Plant Husbandry in Prehistoric Eastern North America: New Evidence for Its Development

1978 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen A. Chomko ◽  
Gary W. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Native Plant ◽  
Late Archaic ◽  
Plant Resources ◽  
New Evidence

Squash remains from three Late Archaic archaeological sites constitute the earliest evidence for cultigens in eastern North America. The new data indicate the tropical cultigen, squash, was introduced into the area prior to the domestication of native plant resources.

LATE ARCHAIC RITUALISM IN DOMESTIC CONTEXTS: CLAY-FLOORED SHRINES AT THE BURRELL ORCHARD SITE, OHIO

2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-701 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian G. Redmond
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Late Archaic ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
The Many ◽  
New Evidence

Past research on the development of Archaic ideological complexity in eastern North America has focused on ritualism and ceremony related to mortuary behaviors, with less attention to ritualism within what is commonly thought of as domestic contexts without overt mortuary ceremonialism or monumental architecture. The recent discovery of puddled clay architecture and associated features at the Burrell Orchard site (33LN15) in northeast Ohio provides new evidence of significant, nonmortuary ritualism within Late Archaic basecamp contexts. That such activity took place alongside normal seasonal subsistence tasks is revealed by thick midden deposits containing abundant burned rock, nutshell, and deer bone. The many bone and stone tool deposits associated with the floors, along with the labor-intensive nature of the clay construction for what appears to have been individually short-term use, support the interpretation of these features as shrines possibly associated with hunting ritualism.

Agricultural Innovation and Dispersal in Eastern North America

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kandace D. Hollenbach ◽  
Stephen B. Carmody
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Behavioral Ecology ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Behavioral Ecology ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Cultivated Plants ◽  
Plant Domestication ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Late Archaic ◽  
Native Peoples

The possibility that native peoples in eastern North America had cultivated plants prior to the introduction of maize was first raised in 1924. Scant evidence was available to support this speculation, however, until the “flotation revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s. As archaeologists involved in large-scale projects began implementing flotation, paleoethnobotanists soon had hundreds of samples and thousands of seeds that demonstrated that indigenous peoples grew a suite of crops, including cucurbit squashes and gourds, sunflower, sumpweed, and chenopod, which displayed signs of domestication. The application of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating to cucurbit rinds and seeds in the 1980s placed the domestication of these four crops in the Late Archaic period 5000–3800 bp. The presence of wild cucurbits during earlier Archaic periods lent weight to the argument that native peoples in eastern North America domesticated these plants independently of early cultivators in Mesoamerica. Analyses of DNA from chenopods and cucurbits in the 2010s definitively demonstrated that these crops developed from local lineages. With evidence in hand that refuted notions of the diffusion of plant domestication from Mesoamerica, models developed in the 1980s for the transition from foraging to farming in the Eastern Woodlands emphasized the coevolutionary relationship between people and these crop plants. As Archaic-period groups began to occupy river valleys more intensively, in part due to changing climatic patterns during the mid-Holocene that created more stable river systems, their activities created disturbed areas in which these weedy plants thrive. With these useful plants available as more productive stands in closer proximity to base camps, people increasingly used the plants, which in turn responded to people’s selection. Critics noted that these models left little room for intentionality or innovation on the part of early farmers. Models derived from human behavioral ecology explore the circumstances in which foragers choose to start using these small-seeded plants in greater quantities. In contrast to the resource-rich valley settings of the coevolutionary models, human behavioral ecology models posit that foragers would only use these plants, which provide relatively few calories per time spent obtaining them, when existing resources could no longer support growing populations. In these scenarios, Late Archaic peoples cultivated these crops as insurance against shortages in nut supplies. Despite their apparent differences, current iterations of both models recognize humans as agents who actively change their environments, with intentional and unintentional results. Both also are concerned with understanding the social and ecological contexts within which people began cultivating and eventually domesticating plants. The “when” and “where” questions of domestication in eastern North America are relatively well established, although researchers continue to fill significant gaps in geographic data. These primarily include regions where large-scale contract archaeology projects have not been conducted. Researchers are also actively debating the “how” and “why” of domestication, but the cultural ramifications of the transition from foraging to farming have yet to be meaningfully incorporated into the archaeological understanding of the region. The significance of these native crops to the economies of Late Archaic and subsequent Early and Middle Woodland peoples is poorly understood and often woefully underestimated by researchers. The socioeconomic roles of these native crops to past peoples, as well as the possibilities for farmers and cooks to incorporate them into their practices in the early 21st century, are exciting areas for new research.

