ABSTRACT

This chapter traces the origins of tobacco use and its variation in Lowland South America. It describes tobacco's rise as a valuable commodity during the colonial period, providing observations made by visiting scholars and scientists. By synthesizing archaeological and botanical findings while also examining human societies' consumptive and productive relationships to tobacco through time, the chapter seeks to illuminate the deep history of tobacco. Recreational use of tobacco in the form of cigars or cigarettes most likely expanded following the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese and the subsequent commodification of tobacco. Tobacco and the various plants of the genus Nicotiana that produce it have a complex history in lowland South America. The high variation in the patterning and spatial distribution of techniques in tobacco use seem to correlate with distribution of Nicotiana species in the eastern Andes and into the lowlands.