Basic Species Information
Multiple species of Cucurbita underwent domestication in the Americas (e.g., Sanjur et al. 2002). The most significant group of crop plants is descended from Cucurbita pepo, including pumpkins, acorn–summer squashes, marrow, and zucchini. Today, these vegetables have multilayered cultural associations and significance in the regions around the world in which they are grown.
The reconstruction of the processes involved in the early stages of domestication of Cucurbita pepo is complex. However, several key stages of early domestication in the Americas have been documented archaeobotanically and, together with genetic data (e.g., Decker-Walters et al. 1993; Sanjur et al. 2002), suggest multiple “independent” domestication events.
Major Domestication Traits
The archaeobotany of squash domestication has been based on macrobotanical remains of rind fragments, fruit stems or peduncles, and seeds (Smith 2006). Wild and cultivated forms of Cucurbita pepoare...
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References
Decker-Walters, D.S., T.W. Walters, C.W. Cowan, and B.D. Smith. 1993. Isozymic characterisation of wild populations of Cucurbita pepo. Journal of Ethnobiology 13: 55–72.
Dillehay, T., J. Rossen, T.C. Andres, and D.E. Williams. 2007. Preceramic adoption of peanut, squash and cotton in northern Peru. Science 316: 1890–1893.
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Fritz, G.J. 2007. Keepers of Louisiana’s levees: Early mound builders and forest managers. In Rethinking agriculture: Archaeological and ethnoarchaeological perspectives, ed. T.P. Denham, J. Iriarte, and L. Vrydaghs, 189–209. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
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Piperno, D.R., and K.E. Stothert. 2003. Phytolith evidence for early Holocene Cucurbita domestication in Southwest Ecuador. Science 299: 1054–1057.
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Sanjur, O., D.R. Piperno, T.C. Andres, and L. Wessel-Beaver. 2002. Phylogenetic relationships among domesticated and wild species of Cucurbita (Cucurbitaceae) inferred from a mitochondrial gene: Implications for crop plant evolution and areas of origin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 99: 535–540.
Smith, B.D. 1997. The initial domestication of Cucurbita pepo in the Americas 10,000 years ago. Science 276: 932–934.
Smith, B.D. 1998. The emergence of agriculture. New York: Scientific American Library.
Smith, B.D. 2000. Guilá Naquitz revisited. In Cultural evolution: Contemporary viewpoints, ed. G. Feinman and L. Manzanilla, 15–59. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Smith, B.D. 2006. Seed size increase as a marker of domestication in squash (Cucurbita pepo). In Documenting domestication: New genetic and archaeological paradigms, ed. M.A. Zeder, D.G. Bradley, E. Emshwiller, and B.D. Smith, 25–31. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Further Reading
Zeder, M.A., E. Emshwiller, B.D. Smith, and D.G. Bradley. 2006. Documenting domestication: The intersection of genetics and archaeology. Trends in Genetics 22: 139–155.
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Denham, T. (2020). Squash: Origins and Development. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30018-0_2186
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