Istwa Nou

Plaque hardens on teeth and traps particles of whatever the person was eating. Centuries later, starch grains can be recovered from that calculus and identified by species. H. L. Mickleburgh and J. R. Pagán-Jiménez applied the technique to human remains from across the pre-Columbian Caribbean and found maize in quantities well beyond what the older evidence suggested. Older evidence meant seeds, cobs and other plant remains large enough to survive in the ground and be spotted during excavation, which favours some crops and loses others entirely. A method that reads the mouth instead of the midden gives a different account of the diet, and the diet is the foundation of everything else. Late Ceramic Age chiefdoms needed a food supply capable of feeding people who were not farming, and maize on this scale helps explain how that was managed. Scholarship describing these societies as thinly provisioned was working from whatever the sieve happened to catch.