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The prehistoric drug trade: Widespread consumption of cacao in Ancestral

Pueblo and Hohokam communities in the American Southwest

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Journal of Archaeological Science 38 (2011) 1634e1640

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Archaeological Science

journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jas

The prehistoric drug trade: widespread consumption of cacao in Ancestral Pueblo

and Hohokam communities in the American Southwest
Dorothy K. Washburn a, *, William N. Washburn b, *, Petia A. Shipkova c
a
American Section, University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA 19104, USA
b
Metabolic Disease, Pharmaceutical Research Institute, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, NJ 08543, USA
c
Analytical Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Research Institute, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, NJ 08543, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: We propose the existence of extensive trade and interaction among the peoples of the American
Received 30 December 2010 Southwest and Mesoamerica. We base this inference on our detection of the widespread presence of
Received in revised form theobromine, the biomarker for cacao, in 50 of 75 vessels used by Ancestral Puebloans (previously
22 February 2011
referred to as Anasazi) elites and non-elites from the Four Corners area and Hohokam elites of the Gila
Accepted 24 February 2011
and Salt river valleys in the prehistoric American Southwest. We used a non-invasive, non-destructive
aqueous sampling procedure that provides conservation advantages over the current methods that
Keywords:
require crushing and boiling sherds or removing residues from vessel surfaces. Analysis of these samples
Detection of theobromine
Cacao consumption
by sensitive LC-MS instrumentation capable of detecting nanogram quantities of material revealed
Mesoamerica theobromine in non-local vessel forms found in elite burials in great house and platform mound sites as
American Southwest well as in local vessel forms used by non-elites living in small unit-pueblos. After elimination of plants
Cylinder jars native to the Southwest as the source of theobromine, we conclude that either Theobroma cacao or
Cacao/turquoise trade Theobroma Bicolor was imported from its homeland in the Mesoamerican tropical coastal lowlands. Our
results are at odds with the current consensus that there was little systematic commerce between
Mesoamerican and Southwestern polities. We suggest that cacao was exchanged for high quality
turquoise such as that mined in the Cerrillos, New Mexico mining district. We conclude that, far from
being isolated developmentally, this trade integrally tied populations in the American Southwest to the
socio-political and economic activities of Mesoamerican states.
Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
One of the perennial issues in American archaeology is the nature
and extent of the influence of Mesoamerican states on the devel-
opment of Southwestern cultural traditions. Southwestern archae-
ologists have long insisted that Mesoamerican traits such as core and
veneer masonry, ballcourts, platform mounds, macaws and copper
bells in southwestern sites appeared as the result of diffusion or
down-the-line trade. The consensus is that the major Southwestern
traditions developed sui generis, largely unaffected by activities of
the great states in Mesoamerica (Feinman, 1991; Mathien, 2005;
Nelson, 2006).
If, however, the full trajectory of Southwestern prehistory is
examined, the periodic influxes of these “foreign” assemblages appear
* Corresponding authors. þ1 609 737 7451.
E-mail addresses: dkwashburn@verizon.net (D.K. Washburn), william_washburn@
bms.com (W.N. Washburn), petia_shipkova@bms.com (P.A. Shipkova).
in distinct relief to the long, slow growth of the small village corn
lifeway that dominated the prehistory of the American Southwest.
The periods of stasis and change that punctuate this history are clearly
illustrated in a 1000-year study of the continuities and changes in the
symmetrical organization of designs that decorate ceramic vessels
made in the northern southwest e trends that correlate closely with
periods of major architectural and environmental change (Washburn
et al., 2010, Fig. 4).
Notable in this trajectory dominated by vessels decorated with
bands of one-dimensional designs is the brief but significant
appearance of a completely different design system in the 10th
century. Two-dimensional symmetries such as p2 (Fig. 1a,c) are
used repeatedly to construct a small repertoire of patterns that
were painted on a set of non-local vessel formsdcylinder jars,
vertical-necked, sharp-shouldered pitchers and shallow bowls
(Washburn, in press). These vessels were especially associated with
elite burials in Pueblo Bonito, the central site in a complex of
masonry great houses built along the Chaco Wash in Chaco Canyon,
northwestern New Mexico. Neither this symmetry, nor the vessel

0305-4403/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jas.2011.02.029
 Author's personal copy
D.K. Washburn et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 38 (2011) 1634e1640
Fig. 1. Three non-local vessel forms associated with elite consumption of cacao at Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. (Left) Cylinder jar H/3242, (Center) pitcher H/2277,
(Right) bowl H/3207. American Museum of Natural History, New York.
forms, nor the multi-storied sandstone masonry great houses in
which they are found have antecedents in the northern Southwest.
