Cultivating, Farming, and Food Containers: Reflections on Formative Subsistence and Intensification in the Southern Gulf Coast Lowlands

Abstract

Robert S. Santley was known for his studies of obsidian exchange and Teotihaucan influence in Mesoamerica. He also was a student of tropical agriculture and a practitioner of innovative survey methods. In 1992 Santley published a study of Formative period (1500-500 BC) agriculture and settlement in the Sierra de los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, Mexico. His model linked land use and food preparation practices to ceramic vessel use. He compared the food production model to the distribution of Early and Middle Formative ceramics from village contexts in the central Tuxtlas. Today, the study suggests amplification of Boserup's (1965) scheme of agricultural intensification anda reassessment of the terms horticulture and agriculture in tropical lowland contexts. Santley's work resonates well with recent research on agriculture and settlement in southern Veracruz and the variable role of wild and cultivated food resources among Olmec and pre-Olmec societies of the Gulf Coast lowlands.