Manioc Harvest Day 3: The Power of Culture

Hi again,

Time to catch you up on the last part of our fieldwork. Manioc Harvest Day 3 was yet another interesting lesson for us gringos. We arrived at Alejandro's house early in the morning and began to record the basic information about the place where we'd planted manioc. He owns animals such as horses, goats, dogs, and chickens and the area where we were working was well fertilized (it smelled well fertilized too!)

VERY LARGE MANIOC PLANTS

Test Plot 3: Alejandro's House

One of the horses

Wild Animals of El Salvador ;)

In any event, as we began by mapping the spacing and location of each plant we noticed how large these plants were. The stalks were much bigger in diameter and there were many plants growing from single locations. Unfortunately during this time we also noticed that the initial manioc beds we had planted for our experiment had not been maintained here either! This was very disappointing since we then are not able to test exactly what we thought we were testing. 

Very Large Manioc Plants WITHOUT beds!

Manioc Plant

Yet as often happens in anthropological research, there are unexpected findings and questions you hadn't thought to initial ask. In this case, the power of culture when it comes to planting.  Asking a farmer to plant crops in a different way is a much bigger task than we had realize. These farmers had worked with us on the excavating of manioc fields in years past. They understood our research and had seen what the manioc beds looked like during the Classic Period Maya era. We had given clear instructions about how to maintain the beds and in two out of our three cases, the manioc beds were abandoned, seen as unnecessary and not the 'right way' to grow manioc. Asking these farmers to plant manioc in this new and bizarre way was going against all of their training and years of cultural education about plants. This prompted many discussions amongst us anthropologists about how powerful culture can be, particularly when it comes to something as fundamental as our food.

Despite our disappointment at the lack of manioc beds, we harvested and recorded the manioc in Test Plot 3 as we had done at the other locations. We found that the manioc here was much larger than in previous locations and seems someone similar to the sizes of what we find in the archaeological record. Alejandro and our team agreed that this large growth was likely facilitated by the very well fertilized soil in that area.

Another area of data that we recorded was the number of tubers that remained in the ground during harvesting. This was important for our purposes because the manioc beds at Ceren found so far had all been harvested before the eruption and we find the manioc tubers in the beds that were left after harvest, as well as some re-planted stalks.
 

Excavating the manioc tubers left in the ground during harvest

Manioc Tubers

More Manioc

Me and My Manioc

Manioc Tubers

More Giant Manioc Tubers (These look similar in size and shapes to what we found in the Classic Period)

I have been given a much better appreciation for the amount of labor that went into the harvesting of
The very surprising part of this harvest was the difficulty in getting the plants out of  the ground. On many of the stalks it took four big, strong people pulling very hard to even get these to budge. We would rock the plant side to side to try to dislodge it from the earth packed around it and then continuing pulling. This took a great deal of effort, much more so than I had previously imagined.

Struggling to harvest the manioc

Transporting the Manioc

Then as we struggled to break the tubers off the roots, Alejandro's young son came up with his machete at made very quick work of removing the tubers. While the ancient Maya did not have metal machetes, they did have sharp obsidian and flint blades. (Side note: it is very common for young children in Central American rural areas to have machetes- you get used to seeing it after a while but for those of us raised in houses where children don't get to have knives, it can be somewhat startling at first.) 

Child with Machete- he was very helpful and much better at removing tubers than we were!

While we didn't find what we set out looking for, it was important for us to recognize how much effort would likely have been put into getting the large manioc plants of the Classic Period out of the ground. In addition to the excellent drainage provided by the large beds, it is possible that the beds might have also made harvesting somewhat easier. The other variable we must contend with in our analysis is that the soils of the Classic Period and those of today are very different. The Classic Period soil was made from weathered volcanic ash (called Tierra Blanca Joven soil) and was less compacted than what is available in the region today. This would have contributed to better manioc growth and likely a slightly easier harvest. 

Delicious sugary manioc dish

Manioc Plant Left-overs (Post-Harvest Pile). If you look closely you'll see a goat having a manioc-leaf snack!

 

Finally, one other area of cultural interest was the way in which Alejandro's wife fed us throughout the day. We would be in the middle of measuring tubers and she'd be there asking if I wanted her to make a chicken soup. In the end, she fed us more yucca (manioc) than we could possibly eat and proudly presented each of us with a glass of Coca Cola. I will never stop being impressed by the hospitality I find in Joya de Ceren.