Iconographic, epigraphic and textual evidence indicate that
cacao, native to the Mesoamerican tropics (Bergmann, 1969), was
widely prepared and consumed in prehistoric Mesoamerica in
cylinder jars, bottles, pitchers, bowls and plates (McNeil, 2006). A
number of chemical assays have detected theobromine, the
biomarker for cacao, in residues from Mayan cylinder jars, bowls,
bottles and platters (Hall et al., 1990; Henderson et al., 2007; Hurst
et al., 2002; McNeil et al., 2006; Powis et al., 2002; Prufer and Hurst,
2007). Based on the above evidence, detection of theobromine in
these Mayan vessels has been equated with cacao consumption.
Prompted by the recent find of theobromine in 3 of 5 sherds from
a trash mound near Pueblo Bonito that was assumed to indicate cacao
consumption (Crown and Hurst, 2009), we elected to analyze for
theobromine in the vessels exhibiting non-local forms as well as
unique patterns as determined by symmetry analysis to assess the
implications of the appearance of this new design system. We tested
sets of these non-local vessel forms that are counterparts of vessel sets
used by Mesoamerican polities for the consumption of cacao from
two 11th century elite burial clusters in Pueblo Bonito and from elite
contexts at the 14th century platform mound site of Los Muertos. Here
we (1) detail the discovery of theobromine in these elite vessel sets,
and (2) discuss the implications of our surprising discovery of theo-
bromine in the ‘control’ vessels e local vessel forms from unit-pueblo
sites thought to represent the activities of small village farmers.
2. Experimental method
Our study involved analysis of an aqueous wash of the interiors of
whole vessels using a high performance LC-MS with the capability of
detecting low nanogram concentrations of theobromine, the
distinctive methylxanthine in cacao. The aqueous wash enabled non-
destructive recovery of material from whole vessels in a manner
acceptable to preservation and conservation concerns. Prior analyt-
ical methods for theobromine detection have entailed scraping
visible residues adhering to vessel walls (Hall et al., 1990; Hurst et al.,
2002) or heating sherds in hot water or trituration of pulverized
sherds with hot water (Crown and Hurst, 2009; Henderson et al.,
2007; Hurst, 2006). We simply briefly washed the interiors of
whole vessels with 20  C deionized water. This approach does not
require the presence of visible residues or the destruction of sherds to
extract the key residual component, theobromine.
The water wash method entailed pouring 30e40 mL of deion-
ized water into a vessel. Using a pipette, the sides of the vessel were
1635
washed down with the water for w5 min. The water was trans-
ferred by pipette to a vial; typically w25 mL was recovered due to
adsorption by the clay matrix. After standing for 24 h to allow the
sediment to settle, the solution was concentrated under vacuum to
w0.5e1 mL. The concentrated liquid was then centrifuged 20 min
at 13,500  g to remove suspended particulates. After transfer of
the clear supernatant to a clean tube, the process was repeated
prior to mass spectral analysis.
All samples and standards were analyzed using a hybrid LTQ-
Orbitrap mass spectrometer (Thermo Scientific, San Jose, CA) inter-
faced with an Acquity UPLC (Waters, Milford, MA). An Acquity BEH
C18, 50 mm,1.7 u, UPLC column, kept at 65  C, was used with a 0.6 mL/
min flow rate. Mobile phase A was water, 0.1% formic acid and mobile
phase B was 98:2 acetonitrile:water, 0.1% formic acid. The chro-
matographic conditions which provided baseline resolution of the
three methlyxanthines e theobromine, caffeine and theophylline e
included a 1 min hold at 100%A followed by a ramp to 100%B at 5 min.
