A Systematic Approach to Species–Level Identification of Chile Pepper (Capsicum spp.) Seeds: Establishing the Groundwork for Tracking the Domestication and Movement of Chile Peppers through the Americas and Beyond 1 KATHERINE L. CHIOU * AND CHRISTINE A. HASTORF Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA *Corresponding author; e-mail: katie.chiou@berkeley.edu A Systematic Approach to Species–Level Identification of Chile Pepper (Capsicum spp.) Seeds: Establishing the Groundwork for Tracking the Domestication and Movement of Chile Peppers through the Americas and Beyond The chile pepper (Capsicum spp.), a plant held in great esteem throughout history, was independently domesticated in a series of places including highland Bolivia, central Mexico, the Amazon, the Caribbean, and other locales with a particularly long history of cultivation and use in the central Andes of South America. Though identification of chile pepper species through fruit morphology is possible and has been utilized by botanists studying modern and archaeological specimens, species–level identification of Capsicum seeds has remained undetermined. Given the greater abundance of seed remains in the archaeological record due to the higher likelihood of preservation, the ability to identify specific Capsicum domesticates has profound implications for tracking the domestication and spread of chile peppers prehistorically through the Americas and historically through trade and exchange to the rest of the world. This article presents a systematic procedure to identify Capsicum seeds to the species level created by adopting a morphometric approach to compare attributes of modern Capsicum seeds to archaeological seeds. Un Procedimiento Sistemático para la Identificación de Diversas Especies Chiles/Ajíes (Capsicum spp.) por medio de Sus Semillas: Estableciendo una Base para Rastrear la Domesticación y Movimiento de los Chiles/Ajíes a través de las Américas y el Resto del Mundo El chile/ají (Capsicum spp. L.), una planta que goza de gran estima a lo largo de la historia de la humanidad, fue domesticado independientemente en una serie de diferentes lugares, incluyendo el altiplano boliviano, México central, la Amazonia y el Caribe. Aunque hoy en día es possible la identificación de diferentes especies de chile/ají a través de la morfología de la fruta, la identificación utilizando solamente la semilla permanece una tarea difícil. Dada la gran abundancia de semillas en el registro arqueológico, el desarollo de esta habilidad tiene profundas implicaciones para el estudio de la domesticación y difusión de chile/ají en las America precolombina y el resto del mundo. El presente artículo propone un procedimiento sistemático 1 Received 7 November 2013; accepted 14 August 2014; published online 16 September 2014. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s12231-014-9279-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Economic Botany, 68(3), 2014 pp. 316–336 © 2014, by The New York Botanical Garden Press, Bronx, NY 10458-5126 U.S.A.