, temperature, soil fertility) than residence group. For a better analysis of this data see "How to Measure a Corn Cob and Why Bother?". Also my sketch of the willow basketry fragment has way too many willow stems in the warp bundles. A Scientific Illustration class came later also. Oh well, we all have to start somewhere. At least the basic data is useful.
After multiple moves, some of them cross country, my archives aren't going to take up any space in a library somewhere. Trust me, the little correspondence I did wasn't very interesting or enlightening. At least I will have a few linear bytes on Academia, as long as it survives.
Citation: 1977 The potential of artifactual pollen washes for recovering environmental and subsistence data. with Diane McLaughlin, Society for American Archaeology, New Orleans, LA.
Diane deserves most of the credit for writing the manuscript. The flow chart at the end is pretty cool.
I still have reservations about phytoliths and taphonomy. If you compare early maize claims based on isolated phytoliths (or starch grains) with directly dated (TAMS) maize macrofossils, there are usually wide discrepancies. I do have a little more confidence in articulated phytoliths (multiple ones still stuck together).
Most of my career, I worked with plant remains from archaeological sites. In terms of contemporary ethnobotany, I worked with Navajo healers, Belizean snake doctors, dooryard gardens, traditional farmers, and "The Ethnobotany of Us".
I wanted to keep the file sizes small. Part 3 was personnel and qualifications. Part 4 was a summary of previous projects conducted by BioSystems Analysis. Parts 3 and 4 will not be posted. BioSystems Analysis existed from 1978 to 1996 and did cultural and natural resource management. Pacific Legacy spun off from BioSystems Analysis. Garcia and Associates took over BioSystems in 1996. Albion Environmental took over when Garcia and Associates closed its Santa Cruz, CA office.
The following are two versions on an eLetter I submitted to Science Advances 4/27/2020. One is a popular version posted on ello, the other is a slightly longer version of the eLetter itself.
Science Advances published my eLetter 04 June 2020 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/6/eaax0384/tab-e-letters
Still no response from the authors
Reference: Barton, C Michael, Federico Rubio Gomis, Charles H Miksicek (they got my middle initial wrong which I didn't notice until now), Douglas J. Donahue. (1990) 346: 518 - 519.
My own contribution to this post is rather minor pp 51 - 53. The original report was a bit longer. I didn't scan pp 40 - 47 on the Circus and the Baths. I did try an initial scan with 2 pages / view, but the text just wasn't readable by the time it was cropped and rotated. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first attempt to use flotation in Portugal.
In 1984 and 85 I spent two field seasons in Cyprus working at the Roman site of Kourion which was destroyed by a massive earthquake in 365 AD. Despite the earthquake there didn't seem to be an accompanying fire, at least in the part of the site where we worked, so we never really found good deposits for plant preservation. I did do a little work on wood preserved in the rust on iron nails.
One weekend we visited ongoing excavations at the Late Bronze Age site of Maa - Palaeokastro. I did notice some beautiful black deposits next to a building and I asked the field director if I could take a few samples to see if I could identify any plant remains. It's always nice if you can do a favor for the Director of Antiquities.
For those of you who don't know the Late Mycenaean Chronology for the eastern Mediterranean, I included a chart (Maa Chronology). In Classical archaeology dating is often based on stratigraphy, ceramics and architectural styles. The early 1980's saw the beginnings of the direct dating of cultigens and other annuals using Tandem Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (see the Tumamoc Corn paper). If nothing else this paper demonstrates that there are enough wheat kernels to provide better dating through TAMS.
Comparative Data that might be useful to someone.
These ears would fall into the "Southwestern Dents" group described in MAÍS (Maize of American Indigenous Societies) Southwest: Ear Descriptions and Traits that Distinguish 27 Morphologically Distinct Groups of 123 Historic USDA Maize (Zea mays L. spp. mays) Accessions and Data Relevant to Archaeological Subsistence Models
K. Adams, C. Canyon, +4 authors, D. A. Muenchrath 2006.
Information about the Alder Wash Site from Deni Seymour http://www.seymourharlan.com/My_Homepage_Files/Page66.html
I am not sure if I ever made the revisions Bruce suggested. I probably wrote this report just before I did the Gu Achi / Ventana project for Bruce.
