Each hand-shaped planting bed was about three feet wide and two feet high -- about 10 times larger than traditional planting beds for corn -- although the lengths of the rows are still unknown, he said. Each manioc stalk, or cutting, had been carefully placed in the ground with a growth "node" pointing toward the surface to generate a new bush and several nodes pointing down to generate the edible tubers and regular roots, he said.
Archaeologists had suspected ancient Mayans had cultivated and consumed manioc for its high-energy value, he said. Also known as cassava, manioc provides one of the highest yields of food energy per acre per day of any cultivated crop in the world.
The CU-Boulder team is working with scientists at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., to develop new soil-analysis techniques to detect starch grains like those from manioc that will work at a wide range of archaeological sites, said Sheets.
"We don't want to find out that Ceren was unique in manioc cultivation," said Sheets. "We hope archaeologists eventually find evidence for this kind of activity at sites throughout the region. From an archaeological standpoint, there are few things as important as discovering the sources of day-to-day subsistence for ancient cultures."
The team also included CU-Boulder anthropology graduate students Christine Dixon and Adam Blanford, geology graduate student Monica Guerra and archaeological geophysicist Larry Conyers. Conyers is a University of Denver faculty member who had worked at Ceren and received his CU-Boulder doctorate under Sheets in 1995.
Sheets and his colleagues previously determined the eruption at Ceren occurred on an early August evening because of the height of corn stalks and the fact that the farming implements had been brought inside but the sleeping mats had not yet been rolled out.
Thus far 12 buildings at Ceren -- believed to have been home to several hundred people -- have been excavated, including living quarters, storehouses, workshops, kitchens, religious buildings and a community sauna. Several dozen other structures located with ground-penetrating radar remain buried under up to 17 feet of ash, said Sheets.
Although the absence of human remains at Ceren initially puzzled scientists, the 1993 discovery that an earthquake rocked the site just prior to the eruption indicated the villagers might have had just enough warning to flee. "They did not even have time to remove their most valued belongings," said Sheets.
Preservation of organic materials at Ceren -- including thatched roofs, house beams, woven baskets, cloth and grain caches -- has been deemed superior to the organic preservation at the Italian site of Pompeii, by archaeologists and vulcanologists who have visited the Salvadoran site from around the world.
Located 15 miles west of San Salvador, the Ceren project involves scores of experts from the United States and El Salvador, including dozens of CU students and faculty. Past research at Ceren also has been funded by the National Science Foundation.
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Adapted from materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder.
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MLA University of Colorado at Boulder (2007, August 24). First Ancient Manioc Fields In Americas Discovered. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 5, 2008, from
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