As part of ongoing research into origins and development of agriculture in the New World, Assoc. Professor Gayle Fritz has recently measured the coats of 3,000-year old amaranth seeds (including the specimen on the left) from Cerro Juanaquena in Chihuahua, Mexico. On the right, a modern amaranth seed is illustrated for comparison. Results were recently presented in:
Gayle Fritz, Karen Adams, Robert Hard, John Roney (1999) Evidence for cultivation of Amaranthus sp. at Cerro Juanaquena, Chihuahua Mexico. Paper presented at 22nd Annual Meeting of the Soc. for Ethnobiology, Oaxaca City.
Research by Fritz on another early crop - Cucurbita pepo ssp. ovifera - will appear in the July, 1999 issue of American Antiquity. Its title is: "Gender and the Early Cultivation of Gourds in Eastern North America."