Cultural pollen delivery is not needed to account for consistent, trace abundances of Zea mays pollen in the sediments of Santa Fe Lake

Roos (2026) proposes an intriguing cultural mechanism to account for the rare (<1.5% of terrestrial pollen), but consistent (28/34 samples spanning 450 years), presence of Zea mays (maize) pollen in the sediments of Santa Fe Lake from 800 to 350 cal yr BP (1150 – 1600 cal yr CE; Henne et al., 2026a, 2026b). Whereas the importance of maize agriculture to Ancestral Puebloans is well established, Roos argues that the near-absence of maize pollen from soils proximate to historical maize cultivation and in peat or lake-sediment records in the Southwestern USA indicates that natural pollen delivery was not sufficient to account for the trace abundances of maize pollen we counted at Santa Fe Lake. Roos concludes that ceremonial practices provide an alternative mechanism that should be considered in the interpretation of lake-sediment archives like Santa Fe Lake. We agree that the cultural practices described by Roos are a credible source of pollen delivery and understand the significance of sacred lakes to Indigenous communities (Bodine, 1988). However, we conclude that natural delivery to the Santa Fe catchment is sufficient to account for the trace abundances of maize pollen in our record. We first place our consistent finding of maize pollen in a context beyond the Southwestern USA that includes other mountain regions, discuss why it is unlikely to find consistent maize pollen in the records presented by Roos, and expand on what makes Santa Fe Lake a superior archive for maize pollen than previous records. Based on this discussion, we conclude that natural pollen deposition is the most parsimonious explanation for consistent maize pollen over a period of 450 years.