Fig 1.
S. jamesii plant in flower (left) and tubers in a ceremonial basket (right).
Tubers are approximately 1.5–2.5 cm in diameter. Photos by Tim Lee/NHMU and Alastair Lee Bítsoí, respectively.
Fig 2.
Documented range of S. jamesii populations (open circles) [31, with updates].
Locations of the 14 archaeological sites analyzed in the present study are labeled with a star. Site abbreviations are in Table 1. (Basemap is the intellectual property of Esri and is used herein with permission. Copyright © 2025 Esri and its licensors. All rights reserved).
Table 1.
Archaeological sites, tools, and occurrence of S. jamesii.
Table 2.
Starch granule yields and S. jamesii relative abundance and ubiquity.
Fig 3.
Starch granules extracted from ground stone tools at various archaeological sites assigned to S. jamesii.
1-5 = Modern reference material of S. jamesii [48], 6 = Nephi Mounds, 7-10 = Sudden Shelter, 11-12 = Dust Devil Cave, 13 = Sand Dune Cave, 14-15 = Ventana Cave, 16-21 = Long House, Mesa Verde, 22-30 = Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, 31-33 = Point of Pines, 34-40 = North Creek Shelter. Scale bars represent 20µm.
Fig 4.
S. jamesii starch granule ubiquity (%, shown in yellow) compared to all other starch granules (red) on ground stone tools from archaeological sites beyond and within the boundaries of the S. jamesii range.
Sites with ground stone tools that produced fewer than 100 granules are not shown on map due to small sample size. Pie charts with a potato leaf next to it indicate an extant potato population growing adjacent to site. (Basemap is the intellectual property of Esri and is used herein with permission. Copyright © 2025 Esri and its licensors. All rights reserved).
Table 3.
S. jamesii nutritional data.
Fig 5.
Proposed delineation of the anthropogenic range of S. jamesii (blue) based upon starch granule and genetic data.
Most plant populations in this portion of the range are associated with one or more archaeological sites and are of human origin. (Basemap is the intellectual property of Esri and is used herein with permission. Copyright © 2025 Esri and its licensors. All rights reserved).