Overview
- A PLOS ONE paper published this week reports fragmented Theobroma cacao DNA recovered from pottery sherds at the Etowah mound site, confirming cacao use by Mississippian peoples.
- The cacao-bearing sherds date to the 11th–12th centuries CE and come from pits used as fill during early platform-mound construction, contexts associated with large communal feasts.
- Researchers combined earlier mass spectrometry that found cacao-linked alkaloids with archaeogenomic sequencing to distinguish Theobroma cacao from the local yaupon holly that produces similar chemical markers.
- Because cacao is a tropical species absent from the Eastern Woodlands, its presence at Etowah implies long-distance movement of goods across roughly 3,000 kilometers, though the specific routes and intermediaries remain unknown.
- The finding expands a growing body of evidence for precontact continental exchange, reframes how scholars view Mississippian-era social rituals, and sets a research agenda that includes more archaeogenomic sampling and collaboration with Indigenous nations.