The symbiotic relationship between people and the genus Agave spans millennia and a vast geographical area encompassing Mexico, the southwestern United States, and the Texas borderlands. In the early 1950s, Richard MacNeish's investigations in Tamaulipas yielded evidence of past agave use in the mountains of northeastern Mexico. Excavations in the Ocampo Caves revealed 9,000 years of sporadic occupations by hunter-gatherers, mixed forager-farmers, and finally, periodic visits by residents of nearby agricultural villages. Although these discoveries are incompletely published—and existing publications largely underemphasize the range of utilized wild resources in favor of domesticated maize, beans, and squash—agave is among the wild plant taxa most often mentioned in use throughout the Holocene. Unpublished field notes, curated plant assemblages recovered during MacNeish's excavations, and data from recent archaeological survey complement the published literature to explore the role of this prominent plant in this important archaeological region.

人与龙舌兰属的共生关系跨越数千年，地理区域广阔，涵盖墨西哥、美国西南部和德克萨斯州边境地区。20 世纪 50 年代初，理查德·麦克尼什 (Richard MacNeish) 对塔毛利帕斯州的调查发现了墨西哥东北部山区过去使用龙舌兰的证据。奥坎波洞穴的发掘揭示了 9,000 年来狩猎采集者、混合采集者和农民的零星职业，最后是附近农业村庄居民的定期访问。尽管这些发现尚未完全发表，而且现有出版物在很大程度上低估了野生资源的利用范围，而有利于驯化玉米、豆类和南瓜，但龙舌兰是整个全新世最常被提及的野生植物类群之一。未发表的田野笔记、麦克尼什挖掘过程中发现的精心策划的植物组合，