Fire and Ice: New Evidence for the Production and Preservation of Late Archaic Fiber-Tempered Pottery in the Middle-Latitude Lowlands

1984 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth C. Reid
Keyword(s):  
Middle Latitude ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Late Archaic ◽  
Temperate Latitude ◽  
Far North ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Latitude Distribution ◽  
Type Site ◽  
New Evidence

Fiber-tempered potsherds recovered from three sites of the Nebo Hill phase in western Missouri and eastern Kansas date to between 4550 and 3550 radiocarbon years (2600–1600 B.C.) and represent the earliest dated vessels in the midwest. The occurence of fiber-tempered pottery at this time period and this far north and west of the traditionally-defined southeastern hearth for such wares requires a major reappraisal of the assumed distribution and antiquity of Late Archaic ceramics in eastern North America. This report describes the ceramic sherds from the Nebo Hill type site in terms of their method of manufacture and probable use, and identifies factors influencing their survival and preservation in the middle-latitude lowlands. It is proposed that the temperate latitude distribution pattern of shallowly-buried, fiber-tempered potsherds is shaped primarily by the variables of time, ambient moisture and temperature, and ware porosity, and is not necessarily isomorphic with the prehistoric distribution of fiber-tempered vessels.

Invertebrate trace fossils and agglutinated foraminifera as indicators of marine influence within the classic Carboniferous section at Joggins, Nova Scotia, Canada

1995 ◽  
Vol 32 (12) ◽  
pp. 2027-2039 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen W. Archer ◽  
John H. Calder ◽  
Martin R. Gibling ◽  
Robert D. Naylor ◽  
Donald R. Reid ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Nova Scotia ◽  
North America ◽  
Brackish Water ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Fluvial Systems ◽  
Biogenic Structures ◽  
Water Conditions ◽  
Marine Influence ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Agglutinated Foraminifera

The sea cliffs at Joggins, Nova Scotia, are the most extensive and continuous Carboniferous section in eastern North America. Although the section has been considered to have formed within a nonmarine depositional basin, paleobiological information indicates that parts of the section were deposited in brackish water. The occurrence of a trace-fossil assemblage, which includes Cochlichnus, Kouphichnium, and Treptichnus, is part of an assemblage of biogenic structures that apparently reflects paleodeposition within fluvial systems that may have experienced distal marine influences. Presence of agglutinated foraminifera characteristic of brackish-water environments supports this interpretation. This information provides new evidence of brackish-water conditions at Joggins such as those now being widely recognized in other Carboniferous coal-bearing sections.

Early Agricultural Diet in Eastern North America: Evidence from Two Kentucky Rockshelters

1996 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 520-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen J. Gremillion
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
North America ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Woodland Period ◽  
Food Storage ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Eastern Kentucky ◽  
New Evidence

Systematic quantitative analysis of desiccated human paleofeces from two rockshelters in eastern Kentucky has yielded new evidence for early agricultural diet in eastern North America. Results indicate that native cultigens (including sumpweed, sunflower, and chenopod) were sometimes significant dietary constituents as early as ca. 1000 B.C., at least a millennium before agricultural economies became widespread across the region. However, variability in the quantity and frequency of cultigen remains suggests a dietary role that was somewhat limited compared to the practices of later Woodland period farmers. The predictions of foraging theory suggest that the utilization of cultigens would have been most advantageous in spring and summer (when many other foods were scarce) or in years of poor production by nut-bearing trees. The causal link between food storage and the development of food production in eastern Kentucky receives some empirical support and warrants further investigation.

