Pine nuts are an important and tasty element of modern cuisine, and they have 7,500 years of history to prove it.
During the months of August and September, the mountains of northern New Mexico are redolent with the aroma of native conifers, pine trees such as cedar, ponderosa pine, juniper, and piñon pine. The piñon pine (Pinus edulis) is the New Mexico state tree, and it is especially pungent in the fall of the year, when hundreds of New Mexicans drive up into the arid mountain forests to harvest the pine nut, a main ingredient in some versions of pesto, and a subsistence crop that has been part of the diet of people of the American Southwest and Great Basin for at least 7,500 years.
While all pine trees produce edible nuts, the piñon pine (also spelled pinyon) produces a tasty, calorie-rich nut prized by cooks all over the world. Excavations in the eastern Great Basin at Danger Cave, Utah have identified piñon nuts in levels dated between 6,700 and 7,400 years ago; and possibly as early as 10,000 years ago.
Harvesting Pine Nuts
The flavorful pine nut was harvested in the mountains of New Mexico in quantities for sale throughout the world by World War II; over 8 million pounds were harvested in 1936 alone. Today, as in the 1930s, piñon nuts are harvested by hand from the trees growing in the New Mexican mountains, and sold to middlemen parked on old U.S. 66, who in turn sell the nuts to distributors world wide. However, political issues such as grazing and mining rights, environmental degradation of some of the range areas where piñon is grown, combined with competition from foreign markets have reduced the crop considerably.
Archaeobotanists, people who study of the use of plants in the past, have determined that pine nuts, which can be readily harvested and store well with a thin hard coating that may be cracked easily (not to mention their delightfully rich and oily taste), made up a substantive portion of the diet of early New Mexican residents. Mmm; I think I need some right now. Pesto, anyone?
Pine Nuts and Archaeology Sources
Dismore, MacKenzie L., et al. 2003. Vitamin K content of nuts and fruits in the US diet. Journal of the American Dietetic Association 103(12): 1650-1652
Minnis, Paul E. 1989 Prehistoric Diet in the Northern Southwest: Macroplant Remains from Four Corners Feces. American Antiquity 54(3):543-563.
Rhode, David and David B. Madsen 1998 Pine nut use in the Early Holocene and beyond: The Danger Cave archaeobotanical record. Journal of Archaeological Science 25:1199-1210.
Varien, Mark D., et al. 2007 Historical Ecology in the Mesa Verde Region: Results from the Village Ecodynamics Project. American Antiquity 72(2):273-300.
