Projet Chocolat

Cacao in North America, Pre Contact

In Chaco Canyon, 1000–1125 CE. cylinder jars carrying theobromine, cacao’s chemical fingerprint, were tested by Dr. Patricia Crown and Jeffery Hurst in 2009. Though Dorothy Washburn and colleagues pushed that date back to 750 CE. Thousands of miles north of where the tree grows.

Testing later expanded to Hohokam sites in southern Arizona and found the same residue, across elite and common vessels. That means that cacao was traded all around the Southwest.

The next frontier is the Gulf. Researchers have proposed cacao moving into the Mississippian world around the same time but the residue evidence there thinner. “Don’t be surprised if we discover cacao was in the Gulf states” - Dr. Crown at the Santa Fe Women’s Cacao Summit.

And now Chaco itself is at risk. The federal protections that have kept oil and gas drilling 10 miles from the park since 2023 are being rolled back, on a public comment window that closes July 29. This is a living cultural landscape, not a ruin. Link in bio to comment before the deadline.

Part two: the books that are one of a kind and fun to find.

This list includes topics on medicine, scent, botany, art history, and Indigenous Foodways. These six books are further off the beaten path than last time and I promise there’s at least one in the list you haven’t read.

If you want to know more about each book just ask. All are fantastic and worth finding.

📚 Which one are you adding to your list?

Cover: Cocoa All About It by Historicus AKA Richard Cadbury, 1892

1. Smell Words: Ex Libris Odoratis risograph zine by Aubrey Gurtovenko and Noele Lusano

2. Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate: Consuming the World by Yao-Fen You, Detroit Institute of Art

3. Chocolate as Medicine: A Quest over the Centuries by Philip K. Wilson and W. Jeffrey Hurst

4. America’s First Cuisines by Sophie D. Coe

5. One Cacao Tree by Raven Hanna

6. Hot Chocolate by Michael Turback

After my recent post on cacao ceremony, the most common question in my DMs was: what books do you recommend reading? Because the history of chocolate is so vast, my reading list reflects my particular focus: chocolate art history, culture, scent, and the obscure.

Some of the books on my list are scholarly, some are recent, and some are out of print. I personally love the feel of a book in my hand so I don’t read digital downloads but you can access the out of print ones online.

Is there one on the list that you’d like to know more about?

Cover: Histoire naturelle du cacao, et du sucre, divisée en duex traités, 1719

1. The Sensational Past
How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses by Carolyn Purnell

2. Chocolate,Women, and Empire
A social and cultural history by Emma Robertson

3. The Fermentation of Cacao, edited by Harold Hamel Smith, 1913

4. The Manufacture of Chocolate and Other Cacao Preparations by Dr. Paul Zipperer, 1902

5. The House of the Cylinder Jars
Room 28 in Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon
Edited by Dr. Patricia Crown

6. The True History of Chocolate by Coe & Coe

7. The Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 10, The People by Fray Bernardino de Sahagun
Translated with title notes by
Charles E. Dibble & Arthur J. O. Anderson

8. Sacred Consumption
Food and Ritual in Aztec Art and Culture
by Elizabeth Morán

For centuries, the molinillo and the practice of pouring chocolate from vessel to vessel was used to introduce air into drinking chocolate. That air lowers density, changes how the liquid moves across the tongue, and speeds up how quickly aroma reaches the nose. Now the science has caught up to what indigenous people already knew.

The same chocolate tastes more intense with foam, not because the ingredients are changed, but because the structure is changed.

Part 2 of a series on misunderstandings in chocolate: “certified ceremonial cacao” is not a real certification. No governing body issues it, no agency inspects for it, and there’s no standard. Anyone can print it on a label.

There’s no historical “cacao ceremony,” only ceremonial use, and the idea that cacao alone deserves hand processing or intention is a colonial one. Indigenous communities prepare all their foods this way on a small scale, without separating it out as better than corn or anything else that’s made by hand. So skip the front of the bag and read the back.

Ask where are the beans from? Is there a farm named, a country, or even a region? What are the ingredients? That’s the information that tells you what you need to know.

I’m the daughter of two teachers and I recognize real teaching immediately.

There was a moment at the Santa Fe Women’s Cacao Summit that I keep returning to.

Dr. Maricel Presilla, Dr. Patricia Crown, , ,.chocolate, , , , , , , and were all in one room, exchanging ideas, sharing experiences, talking about chocolate. I just looked around and felt joy.

Every woman in that room had something to teach and every woman in that room knew she still had something to learn.

It wasn’t about hierarchy. It was an understanding that years of dedication create a certain kind of wisdom and that new energy asks questions the chocolate industry didn’t know it needed. There was curiosity, depth of knowledge, and great storytelling all in one room.

That’s what real teaching looks like. It’s not a curriculum designed around a path to profit first. It’s the kind of teaching that lasts and is remembered.

This one is personal.

For Indigenous and mixed Indigenous people, watching the “cacao ceremony” be packaged and sold can be a difficult thing to see. It’s not just because the history isn’t there, but because ceremony is sacred. It belongs to community and is never commodified.

Gathering with cacao is beautiful in a circle, a moment of intention, and a shared cup. That’s not a problem. What is painful is the direct claim to an ancient ceremony that never existed, and the wellness industry that has built a business around it. Btw, there is no such thing as certified ceremonial cacao. Peeling cacao beans by hand and setting intention also happens with corn tortillas and we don’t have ceremonial tortillas.

Cacao held a place of honor in Aztec life and was served at weddings, births, funerals as part of a feast that followed the rite. That history is real and it’s enough. It doesn’t need to be repackaged and sold back to us.

Original vintage cacao botanical engravings. I have a favorite. Which one is yours? 🌿

1. Mark Catesby, 1842
2. Beverage Plants, New International Encyclopedia published, 1909
3. Cacao Pod and Brazilian Beetle, Hand Colored, Book of the World, 1857
4. William Rhind botanical plate, Food Plants
Spices Lithographs, 1847
5. Fruits Nuts Natural Remedies Harvesting Plants Flowers, Tropical Fruit Plant Trees Book, 1950

A little office refresh with rearranging pieces and going through books and objects before I start the curating process for the museum.

The metate on the shelf next to the jicaras and the first piece I ever collected in the early 90s. Gosh, has it really been over 35 years of collecting? It’s time for these treasures to be out in the public. I’m incredibly patient.

Chocolate Museum, Fall 2026

A few of the vintage cacao botanical engravings in the Projet Chocolat collection. The one with the olive branch and cacao pod is my favorite because it represents both sides of my family. 🌿