(Fig. 2). After a 1 min hold at 100%B, the column was equilibrated at
the initial conditions for an additional minute. Accurate mass data
(within 5 ppm) were collected at 15 K resolution from 100 to 1000 Da.
Although analysis of all samples revealed the presence of many
components, the methylxanthine levels were too low for UV
detection; in fact, by mass spectrometry the combined methylxan-
thine levels contributed <0.1% to the total ion current generated for
each sample. Structure assignment was based on coincident reten-
tion times to authentic standards as well as exact mass within 5 ppm
for the peak of interest (Fig. 2). Detection of theobromine
(C7H8N4O2) and its isomer theophylline entailed setting the detec-
tion window for (M þ H)þ of 181.07200  0.00091 and integrating
the ion current observed within that range for the material eluting at
the appropriate retention time for each isomer. Caffeine (C8H10N402)
was detected in analogous fashion by integration of the signal for
(M þ H)þ of 195.0876  0.0010 with the appropriate retention time.
Limits of quantitation (LOQ) ranged from 3 ng/mL for theobromine
to 10 ng/mL for caffeine; limits of detection were wthreefold lower.
Concentrations of the three xanthines were determined from
calibration curves (LOQ (3 or 10 ng/mL) e1000 ng/mL) for each
compound. The final concentration of theobromine solubilized
from vessels from all sites ranged from 5 to 300 ng/mL; however,
the typical amount was 10e30 ng/mL. These theobromine
concentrations were below the lower limits of detection of
commonly used LC-MS spectrometers such as a Shimadzu Promi-
nence high pressure liquid chromatography coupled to a Waters
Micromass ZQ but were readily quantified using a more sensitive
hybrid LTQ-Orbitrap mass spectrometer.
 Author's personal copy

1636 D.K. Washburn et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 38 (2011) 1634e1640

1.76 because theobromine bound more tightly to the clay matrix. We

XIC: conclude that the two to four fold higher levels of caffeine to theo-
5 ppm mass filter: bromine found in the prehistoric Ancestral Pueblo and Hohokam
O vessels reflects a similar preferential extraction of caffeine.
N
m/z: 181.07109-181.07291
HN

O N N
O
3. Method validation
H
N
N
theobromine Control studies were run with contemporary Zia and Hopi pottery
O N N
1.9 owned by the authors. First to ascertain whether theobromine would
be recovered with repeated washings, 46 mg of theobromine in 1 mL
theophylline
of water was added to a Hopi vessel with a polished interior and Zia
vessel #1 with an unpolished interior. After swirling to wet the walls,
2.1 the vessel was allowed to dry. Each vessel was then repeatedly
XIC:
washed with water five times. Analysis of each water wash revealed
5 ppm mass filter: that theobromine was recovered by each successive wash. The
N O
N theobromine recovery from the Hopi vessel progressively decreased
N m/z: 195.08672-195.08868 from 400 to 116 ng. Fig. 3 depicts these results as a percentage
N

O decreasing from 0.87% to 0.25% of the original amount spiked in the

caffeine
0. 1. 1. 2. 2.5 3.0 3.
Time (min)
Fig. 2. LCMS Separation and detection of theobromine, theophylline and caffeine.
Extracted ion chromatograms (XIC) for theobromine, theophylline and caffeine. All
extraction mass windows are set at 5 ppm Da. Theobromine and theophylline have
identical molecular formulas and therefore base line chromatographic resolution was
essential for proper detection.
Theophylline was present in c. 50% of the vessels containing
theobromine, typically at 20e60% of the concentrations of theo-
bromine. Caffeine was present in virtually all the vessels containing
theobromine, typically in concentrations one to two fold of that of
theobromine. Since this 2:1 ratio was much greater than the 1:10
caffeine/theobromine ratio found in cacao, we postulated that the
caffeine was being preferentially extracted. To confirm this
hypothesis, we spiked a modern Hopi vessel with a 12:1 mixture of
theobromine to caffeine (4600 ng and 390 ng respectively). Analysis
revealed that the caffeine was preferentially extracted, possibly
vessel. The recovery from the Zia #1 vessel progressively diminished
from 1024 to 14 ng. These results, expressed as a percentage of the
original amount of theobromine added to the Zia #1 vessel, range
from 2.2% to 0.03%. These control studies demonstrate that repeated
washings will continue to yield detectable amounts of theobromine.
