The farmed and the hunted: Integrating floral and faunal data from tres Zapotes, Veracruz

The many case studies in this volume have addressed the integration of plant and animal data in myriad ways. As the final case study, this chapter picks up where the methods chapter on multivariate analysis left off (VanDerwarker, Chapter 5, this volume; see also Hollenbach and Walker, this volume), using principle components analysis to consider the covariation of paleoethnobotanical and zooarchaeological data from the Formative Mesoamerican site of Tres Zapotes. Our primary question regarding the Tres Zapotes dataset is: Did different social status groups eat different foods, and if so, what were they eating (in both type and quantity) and why do these differences occur? Addressing this question requires a consideration of both temporal and spatial patterns in the faunal and floral data. These data span the Formative period as defined for southern Veracruz, Mexico (1400 bc-ad 300); we discuss site chronology in more detail later. In addition to time, we aggregate our data based on social context, with reference to the following categories: elite domestic and administrative areas, referred to as elite; ceremonial and/or mortuary deposits, referred to as ceremonial; and nonelite domestic deposits, referred to as domestic. It is these contextual categories on which we base our present analysis and interpretations.