Clear boundaries between households were not necessarily marked with physical materials or through strategic placement of cultivated flora. The closest evidence for any physical boundaries are the rows of agave outside Household 4, but the spatial location of these suggest more of a garden patch, which provided a source of fiber rather than a natural fence. Fencing is often utilized to keep animals out of cultivated spaces. Identified zooarchaeological remains recovered from the site suggest that the residents of Cerén did consume white-tailed deer , domesticated dog , peccary , and duck . Household 1 exhibited the largest concentration of unmodified animal remains as well as obsidian blades which tested positive for nonhuman animal protein, suggesting that this household processed more meat that the others excavated thus far . All of these animals were certainly capable of disturbing cultivated spaces, yet this must not have been of great concern to the ancient residents since no regular barriers were put in place surrounding the gardens or fields. Besides the fruit trees surrounding the homes, which would have concealed a bit of the space around each dwelling, the Cerénians did not bother to hide their wealth in terms of the foodstuffs growing in their immediate surroundings. Since the Cerén households were able to see other neighboring gardens and fields, grow lights shelves this suggests something about the intimate relationships these inhabitants had with each other .
Large quantities of beneficial wild and domesticated plants encompassed their entire village, just waiting to be transformed into collected food, goods, and tools that could be stored to ensure a prosperous future, supporting a sense of regular landscape management. There has been no indication that the gardens within the village were blocked off, with access denied to neighboring households or even views blocked. If we view the household gardens as a form of wealth at Cerén, each household’s potential was readily visible, and each villager would have had a basic knowledge of everyone’s relative wealth in terms of plant goods. This becomes more significant when we consider that each household likely had a surplus of certain plant products. For example, Household 4 had a courtyard garden consisting of rows of agave plants, whose fiber was transformed into rope and clothing material. It was probably well known among the inhabitants that this domestic unit provided the main fiber resources for the village . Such important aspects of their livelihoods were not kept secret, with the knowledge of each households’ belongings visible yet controlled with the use of storehouses. Each household at Cerén produced surplus goods that could be exchanged within the community and perhaps at nearby marketplaces. The kitchen gardens demonstrate that each household also produced their own basic commodities for the household’s consumption, thus creating a dual role for the kitchen gardens as both subsistence and market production .
Even if we consider the perspective that collected food was stored almost entirely inside the structures, away from the public eye, recent spatial distribution studies by Farahani et al. show that food was stored throughout the village in domiciles, bodegas, and kitchens. Most structures contained ceramic vessels that would have been used to hold foodstuffs, so these materials were not necessarily hidden or private. It is important to note that preservation is not perfect at Cerén, leaving much to be imagined by archaeologists. Granted, foodstuffs that were in ceramic vessels were preserved well when the thatch roofs collapsed during emplacement of Unit 3 tephra. However, foods stored in organic containers such as gourds and baskets did not preserve, and those containers themselves did not preserve except for the painted surface of a single gourd under the bench in Structure 2 . Gourds, for example, could have been good storage containers for manioc or malanga flour as it could be kept dry under the roofs. While the archaeological preservation only allows a glimpse of the most durable storage containers, it is still clear that subsistence and diet were not hidden aspects among the social lives of Cerén inhabitants; they were very prevalent in their day to day routine and view of neighboring households through the presence of productive garden plots. Since 2007, excavations at Cerén have focused on the agricultural contexts south of the village, beyond the immediate vicinity of the structures excavated thus far and reveal extensive fields of staple crops that serve as an extension of the fields found adjacent to the household gardens. Infields of maize were situated close to the village.