We ran another control to evaluate whether the above described
method would be able to detect amounts of theobromine from
4. 4.
vessels containing a hundred fold smaller quantities of theobro-
mine than described above. We added 0.287 mg of theobromine to
a second Zia vessel (#2) with an unpolished interior. It is particu-
larly notable that detectable levels of theobromine were easily
recovered from this vessel containing less than one microgram. In
this instance the amount of theobromine recovered also progres-
sively diminished from 64 to 12 ng upon repeated washing;
however, inexplicitly the recovery percentages ranging from 22% to
4.1% were much higher (Fig. 3).
In summary, our control studies established that this water
wash procedure can be used to detect theobromine in vessels
containing as little as 0.3 mg. Under these experimental conditions
each successive wash solublized only a small fraction of theobro-
mine present, suggesting that theobromine is complexed to the
clay matrix. Consequently this method is suitable for establishing
presence or absence but not quantification.
Finally to demonstrate replication of results obtained by Hurst’s
sampling procedures and instrumentation, we re-sampled two

Fig. 3. Percent recovery of a Theobromine Spike in Hopi and Zia Vessels as a function of successive water washes. Hopi and Zia #1 vessels: % recovery of theobromine in successive
water washes following addition of 46 mg. Zia #2 vessel: % recovery of theobromine following addition of 0.287 mg.
 Author's personal copy
D.K. Washburn et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 38 (2011) 1634e1640
vessels e a cylinder jar from a burial in the Senchu district,
Guatemala (NA 10835) and a deep bowl from Chama, Guatemala
(NA 11216) from the University of Pennsylvania Museum’s collec-
tions. Both Hurst’s tests of residue scrapings (Grant, 2006) and our
aqueous wash detected theobromine.
4. Materials
We sampled three non-local vessel forms found in association
with the elite burials at the Ancestral Puebloan site of Pueblo Bonito
and the Hohokam site of Los Muertos that are general counterparts
to Mayan forms previously tested and found positive for theobro-
mine (Hall et al., 1990; Henderson et al., 2007; Hurst et al., 2002;
McNeil et al., 2006; Powis et al., 2002; Prufer and Hurst, 2007).
To increase the probability that an aqueous wash of the interiors of
whole vessels would be successful, we chose vessels that had the
least probability of being washed, either in the field, in the
conservation lab, or preparatory to a museum exhibit. Since early
expeditions did not wash their artifacts in the field, we were
fortunate that the great houses of Pueblo Bonito and Pueblo del
Arroyo in Chaco Canyon were excavated in 1896e1900 by George
Pepper (Pepper, 1920) and in the 1920s by Judd (1954, 1959). In one
of those unplanned but fortuitous events of history, the vessels
excavated by Pepper from Pueblo Bonito were wrapped in news-
paper, crated, and shipped by rail to the American Museum of
Natural History where they remained untouched until the senior
author, then a graduate student at Columbia University, unwrapped
them in 1968. Because they were not washed then or at any time
since according to the best recollections of museum staff, they were
prime candidates for testing. To bolster our results obtained from
these American Museum vessels excavated from the elite burials in
Rooms 32 and 33 as well as those stored in adjacent Room 28, we
tested vessel sets from the Smithsonian collections recovered by
Judd from burial rooms 320, 326, 329, and 330 as well as three
polished red sloped-sided cylinder jars (vases) from Pueblo Del
Arroyo, another great house site in Chaco Canyon.
To determine whether elites in other complex southwestern
traditions also consumed cacao, we tested plain redware vessel sets
found in elite contexts at the platform mound site of Los Muertos,
a late Classic period Hohokam site (AD 1300e1400) located south of
the Salt River near Tempe, Arizona. This site had been excavated by
Frank Hamilton Cushing (1892) for the Hemenway Southwest
Expedition in 1887e1888 (Haury, 1945). Subsequent research for
the Salt-Gila Aqueduct Project confirmed the elite nature of the
burials and activities at Los Muertos (Teague, 1984). We tested four
beakers (equivalent in form to the Chaco cylinder jars but shorter),
three pitchers, one bowl, one jar and one mug from “Ruins” (house
compounds) XIII, XIV, XIX, XX, and Refuse Mounds II, XIV and XIX.
