Nonagricultural Cultivation and Social Complexity

Abstract

Early civilization has been envisioned as a child of agriculture, a product of the Neolithic revolution proposed by V. Gordon Childe. However, archaeological and ethnographic records worldwide are replete with complex hunter-gatherers who rely on both wild and domesticated resources. Researchers now recognize that mixed or largely nonagricultural subsistence practices frequently supported sedentary groups and larger complex societies before agriculture dominated subsistence around the world. This article builds on a mixed/nonagricultural model proposed by several authors for one of Mesoamerica’s earliest complex societies, the Early Formative Olmec (1200–400 BC) of Mexico’s southern Gulf Coast lowlands. Presentation of the nonagricultural model seeks to expand the lexicon of early subsistence in the tropical lowlands and introduces mixed subsistence hunter-fisher-gardeners for the early Gulf Coast lowlands in the millennia before the Olmec proper. Paleobotanical evidence of maize and Early Formative artifact assemblages are examined for goodness of fit with the mixed model at the Formative Olmec centers of San Lorenzo Tenochtilan and La Venta and related sites in Veracruz and Tabasco, Mexico. Available data strongly recommend further testing of the nonagricultural model in the southern Gulf Coast lowlands and beyond.