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Is there a food more universally loved than chocolate? No other ingredient lends itself to savory, sweet, and even alcoholic applications, tempting folks in everything from molten cakes to moles to Martinis. Chocolate—or, more specifically, cacao—has been processed and consumed in Mesoamerica for millennia. In Chocolate: The Exhibition, which opens on June 17 at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science and is brought to us from Chicago's Field Museum, audiences are invited to explore chocolate's worldwide significance and learn how it spread to all corners of the human experience. Encounter Culture host Charlotte Jusinski takes the local angle. She and her guests delve into the Ancestral Puebloan's connection to the non-native cacao bean, charting its arrival and usage by way of the unique cylindrical jars discovered at Chaco Canyon––with renowned scholar Dr. Patricia Crown and retired archaeologist Jay Shapiro. Chocolate at Chaco Canyon is a mystery that remained hidden in plain sight for decades until Dr. Crown began piecing the clues together, starting with the uniquely decorated jars stored among artifacts at the Museum of Northern Arizona. “I wasn't sure why I was so interested,” she recalls, but the intrigue prompted her to consult a colleague who specialized in similar pottery found in Mayan civilization. When told that the Mayans drank cacao from the cylindrical vessels, Patricia assumed her colleague had conducted organic residue studies to reach that conclusion. Instead, her colleague had simply read the hieroglyphics. “It says: this jar is used for drinking chocolate,” laughs Patricia. So how did drinking chocolate end up in Chaco Canyon, a locale inhospitable to the cultivation of the cacao tree? Three possibilities pique the professionals' curiosity: people from the south traveled north with cacao; people from the north ventured south, then returned with cacao; or cacao moving from hand to hand, village to village, eventually reaching Chaco Canyon. “That's the conundrum with archeology. We don't know everything,” admits Jay. “We know some things, and some things may simply not be discernible from the archeological record, and how cacao got to Chaco may, unfortunately, be one of those things.” Even without a definitive origins story, it's fascinating to imagine native civilizations throughout the Southwest encountering cacao for the first time, then adopting drinking chocolate for use in their ceremonies, as a therapeutic medicine, and even as a form of liquid courage. Chocolate: The Exhibition opens on June 17 at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE El Palacio Summer 2022 Chaco Culture National Historical Park Field Museum Museum of Northern Arizona Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours and more. *** Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios. Hosted by Charlotte Jusinski, Editor at El Palacio Magazine Technical Director: Edwin R. Ruiz Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann Show Notes: Lisa Widder Associate Editor: Helen King Theme Music: D'Santi Nava Instagram: @newmexicanculture For more, visit podcast.nmculture.org.
One thing that your insulated mug of hot cocoa says about you on a cold day is that this drink is for you as an individual, and that you’re autonomous. For the people using the very first jars to drink hot chocolate found at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico around 875 AD, it was more like a party, according to southwest archaeologist Patricia Crown. We interviewed her and a Santa Fe chocolate expert and took a trip to Chaco Canyon ourselves to see what it was like for the first cocoa-lovers.
Episode 9: Mindfulness in Education with Robert Roeser, Sona Dimidjian and Dr. Patricia Crown by Integrated Health Podcast
The "Precious Sons" production team - producers Marty Bell and Roger Berlind, legal respresentative Patricia Crown, press representative Joshua Ellis, advertising representative Peter LeDonne, and general manager Peter Neufeld - discuss the steps taken to bring the show to Broadway such as obtaining rights, building a creative team, the casting process, Broadway versus off-Broadway, the risks in mounting a production, marketing planning and costs, varying advertising, and experimental ticket pricing.
The Precious Sons production team -- producers Marty Bell and Tony Award winner Roger Berlind (2005 Best Play for Doubt and 2006 Best Play for The History Boys), legal respresentative Patricia Crown, press representative Joshua Ellis, advertising representative Peter LeDonne, and general manager Peter Neufeld (2005 Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre) -- discuss the steps taken to bring the show to Broadway such as obtaining rights, building a creative team, the casting process, Broadway versus off-Broadway, the risks in mounting a production, marketing planning and costs, varying advertising, and experimental ticket pricing.
A conversation with W. Jeffrey Hurst at the Hershey Center for Health and Nutrition. Hurst and Patricia Crown at the University of New Mexico traced the earliest use of cacao north of the Mexican border to ~A.D. 1000.