Our control sample consisted of eight local pitcher and bowl
forms from small (non-elite) unit-pueblo sites. These vessels had
received little or no cleaning after their recovery by early investi-
gators. We chose these vessels for the following reason. In contrast
to the new two-dimensional design system on the cylinder jars,
sharp-shouldered pitchers and shallow bowls associated with the
elite burials at Pueblo Bonito typed as Chaco Black-on-White and
dated AD 1075e1150, the local control vessels were decorated with
the Red Mesa design style. Red Mesa Black-on-White is the most
common pottery type in Chaco Canyon prior to and contempora-
neous with the period of great house construction (AD 875e1040).
Variants of this type were made and used in sites throughout the
northern puebloan Southwest from the 9th through the 11th
centuries. Thus, by choosing vessels decorated with this wide-
spread style, we could test vessels from unit-pueblo sites within
Chaco Canyon as well as those from unit-pueblos both near and
distant to Chaco Canyon. In this way we could ascertain whether
1637
cacao consumption was limited to those living in the great houses
or whether it included inhabitants of unit-pueblos, both unit-
pueblos directly associated with the great houses in Chaco Canyon
as well as unit-pueblos in non-great house contexts in other areas
of the northern southwest.
To this end our control sample included two bowls and one
pitcher from BC-51, a small unit-pueblo site on the south side of the
Chaco Wash in Chaco Canyon opposite the great houses of Pueblos
Bonito and Del Arroyo located on the north side of the wash. BC-51
was excavated in 1936e1937 by the University of New Mexico field
school under the direction of Frank Hibben. We sampled a Red Mesa
B/W style pitcher that was recovered from a site along the Little
Colorado in eastern Arizona by Stewart Culin for the University of
Pennsylvania Museum’s Wanamaker Expedition to the Southwest in
1901 and one bowl and three pitchers from the Harvard Peabody
collections excavated by Charles Marsh Sumner during the winter of
1888e1889 from burial mounds at three sites located 1e4 miles to
the east and southwest of Cortez, Colorado. A complete listing of the
database can be found in the Supplementary material.
5. Results and discussion
Table 1 contains the results from LC-MS analyses of aqueous
washes of non-local as well as local vessel forms (N ¼ 75) from the
Ancestral Pueblo and Hohokam cultural traditions. Detection of
theobromine in 65% of the cylinder jars, 41% of the pitchers and 83%
of the bowls from the Ancestral Pueblo great houses of Pueblo
Bonito and Pueblo del Arroyo and, likewise, detection of theobro-
mine in 80% of the cylinders, pitchers, bowls and mugs from the
Hohokam site of Los Muertos was consistent with our hypothesis
that both Ancestral Pueblo and Hohokam elites were consuming
cacao in these vessel sets. However, the most significant discovery
was the totally unexpected detection of theobromine in 100% of our
control vessels (N ¼ 8). These were local pitcher and bowl forms
decorated with the local Red Mesa design style used by inhabitants
of small masonry unit-pueblos in northeast Arizona, northwest
New Mexico and southwest Colorado.
The mass spectral data e exact mass and coincident retention
time e unambiguously established the presence of theobromine,
caffeine and theophylline in 67%, 68% and 43% respectively of the
samples. What is less certain is how theobromine and the other two
methylxanthines came to be present. One possible source is from soil
contamination due to microorganisms; however we found no report
that microorganisms produce methylxanthines. Animals are not
a source of methylxanthines. However, plants which are members of
the Sterculiaceae family may contain methylxanthines. Within this
family, the relative proportions of theobromine, caffeine and
theophylline are species dependent. Caffeine is predominant in
coffee and tea whereas theobromine is predominant in cacao.
We consulted with medicinal and pharmacological experts and
examined appropriate databases to ascertain whether theobro-
mine-producing species were native to the Southwest (http://www.
plants.usda.gov/, http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/, http://www/
Table 1
Incidence of theobromine in vessel forms in Ancestral Pueblo and Hohokam sites.
