New study helps resolve one of South American archaeology’s longest-running debates: the role of maize in precolonial societies. Evidence reveals that large villages in central Brazil were supported by polyculture maize farming while neighboring societies maintained diversified food production strategies.
To the Point:
- Maize-based polyculture: Large precolonial villages in the Brazilian Cerrado relied on diversified maize farming systems, not just hunter-gathering or intensive monoculture agriculture.
- Research methods: Scientists used isotopes from teeth and bones, radiocarbon dating, and archaeobotanical evidence from 37 sites to reconstruct diets during the Late Holocene with precision.
- Agricultural innovation: The study challenges previous views by showing maize was part of resilient, diversified food systems combining domesticated and wild plants.
For decades, researchers have debated the subsistence strategies of precolonial societies of the Brazilian Cerrado (tropical savanna): were they hunter-gatherers or intensive maize farmers, and in either case, how did they organize themselves and interact with the land they inhabited? This week, a study published in Science Advances provides the first large-scale direct evidence to answer these questions. The evidence shows that while some populations relied on diverse plants, maize farming played a central role for others. But rather than practicing intensive monoculture, these communities developed diversified maize-based polyculture systems.
Eliane Chim selecting samples for stable isotope analysis
© Mariane Pereira Ferreira
“For many years, the Cerrado debate focused on two extremes: highly mobile foraging or intensive sedentary farming,” says Eliane Chim, lead author of the study. “Instead, we found that some societies depended heavily on maize grown within diversified agricultural systems capable of sustaining large villages. This fundamentally changes our understanding of Indigenous food production and settlement in central Brazil.”
The researchers analyzed stable carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen isotopes from the teeth and bones of more than 100 individuals recovered from 37 archaeological sites across the Cerrado, Caatinga and Atlantic Forest biomes. Combined with new radiocarbon dates from human bone collagen, faunal isotope baselines, archaeobotanical evidence and palaeoecological records, the study reconstructs diets across the region during the Late Holocene with chronological precision.
Aratu funerary urn with its lid, referred to in Portuguese as an ‘opérculo.’ Excavation at Vale Verde site, Bahia Brazil
© Luydy Fernandes
The isotope evidence shows that people associated with the open-air villages obtained a substantial proportion of their diet from maize, whereas contemporaneous populations living in nearby rock shelters consumed much more diverse foods and showed little evidence of intensive maize use. Because these groups occupied similar environments, the differences cannot be explained by ecology alone. Instead, they reveal the coexistence of distinct cultural traditions and economic strategies across the region.
“These results challenge broader ideas about how agriculture developed in tropical South America,” says Prof. Patrick Roberts, director of the Department of Coevolution of Land Use and Urbanisation at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. “Our findings show that maize was part of resilient polycultural food-production systems that combined domesticated crops with wild plants and local ecological knowledge.”
The findings also place the Cerrado alongside the Amazon as a major centre for understanding Indigenous innovation before European colonization.
Aratu funerary urn. Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Universidade de São Paulo
© Mauricio de Paiva
“The Cerrado has often been overshadowed by the Amazon in discussions of precolonial land use,” says Prof. André Strauss of the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at the University of São Paulo (Brazil). “Our findings demonstrate that it was also a centre of innovation, where different societies developed distinct ways of interacting with one of the world’s most biodiverse tropical landscapes.”
Beyond archaeology, the research contributes to understanding the long history of human influence on one of the world’s richest tropical savannas, highlighting sustainable land-use strategies that helped shape Cerrado landscapes for centuries. These findings contribute not only to refining our understanding of past food production but also contribute to contemporary discussions on biodiversity conservation, Indigenous knowledge, and the long-term management of tropical ecosystems.
