Maize for the Gods : unearthing the 9,000-year history of corn / Michael Blake.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Blake, Michael, 1953- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Corn--History.

Corn.

History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 266 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Other Title:

Unearthing the 9,000-year history of corn

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2015]

Summary:

"Maize is the world's most productive food and industrial crop--grown in more than 160 countries and on every continent except Antarctica. Maize for the Gods brings together new research by archaeologists, archaeobotanists, plant geneticists, and a host of other specialists as they trace the history of Maize, exploring the complex ways that this single plant and the peoples who domesticated it came to be inextricably entangled with one another over the past nine millennia. From Maize's first appearance and domestication in ancient campsites and settlements in Mexico to its intercontinental journey throughout most of North and South America, this history is also the story of the artistic creativity, technological prowess, and social, political, and economic resilience of America's first peoples."--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

The archaeology of Maize

The place of Maize in (agri)cultural origin stories

Old puzzles and new questions about Maize's origins and spread

Timing is everything: dating Maize

Maize through a magnifying glass: macro-remains

Maize through a microscope: micro-remains

Elemental Maize: tracing Maize isotopically

Genetically modified Maize; the old way: by agriculture1

Daily tools and sacred symbols.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780520276871

0520276876

9780520286962

0520286960

OCLC:

898161602