Ancient Georgia feasts included cacao from Central America
Archaeologists found traces of cacao in pottery fragments from an 11th-century feast at Etowah, a Mississippian city in Georgia. The discovery indicates trade connections spanning at least 3,000 kilometers to Central America. The cacao likely played a role in the city's development.
The cacao traces were found in potsherds from a feast pit at Etowah, a Mississippian city near modern Atlanta. The pottery dated to the construction of the city's first platform mound, roughly two centuries before its peak around 1350 CE. Researchers used mass spectrometry to identify chemical markers, then confirmed the find with ancient DNA analysis.
The discovery pushes back evidence of long-distance trade for the Mississippian culture. Cacao trees grow only in tropical regions, meaning the beans traveled at least 3,000 kilometers from Central America. This suggests Etowah had continent-spanning connections earlier than previously documented, linking the Mississippian world to Maya civilizations.
This finding could reshape understanding of pre-colonial trade networks in North America. If cacao reached Georgia a millennium ago, other goods and ideas may have traveled similar distances, suggesting Indigenous societies were more interconnected than previously assumed. The discovery may also influence how archaeologists interpret the rise of Mississippian centers, potentially prompting reexamination of other sites for distant trade goods.