Information about the Alder Wash Site from Deni Seymour http://www.seymourharlan.com/My_Homepage_Files/Page66.html
The report may be included in:
Masse, Bruce W., and Gayle Hartmann 1985 The Peppersauce Wash Project. Manuscript, Arizona State Museum Library, University of Arizona, Tucson.
I apologize for both the size of this file and the poor quality of the photographs. They are digital copies from 35mm slides. Back in 1987 when they were made, I didn't have a very good set-up for macro-photography. Do note that I always refer to it as cf. Capsicum.
The next step will be to get better images of the cf. chile seed and some other Solanaceae such as Physalis (tomatillo, groundcherry, or husk tomato) and Lycium (wolfberry or desert thorn) in both fresh and experimentally carbonized states. (doing that now 3/19/2020, charred and uncharred, various preparation methods)
The most recent file was added 02/25/2020 using a Leica Digital Microscope at the Washington University St Louis Paleoethnobotany Lab.
There's a problem with this seed, can you spot it? That cute little "fish mouth" seed attachment scar is supposed to be a Capsicum chinense trait. What gives? The pit it came from showed no signs of contamination. I haven't seen that trait in any of the annuum seeds I have looked at so far. My next step will be to look at more immature annuums to see if that trait changes with age. More to come. 04/05/2020 update - the "fish mouth" seems to be characteristic of a sprouting seed, no matter which species.
Reference: Standing Fall House: An Early Puebloan Storage and Redistribution Center in Northeastern Arizona. Anthony L. Klesert, The Kiva Vol. 48, No. 1/2 (Fall - Winter, 1982), pp. 39-61
http://www.jstor.org/stable/30246025?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
When I worked on the Sedentary Period site of Gu Achi for Bruce Masse, I took the opportunity to re-examine the corn from nearby Ventana Cave (Az Z:12:5) excavated by Emil Haury and Julian Hayden in 1941 and 1942. With extinct fauna and dates of 10,000 to 7,000 BP on the Volcanic Debris layer, I was hoping for Early Corn to rival Bat, Tularosa, and Coxcatlan Caves. All of the maize remains are uncharred and come from the "Dry Midden". The "Dry Midden" is poorly dated and the maize remains could date from around 500 AD to Historic Times. It might be worthwhile to go back and directly date a sample of corn someday. The Ventana maize cobs are in the collections of Arizona State Museum. The O'odahm corn was collected by G N Collins in October 1914 from Indian Oasis on the O'odahm Reservation. It was part of the USDA Corn Collection at Missouri Botanical Garden in the late 1970's when I measured it. This collection was relocated after Hugh Cutler's retirement to the University of Illinois Crop Evolution Laboratory.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1220710?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.
The modern Chapalote kernels came from CIMMYT, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.
Ventana Corn Phote Caption:
A and B, Lower D II-2
C and D, G II-3
D and F, Tassel Ears
E and F Upper C I
G N5
H Upper C i
I and J kernels cut or scraped from cob, Lower C I
errata added 1/30/2019. In the course of writing up the SNI-38 results I was able to come up with better identifications of several of the categories. "Bulb" and "Tuber" should be merged into "Corm" which is most likely Dichlostemma (Blue Dicks, or Wild Hyacinth) based on a comparison of my lab notes with a figure in Gill (2016). "Bulblet" should be changed to "Cormlet" also most likely Dichlostemma.