Sites Cylinders Pitchers Bowls Other forms Total vessels
# TB (N) # TB (N) # TB (N) # TB (N) # TB (N)
Anasazi
Great houses 15 (23) 9 (22) 10 (12) 0 (0) 34 (57)
Small sites 5 (5) 3 (3) 0 (0) 8 (8)
Hohokam
Los Muertos 3 (4) 3 (3) 1 (1) 1 (2) 8 (10)
#TB, number of vessels with theobromine; N, total number of vessels.
 Author's personal copy
1638 D.K. Washburn et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 38 (2011) 1634e1640
napralert.org/, Willaman and Schubert, 1961). Ilex vomitora,
a species of holly native to the southeast from the Carolinas and
Florida west to Texas and Oklahoma is reported to contain theo-
bromine. However, the detection of theophylline in our samples
allowed us to eliminate I. vomitora since this species is reported to
contain only theobromine and caffeine (Edwards and Bennett,
2005). Given the current absence of a documented indigenous
source in the American Southwest, the plant material containing
theobromine must have been imported. Based on historical and
ethnographic data establishing cacao consumption in Mesoamerica
and South America (McNeil, 2006), archaeologists have equated the
finding of theobromine in Mayan vessels with cacao usage. This
assumption was extended to the American Southwest to account for
the presence of theobromine in three of five sherds from Pueblo
Bonito (Crown and Hurst, 2009). We concur that the most reason-
able explanation for the detection of theobromine in our vessels is
consumption of imported cacao. However, we assert this inference
with the proviso that if future studies discover a plant native to the
Southwest that contains theobromine, all studies that have reported
the presence of cacao in the Southwest will need to be reassessed.
Our detection of theobromine in 67% of the 75 whole vessels
from elite great houses and platform mounds and small unit-
pueblo sites in New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona suggests that use
of this stimulant was not only widespread but also occurred over
centuries (AD 900e1400) that coincided with its cultural use in
Mesoamerica. Importantly, the detection of theobromine in local
vessel forms from non-elite sites has major implications. At the
very least, since cacao was being consumed both by elites and non-
elites, the extensive nature of its use must have required an active
trade that exchanged cacao for commodities available in the
Southwest. We investigated the specific character of the vessel
forms that contained cacao as well as the commodities that might
have been exchanged for cacao.
We focused on the cylinder jar because this form is endemic in
assemblages of many Mesoamerican polities. They range from the
Thin Orange and frescoed tripod jars at Teotihuacan (Berrin and
Pasztory, 1993) to the beautifully painted polychrome jars of the
Classic Maya (Reents-Budet, 1994). As early as the Formative, sets of
beakers, spouted vessels and low bowls were found in Olmec burials
(Lowe, 1981). The Delia White beaker from a high status burial from
the site of Fabrica San Jose in the Valley of Oaxaca is said to be the
oldest example of an elite cylindrical drinking vessel (Marcus and
Flannery, 1996, p. 115). By the Classic period (AD 200e800) at
Monte Alban, Zapotec royalty (Tomb 104) were buried with complete
“table settings” of these vessel forms (Marcus and Flannery, 1996, p.
214) similar to the sets of cylinder jars, bowls and plates used by the
Maya in their feasts and tomb offerings (Reents-Budet, 1994, 2006).
Polychrome images on Classic period Mayan cylinder jars, stelae
and codices depict rulers and gods with cylinder jars as they enter-
tained rivals, accepted tribute, exchanged gifts at alliances and royal
marriages, and put their dead to rest with elaborate offerings of food
and drink (Dreiss and Greenhill, 2008; Reents-Budet, 2006; http://
research.mayavase.com/). One special feature of this ritual drink
involved frothing the beverage by pouring it from one cylinder jar
into another, as shown on the Princeton Vase (Princeton University
Art Museum collection #75-17, K511). Glyphs on the exterior rims of
these cylindrical “chocolate pots” specifically describe the vessel
forms as well as the occasion, the contents, the artist and the owner/
patron (Stuart, 2006). It has been argued that prior to the Classic,
vertically-spouted pitchers may have been used to froth the liquid
(McAnany et al., 1999), a suggestion that gives this practice some
antiquity. Our tests found theobromine in a Late Classic spouted
vessel from Kixpek (University of Pennsylvania NA 11604).
