Science & Society Distinguished Public Talks

Co-sponsored by the Albuquerque Section of the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and its Life Members Affinity Group, Sigma Xi (the Scientific Research Society), the UNM Department of Physics & Astronomy, and the UNM Division of Continuing Education.

Presents

Stimulating Science: Caffeinated Drinks in the Prehispanic American Southwest

By
Patricia L. Crown

Thursday, 19 March 2015 5:30 PM

The University of New Mexico Conference Center, Auditorium
1634 University Blvd. NE

Meet & Greet: 5 p.m.

Pizza with the speaker will follow the lecture

Patricia L. Crown received her A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1974, and her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1981. She has been on the faculty at the University of New Mexico since 1993, where she is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014. Dr. Crown has conducted field investigations in the Ancestral Pueblo, Mogollon, and Hohokam areas of the American Southwest; she recently directed the re-excavation of a room in Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon. With collaborator Jeffrey Hurst, she identified the first prehispanic cacao (chocolate) north of the Mexican border in ceramics from Chaco Canyon.

Abstract. This talk explores the initial recovery of evidence for chocolate drinks in Chaco Canyon and the connection to the Chacoan cylinder jars. It presents results from a recently completed NSF-funded study looking for chocolate residues on almost 200 ceramics from throughout the Southwest. The results show that chocolate may not have been the only caffeinated drink consumed in the southwestern past. Finally, it investigates what this discovery means for our understanding of Southwest-Mesoamerican interaction.

For more details, please see the following flyer:
Patricia Crown Lecture 2015

Thank you.

Gilberto.
Chair.