Gill, Kristina M
2016. 10,000 Years of Geophyte Use among the Island Chumash of the Northern Channel Islands. Fremontia 44( ): pp 34 - 38 https://www.academia.edu/33900487/10_000_YEARS_OF_GEOPHYTE_USE_AMONG_THE_ISLAND_CHUMASH_OF_THE_NORTHERN_CHANNEL_ISLANDS accessed Jan 2019
Economic Botany, 74(4), 2020, pp. 471–472
Book Reviews - Economic Botany, Vol 74(2): 246 - 247
This was an official, sanctioned, publication for an internal, employee, newsletter from the Office of Media and Communications. It was about the only thing I was allowed to write during this period other than an ungodly number of monthly reports whose major function seemed to be to get a check on some list up in Sacramento - "submitted". We were constantly reminded that, even off duty, we were still representatives of EDD. We were always told to only refer all media inquiries to the Media and Communications folks in Sacramento who would deliver some sanitized statement devoid of any information value. After 30 years of publishing reports in archaeology and often dealing with the media myself, this was hard for me to do, especially during the Great Recession of 2009 - 2013 (officially 2007 - 2009). The latest "Jobs Report" or economic bombshell would drop and local members of the fourth estate would rush to the Career Center for a comment or local perspective, only to be sent to the Sacramento Office who were often deluged, hard to reach, and busy crafting their latest, carefully worded, but vague statement.
"Off the Record", I didn't always strictly comply with this guideline. Maybe that's why they never let me become a manager.
Unfortunately with directives from Washington to reduce over-crowding in California Prisons, and budget and staffing cuts due to the Great Recession, this fairly successful and relatively inexpensive program was dropped. Oh well, I got a fairly decent pension and good health benefits when I retired from EDD in 2016. Maybe I even helped change a few lives for the better, along the way.
Collage 18" x 12", 2016
With some of my influences - Edgar Anderson (upper left), Paul Martin (center left), Hugh Cutler (upper right), Gary Nabhan (lower right). I started this journey in the Saturday morning kid's classes at Shaw's Garden (Missouri Botanical Garden - lower left) and thanks to my mom, a former farm girl and avid gardener. Some of my favorite plants - corn, chiles, agave, cacao, chanterelles, and durian. I'm still searching for mangosteen. Some of my other art work may be viewed at https://ello.co/ccruzme
Trying to figure something out? Do a collage!
https://ello.co/ccruzme/post/hwxnuo7txhaeo9m9qtifuw
http://www.thebrautiganlibrary.org/download/miksicek-puppy-dreams.pdf
The continuing adventures of Dolly sometimes show up on
https://ello.co/ccruzme search #Dolly (or they did until ello folded)
Rather than send folks to the Brautigan Library, I decided to upload the whole document with the Dedication which isn't in the Brautigan version
12/3/23 update. I noticed Disney did a series "Puppy Dreams" in 2020, with a character Dolly, and "Space Pups" and "Jurassic Pups" episodes - curious . . .
This project was background research for the preparation of a "Framework for Archaeological Research and Management in the North-Central Sierra". We had access to a lot of obsidian hydration data and I wondered what kind of patterns we could find if we put it all together in a single database. In 1993 this was "big data"; about the limit of what we could handle on a desk top computer. I never did cut, polish, or read a single obsidian hydration sample, but I did run our XRF machine for analyzing obsidian and basalt samples. I also played around with calibrating the XRF machine to look at trace elements in other materials - bone, ceramics, plant ash, volcanic ash etc.
This study was the basis for the obsidian hydration profiles in my "California as a Testing Ground . . . " post.
A more complete version of this study is in: Jackson, R J, Jackson, T J, Miksicek, C, Roper, K, and Simons, D (1994) Framework for Archaeological Research and Management: National Forests of the North-Central Sierra Nevada. Unit III: Special studies and research data. Santa Cruz: Biosystems Analysis. Tracking down a copy will be challenging - the problems of grey literature.
Some of the other Framework information is available at: https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsm91_057359.pdf - Overview of the Prehistory of the Stanislaus National Forest. Kristina Roper wrote most of that chapter.
I joined BioSystems in December 1990. Pacific Legacy broke off in 1995 and became its own company. John Garcia (a founding partner of BioSystems) took it over in 1996 and it became GANDA (Garcia and Associates). It was then that we shipped our SpecTrace off to Craig Skinner at Northwest Research Obsidian Studies Lab.