In Mesoamerica, cacao was also consumed by administrators
and supporting sectors of the population (Reents-Budet, 1994). At
the Ceren site, a Middle Classic village in El Salvador, the AD 600
eruption of the Laguna Caldera preserved casts of cacao trees, a jar
full of cacao seeds and a polychrome cylindrical vase e evidence
that villagers husbanded cacao trees and used the same comple-
ment of vessel shapes as the elite, except that they were more
modestly decorated (Lentz et al., 1996).
However, in contrast to these Mesoamerican practices where
vessels used for cacao consumption had a long history of usage in
feasting and burial contexts, at Chaco the cylinder jar form and
associated pitchers and bowls have no precedent prior to their
appearance in elite burials and storage contexts at Pueblo Bonito. In
storage room 28 alone over one hundred jars were found stacked in
rows with pitchers and bowls. The cylinder jars we tested from
Pueblos Bonito and Del Arroyo included 19 decorated with the non-
local pattern system, 12 of which contained theobromine; as well as
two plain white jars, one of which contained theobromine; and two
polished red ‘vases,’ both of which contained theobromine.
Cylinder jars have a longer history in Hohokam contexts, appearing
as early as the Sweetwater phase, AD 100e300 and continuing in
the Colonial, AD 700e900, Sedentary periods, AD 900e1200, and
Classic periods (AD 1200e1400) (Gladwin et al., 1938). Three of the
four beakers (cylinder jars) we tested from Los Muertos contained
theobromine.
Our discovery of cacao in Ancestral Pueblo and Hohokam
cylinder jars is strengthened by similarities in specific features
between the cylinder jars from Mesoamerica, especially those from
Monte Alban, and those in the Southwest. Beginning in the late
Formative (MA I) at Monte Alban, bulging-sided cylinder jars from
burials have sets of holes near the rim that are identical in form and
hole arrangement to examples from Bonito (eg. AMNH H/3410, SI
336492). These Monte Alban jars apparently had a peaked lid tied
by cords to the jar mouth. The excavators suggested that these
vessels were covered and suspended so as to prevent insects from
getting into the honey possibly stored there (Caso et al., 1967,
Fig. 173). Similarly, it is possible that the small bowls with side loops
found at Bonito were lids that were tied to the loops on cylinder jars
used to store honey. Peaked lids on Mayan cylinder jars are illus-
trated in polychrome scenes decorating these jars (Schmidt et al.,
1998, pp. 289, 290). Notably, honey is one of the substances that
the Maya added to their chocolate drink (Reents-Budet, 1994).
Furthermore, during the late Monte Alban IIIa and b period that
corresponds with the onset of great house construction in Chaco
Canyon, cylinder jars from Monte Alban Tomb 109 and Mound M
have four vertical loops below the rim (Caso et al.,1967, Fig. 346) that
are counterparts of the loops found on Bonito cylinder jars (eg. # cat
AMNH H/3266, PM 30-18-10/A6921). Likewise, Santa Cruz Red/Buff
cylinder jars with slightly concave sides from the Hohokam Colonial
period site of Snaketown on the Gila River just south of Los Muertos
have close formal counterparts at Monte Alban.
Two images (indicated by K numbers) from the Justin Kerr Maya
Vase digital database (http://www.research.mayavase.com/) depict
two other specific featural identities. K5421 depicts an Ah K’hun
holding a flat circular lid over a cylinder jar identical to the circular
flat sandstone discs found with the cylinder jars stored in room 28 at
Pueblo Bonito. K3983 depicts a bail-handled cylinder jar painted
with a two-dimensional pattern that closely resembles a bail-
handled jar from Bonito (H/3381) painted with almost the same
pattern (Chaco Design System pattern #55-2 in Washburn, in press).
We propose that such identities in vessel contents, form, and
features are manifestations of direct and extensive interactions
between the two regions. One possible interpretation is that the
discovery of cacao in so many vessels indicates that it was the
commodity that was traded for Southwestern turquoise. By the
Postclassic, AD 900, turquoise had replaced jade as the luxury
mineral most in demand by the Mixtec, Aztec and other
 Author's personal copy
D.K. Washburn et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 38 (2011) 1634e1640
Mesoamerican polities (Weigand and Garcia De Weigand, 2001).
