Identifying water availability with maize phytoliths in Range Creek Canyon, Utah

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Highlights

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    Maize (Zea mays) phytolith production is affected by water availability.

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    Maize phytolith weight percentage increases in leaves and tassels as water input increases.

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    Proportion of long-cell maize phytoliths increases as a function of increased water availability.

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    Relative water availability can be determined for maize in an archaeological context.

Abstract

In arid and semi-arid regions, systems of water management and irrigation are crucial for successful crop production, and therefore provide valuable information regarding human behavior and the environmental constraints under which they operated. Unfortunately, structural evidence of irrigation can be difficult to locate, prompting various studies to evaluate the utility of phytolith analysis as a means of identifying past water availability. Evidence suggests the ratio of long-cell to short-cell phytoliths is an effective measure of relative water availability in some important economic crops such as wheat, barley, and sorghum. Expanding on this, the present research applies a similar method of analysis to determine the utility of maize (Zea mays) phytoliths for understanding past water availability. Experimental maize crops receiving different amounts of irrigation were grown in Range Creek Canyon, Utah, a canyon in the northern Colorado Plateau occupied by Fremont populations most heavily from around 800-1100BP. The production of long-cell and short-cell phytoliths from maize leaves, husks, and tassels is analyzed using statistical modeling. Results suggest the ratio of long-cell to short-cell phytoliths in maize increases as a function of increased water availability. The statistical models indicate maize phytoliths are an effective tool for inferring past water availability. By examining maize phytolith assemblages from archaeological contexts, analyzing the inferred available water, and comparing to relative climate and precipitation records, systems of irrigation can be identified and better understood.

Section snippets

Introduction & background

Water management has been critical to successful crop production in arid and semi-arid regions throughout time (Damp et al., 2002, Shanan, 2000, Mithen, 2010 Simms et al., 2020). Identification and examination of past water management systems, and therefore crop water availability, provides important context for understanding past human decisions regarding settlement patterns (Lane, 2017, Yaworsky et al., 2020), subsistence practices (Barlow, 2002, Mithen, 2010), technological change (

Methods

As part of ongoing experimental studies on the costs and benefits of irrigation in Range Creek Canyon (Boomgarden, 2015, Boomgarden et al., 2019), Pima 60-Day maize (Zea mays) was planted in seven adjacent plots near the field station. Each plot contained 12 basins and multiple plants per basin (Fig. 2, Fig. 4). The rectangular plots measured about 6 by 12 ft. Each plot was subject to a different amount of supplemental water applied to measure the impact of water input on crop yield at various

Results

Plot 0, which received no irrigation after planting the seeds, did not produce any plants that survived to maturity. Plot 1 received 275 gallons (1041 L) of irrigation throughout the growing season, but also did not produce plants surviving to maturity. The plants in the remaining five irrigated plots grew to maturity (Fig. 4) and plants from each of the five successful plots produced maize cobs of varying size, health, and abundance. Total water input (liters and precipitation comparison) for

Discussion

The results from the percent weight phytolith analysis suggest an increase in water availability yields an increase in total phytolith production. Tassels and leaves both exhibit an increase in phytolith production in response to additional water availability, the leaves showing the highest levels of phytolith production by weight. The husk displayed the opposite effect, decreasing in phytolith weight content as water input increased. The data indicate that in this case, increased phytolith

Conclusion

Phytoliths can be effectively used as a proxy to answer a wide array of questions about past vegetation. Due to the distinctive morphologies of phytoliths from numerous plant species, identification at the genus and species level is possible from archaeological soil samples (Piperno, 2006). Studies on wheat and sorghum have shown water input to be an influencing factor on phytolith production, allowing for the identification of past water availability (Jenkins et al., 2016, Jenkins et al., 2020

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Brian Codding for support and assistance with coding in R. Thank you to Andrea Brunelle for access to the RED lab at the University of Utah. Thank you to Duncan Metcalfe, Corinne Springer, and everyone who participated in the Range Creek Canyon Field School in summer 2019. Thank you to Emma Jenkins for sharing her data and informing the structure of this research. Thank you to Kurt Wilson for commentary and feedback on multiple drafts. I would also like to thank Mikhail Blinnikov

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      Citation Excerpt :

      Jenkins et al. (2020) proposed for the first time to apply the same ratio to sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench), with positive results. The same ratio has been exploited by Ermish and Boomgarden (2022), who tested how sensitive to fixed phytoliths ratio and long-cells proportion of maize (Zea Mays L.) respond to wet-dry conditions (Ermish and Boomgarden, 2022). The results highlighted strong differences between well irrigated and less-irrigated C₄ crops, proving that the methodology is effective even in crops with reduced water availability.

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