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Shedding Light on the Nightshades (Solanaceae) Used by the Ancient Maya: a Review of Existing Data, and New Archeobotanical (Macro- and Microbotanical) Evidence from Archeological Sites in Guatemala

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Abstract

Numerous taxa within the Solanaceae family are economically important today, and for New World taxa such as chilies and tomatoes, their histories are particularly well documented. What remains less clear, however, is the extent of nightshade used by the ancient Maya. This article reviews the ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archeological evidence of some of the major taxa in this large family, as well as providing new archeobotanical evidence in the form of macro- and microbotanical remains from Maya sites in northwestern Petén, Guatemala. This new evidence sheds additional light on the Solanaceae used by the ancient Maya in both domestic and ritual contexts. The absence of certain taxa in this family in the archeobotanical record of this region does not necessarily imply that these were not used in the past. Instead, it indicates that systematic collection of samples needs to be implemented if archeologists are to fully characterize past plant use among the ancient Maya.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank David Freidel, Juan Carlos Perez, Marcello Canuto, and Tomas Barrientos for facilitating working at El Peru-Waka’ and La Corona, and for the Dirección General del Patrimonio Cultural y Natural de Guatemala for issuing export permits. Gayle Fritz, David Lentz, Deborah Pearsall, and Ruth Dickau were instrumental with initial help with identifications. Olivia Navarro Farr, Griselda Robles Perez, Damaris Menendez, Jocelyne Ponce, and Divina Perla kindly provided access to the archeobotanical samples, and Juan Carlos Melendez kindly helped with the figures. I am also grateful to the reviewers whose thoughtful comments improved this manuscript.

Funding

Parts of this research were made possible by a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant by the National Science Foundation (#1212559), and writing was supported by a Fyssen Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2016–2017).

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    Clarissa Cagnato

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Cagnato, C. Shedding Light on the Nightshades (Solanaceae) Used by the Ancient Maya: a Review of Existing Data, and New Archeobotanical (Macro- and Microbotanical) Evidence from Archeological Sites in Guatemala. Econ Bot 72, 180–195 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-018-9412-8

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