High quality turquoise that could be fashioned into tesserae for
mosaics on status objects (McEwan et al., 2006) is only found in
mines located in the greater Southwest (Nevada, California, Arizona
and New Mexico, Weigand and Harbottle, 1993; Weigand and
Garcia De Weigand, 2001). Neutron Activation analyses have
matched the chemical signature of turquoise from the Cerrillos
mines in New Mexico (Weigand et al., 1977) with turquoise found in
sites from northern Mexico and Chalchihuites (Kelley, 2000) and in
Chichen Itza in the Yucatan (Weigand and Garcia De Weigand,
2001). Workshops for the processing of turquoise and other
materials into luxury items, such as those found in the unit-pueblo
sites in Chaco Canyon (Windes, 1992) and at Ruin XIII at Los
Muertos (Teague, 1984, p. 167), suggest how small site inhabitants
were integrated within the socio-political and economic outreach
of the Mesoamerican states. Since the BC-51 site, a small site in
Chaco Canyon, yielded local vessel forms with cacao residues, it is
possible that workers in these workshop sites may have been paid
in cacao, as was the case during the Aztec state (Coe and Coe, 1996).
The heyday of the Chaco phenomenon (AD 900e1150) both
bracketed this sequence of extraordinary long distance activity that
tied together centers in the American Southwest with Mesoamer-
ican states and, at the same time, witnessed its demise with the
collapse of Tula and Chichen Itza that was triggered by the longest
and most severe drought cycle in the Holocene (AD 700e1200)
(Metcalfe and Davies, 2007). We suggest that the great house
communities of the Ancestral Pueblo and the platform mound
complexes of the Hohokam may well have been involved in the
procurement of highly valued goods sought by Mesoamerican
polities. Indeed such complexes may be manifestations of similar
developmental trajectories in other civilizations where such
centers were built as or existing sites became frontier trading
outposts of growing empires (Algaze, 1993; Kelley, 1995). It is surely
not coincidental that the appearance of the greatest number of
Mesoamerican objects in southwestern sites coincides with the
breakup of the great Mesoamerican states at the end of the Classic
and the beginning of the Postclassic, c. AD 800e900. At this time
the focus shifted to a more decentralized commercial system that
supported regional systems of city states and their trading
networks (Smith and Berdan, 2003). Turquoise, cacao, cotton,
feathers and other goods (Smith, 2003) were moved through many
intermediary processing and exchange centers, both along the
coast (Mountjoy, 2000) and in the interior (Beekman, 2010). The
late Postclassic Aztec professional merchant class known as the
pochteca surely must be rooted in this trade. We conclude that our
discovery of theobromine in different and unexpected contexts in
the American Southwest virtually mandates a reassessment of
current theories regarding Southwest/Mesoamerican relationships.
Acknowledgments
The following individuals and institutions facilitated the testing
of vessels: David Hurst Thomas, Judith Levinson, Anibal Rodriguez
and Kristen Mable at the American Museum of Natural History;
Robert Preucel, Lucy Fowler Williams and Lynn Grant at the
University Museum, University of Pennsylvania; Ronald Bishop and
Greta Hansen at the Smithsonian Institution; and William Fash, T.
Rose Holdcraft, Genevieve Fisher and Susan Haskell at the Peabody
Museum, Harvard University. We thank Vorsila Bohrer, James Duke,
Norman Farnsworth, Laura Lopez-Hoffman, Adrian Quijada, Bar-
bara Timmermann and Kelly Kindscher for consultation regarding
alkaloids in plants native to the American Southwest. We appre-
ciate information from Lynn Teague, Helen Pollard, John Hender-
son, Dorie Reents-Budet, and Pat McGovern. We thank the
Pharmaceutical Institute, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, NJ for
1639
access to the LC-MS instrumentation. This research was not sup-
ported by outside funding.
Supplementary material
Supplementary material associated with this article can be
found in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.jas.2011.02.029.
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