Science and Technology Production
Congress
Authorship
Capparelli, Aylen
;
LEMA, VERONICA SOLEDAD
;
Giovannetti, Marco Antonio
;
Raffino, Rodolfo
Date
2004
Summary
Information provided by the agent in
SIGEVA
Crops were the most important subsistence element that allow the developing and evolution of social complexity. Since the origin of agriculture they were vinculated to the most important civilizations; rice in the Far East; wheat and barley in the Middle and Near East; millium and sorghum in Africa; maize, beans and squash in Meso and Andean América, among others, are some examples. The contact between Old and New World after Columbus voyages allowed the exchange of many domesticated pla...
Crops were the most important subsistence element that allow the developing and evolution of social complexity. Since the origin of agriculture they were vinculated to the most important civilizations; rice in the Far East; wheat and barley in the Middle and Near East; millium and sorghum in Africa; maize, beans and squash in Meso and Andean América, among others, are some examples. The contact between Old and New World after Columbus voyages allowed the exchange of many domesticated plants. American maize, tomato, potato and quinoa, have had an enormous impact on the Old World (Crosby 1972). Simultaneously there has been a diffusion of Old World plants and animals to America. It is well known that diffusion of cultivated plants represented changes in economic, social, political and even religious aspects of the local society where a new plant is introduced (see for example Plotnicov and Scaglion 1999). In the case of the Spanish colonies of South America this diffusion was merged into a strong desestructuration process, made through the exploitation, appropriation of the land (a source o precious metals) and corralling, on the aboriginal populations. Aborigines where for example induced to leave some habits for others (from being hunther-gatherers to being agriculturalists in some cases) more convenient for the conquerors, or to produce European crops more than maize in order to supply the Spaniard cuisine. But not only political situation is important to describe the process of plant diffusion, but also local perceptions of the new plants, a variable that is depending of the circulation context, function and meaning of each material element in each local cosmovision (cita????). It is well known that the first person who arrived at the NW of Argentina was D. de Almagro in 1536, a Spaniard who passed through this region along his way to Chile. After that, Spaniards from Peru and Chile competed between them and fought versus the local aborigines for appropriating their land. The first three villages founded by Spaniards were Barco (1550 AD) in the modern province of Tucumán, Santiago del Estero (1553) in the modern province of the same name; and Londres de Quimivil (1558) in the modern Province of Catamarca. It was believed for a long time that the first Europenas crops were introduced to the NW in 1550 AD, and that the aborigines incorpored them to their subsistence cuasi passively. However, the introduction of European crops and the routes that they have followed after that, as well as their production and consumption have been poorly studied in Argentina. Báez´s papers (Báez 1947, 1948), for example, are the first to determine wheat crops during the Colonial era, but their ethnohistorical references are incomplete and very imprecise. It is considered in this paper that the recovering of wheat, barley and peach from El Shincal (an Inka Administrative Centre) is an important contribution to this subject because of the following four reasons: 1- they are the first archaeological evidence of these European crops for Argentina, and the oldest evidence of European crops in general, 2- archaeological record of El Shincal linked the Inka occupation with the local inhabitants during the Historical-aboriginal period through the persistent use of the Ushno as a ceremonial place, 3- the site is closely related with one of the first three villages founded by Spaniards in the NW Argentina, Londres de Quimivil (1558); and 4-the context of this remains was dated C14 1640 AD corresponing to the Hispanic-aboriginal Period. From El Shincal evidence new interrogants appeared, some of which are boarding here. So then, this paper intend to analyse who brought the first wheat, barley and peach to the study region (the Tucumán Government from an historical perspective), as well as where were they seed and which routes could they follow after that. This analisys is made by taking in account archaeobotanical and ethnohistorical evidence. However, as it is considered that crop diffusion is not a simple but a complex process, other different aspects of this subject will be evaluate to interpret El Shincal record. For example, which could have been the possible ways for local people to obtain European crops and the significance of the ritual evidence. Finally, it is worth mention that the term “European crops” refers here to “that plants that were brought to South América by the Europeans” and does not implicate that they have an European origin. For example, while wheat and barley started to be part of the subsistence system of the people of the Iberic Peninsule from the Neolithic (8000 BP??), peach was from the Roman Period (Buxó 1997); but all together already played an important role in the Spanish cuisine by the time Spaniards came to the NW Argentina.
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