The maize, belonging to the Chapalote-Nal-Tel race, has been identified within the milpa through plaster casts of entire stalks, as well as carbonized kernels, cupules, and larger cob fragments . Farther south of the main village center, just past the maize agricultural fields were outfields of manioc. All of the agricultural fields were cultivated in a series of ridges oriented parallel to the ground slope to help with moisture removal and drainage, just as the kitchen gardens were within the village. The mean precipitation in the Cerén area is at the maximum ideal range for manioc, so drainage was necessary for productive manioc yields. Excavations of the extensive manioc fields strongly suggest that this root crop likely comprised a significant portion of the diet in this region during the Late Classic period, suggesting that this food regime could have been widespread throughout Mesoamerica . The unique preservation of agricultural fields at Cerén allows us to view both maize and manioc as staple crops that greatly contributed towards the diet of these Late Classic inhabitants in Mesoamerica. The inter-ridges of the maize fields—i.e. the smaller ridges that did not contain plaster casts of maize stalks—showed evidence of squash and common beans . This conclusion was determined through paleoethnobotanical recovery efforts that utilized both plaster cast techniques and water flotation of soil samples. These inter-ridges were not as large as the maize ridges, but were nevertheless distinct ridges and were located in an alternating manner in between the larger maize ridges. A plaster cast of a squash gourd was recovered in between the maize ridges in an inter-ridge within the milpa of Operation AE, along with multiple bean cotyledons that were identified from soil samples originating from other inter-ridges . Multiple common bean populations have been found throughout Cerén, appearing in storage containers, middens, and floor surfaces . Squash seeds and rinds have also been identified previously at the site, within ceramic vessels, a basket, and even atop a metate inside the kitchen structure . For the first time the presence of both beans and squash is now verified within the milpas and shows that farmers at Cerén practiced inter-planting within their agricultural fields . The eruption apparently occurred in August when maize was mature, yet common practices today in El Salvador suggest that squash and beans would not have been planted yet. The paleoethnobotanical remains propose that in the past these three annual plants were cultivated simultaneously at Cerén, especially considering that all three were recovered in a mature form. Inter-cropping maize, beans, and squash is advantageous in that it aids in an efficient and prosperous harvest; crop yields are prolonged into subsequent growing seasons, indoor vertical garden systems which is a common feature of many agricultural systems in the tropics. For example, the Kekchi Maya incorporate various plants in their milpas immediately after maize begins to sprout . The leguminous beans would have replenished the soil with nitrogen that had been depleted from maize, while the maize created a sturdy structure for the Phaseolus to climb upon and be supported. The squash likely served as a cover crop, helping to retain soil moisture by reducing the total surface exposed to sunlight and also helping to prevent soil erosion. These ancient villagers were successfully maintaining an agroecological system that today we would describe as resilient and sustainable. Flotation samples taken directly and regularly from the interior of these agricultural ridges show that a great variety of plants were growing and thriving in the infields, not just the domesticates recovered and discussed above.
These milpas are not just simple agricultural fields dominated by a single crop, they incorporate a variety of plants that could serve as food, medicine, and pesticides . The maize fields at Cerén had over a dozen weedy species growing in or around the well-maintained maize agricultural ridges, amounting to over 140,000 seeds and achenes . The varied floral assemblage within the infields reflects the effort that the Cerén residents made to diversify their agricultural production, a continuation from what can be seen in the household gardens. It was previously hypothesized that the Cerén residents had well maintained agricultural fields, with few intrusive plants growing among the domesticated crops. The intensification of paleoethnobotanical recovery has made the overwhelming abundance of weedy species visible archaeologically. The majority of the weedy species recovered from the agricultural fields have seeds with an average width of less than a millimeter, which makes water flotation an essential collection strategy to broaden the understanding of this complex agricultural system. Weeds are generally referred to as unwanted pests in agricultural fields and are defined as plants that grow predominantly in disturbed areas and are fast growing . This view regards weeds as problematic due to the competition for nutrients and moisture from soil within a field that weeds take part in, often contributing to a decline in yields, soil fertility, and an increase in other pests such as insects . However, many ethnobotanical studies that report weeds as a problem dealt with invasive species introduced from the Old World post-conquest, which would not have been a concern at the ancient village of Cerén. If competition for resources between weeds and food crops were a major factor, this obstacle could have been eradicated through laborious weeding. While it is possible that the farmers worked to remove weedy plants, the overwhelming abundance of weedy seeds and achenes suggests that the weeding process was not intensive. Perhaps the households at Cerén did not have an abundance of labor to devote to weed removal, which would have been done through manual labor at this ancient village with the use of stone and wooden tools which limit the ability to control the growth of unwanted plants . Removing weeds from a field is a laborious task even with modern technology. Alternatively, the residents of Cerén may have been knowledgeable of the multitude of applications for these ‘weedy’ plants, especially as nutritious herbs, given their strong presence among other food crops. Jones and Halstead demonstrate this same concept with maslins in Europe, where minor contaminants such as wild herbaceous species are difficult to remove and also tend to be tolerated within agricultural fields. When the life forms of the weedy species identified within Cerén milpas are taken into consideration, it becomes apparent that the majority of these weeds would have been manageable if desired. The majority of weedy seeds and achenes recovered from the maize agricultural fields at Cerén come from annual plants , which would have been relatively easy to control by farmers. Annuals that only live for a single season and generally have more shallow root systems can be removed much more effectively than perennial weeds . Annual weeds do grow much more rapidly than perennials , but the deeper root system of perennials make them considerably more difficult to control. Perennial weeds have a minimal presence within the fields at Cerén, both in terms of quantity and ubiquity. The utility and the abundance of the weedy species found within these agricultural fields raise speculations concerning whether or not these species were deliberately cultivated here or were tolerated. The dichotomy between wild and cultivated food plants does not have a clear distinction; many wild species are thought to actually fall along a continuum where various levels of intervention and human management take place during growth cycles . Cerén farmers clearly managed the landscape in a manner that would have allowed for harvest from both agricultural and non-agricultural species simultaneously. Ethnographic work in Mesoamerica has suggested that the main goal of agriculture for the Maya is to “use the land constantly and keep it covered, as far as possible, with useful plants” . Farmers aim to design agricultural systems that yield the greatest return. Perhaps these ancient agriculturalists conceptualized weedy plants in a much different way than modern views on such plants.