Remote Sensing as Community Settlement Analysis at Moundville

2015 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jera R. Davis ◽  
Chester P. Walker ◽  
John H. Blitz
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
North America ◽  
Magnetic Anomalies ◽  
Landscape Scale ◽  
Geophysical Survey ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Innovative Research ◽  
Settlement Analysis ◽  
Cultural Features

AbstractRemote sensing has revolutionized procedures for locating buried features at archaeological sites in eastern North America. However, the potential of instruments such as gradiometers to shape innovative research in ways that move beyond survey and testing is not always realized in practice. At the Mississippian site of Moundville, Alabama, we conducted a landscape-scale geophysical survey to serve as the guiding method of community settlement analysis. First, we mapped the distribution of magnetic anomalies across the site. Next, we defined the variability of anomalies and selected a sample for test excavations to correlate specific anomaly shapes and amplitudes with specific cultural features. Once confirmed as cultural features, we extrapolated sample results to identify unexcavated anomalies as specific building forms and other features with a higher degree of probability than would have been possible without confirmation by test excavation. Results include the identification and mapping of over 450 unexcavated probable buildings, nearly five times the number previously discovered in decades of traditional excavation. Because the buried probable buildings have different forms, sizes, distributions, and chronological spans, the interpreted gradiometer map is transformed through interpretation from a static palimpsest of anomalies to a picture of changing community settlement organization.

Bear-Human Relationships in Native Eastern North America

Bears ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 271-310
Author(s):  
Gregory A. Waselkov ◽  
J. Lynn Funkhouser
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Black Bear ◽  
Black Bears ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Population Densities ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Foot Bones ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ontological Turn

This volume’s case studies recognize the black bear (Ursus americanus) to be among the most socially consequent of species in Native Eastern North America, despite meager remains at many archaeological sites. Indeed, that sparseness offers valuable evidence for the social roles long played by bears. Ethnohistorical sources suggest bear population densities in some habitats were greater than seen today in Eastern North America. Most archaeological assemblages of bear skeletal remains have skull parts and foot bones but lack most other postcranial elements, often reflecting ritual off-site discard of post-cranial remains and feasting on head and feet. Differences in quantities of bear remains, their relative proportions to other mammals, and differing representations of various parts of the bear skeleton are sensitive indicators of a society’s relationship with black bears. We apply precepts of the new animism, or the ontological turn, to animate the zooarchaeology of bears in Eastern North America.

On the Inferred Age and Origin of Lithic Bi-Points from the Eastern Seaboard and their Relevance to the Pleistocene Peopling of North America

2015 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew T. Boulanger ◽  
Metin I. Eren
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Late Glacial ◽  
Glacial Maximum ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Late Archaic ◽  
Early Woodland ◽  
Definitive Evidence ◽  
Middle Atlantic ◽  
Eastern Seaboard

AbstractRecently, advocates of an “older -than- Clovis” occupation of eastern North America have suggested that bi-pointed leaf-shaped lanceolate stone bifaces provide definitive evidence of human culture on the eastern seaboard prior to the Late Glacial Maximum. This argument hinges on two suppositions : first, that points of this form are exceedingly rare in the East and second, that all known occurrences of these point forms are from landforms or depositionaI environments dating to some time before the late Pleistocene. Neither of these suppositions is supported by the archaeological record. Bi-pointed leaf shaped blades have been recoveredfrom throughout the Middle Atlantic and Northeast, where they have been repeatedly dated, either radiometrically or by association with diagnostic artifacts, to between the Late Archaic and the Early Woodland. Statistical analysis of supposed “older-than-Clovis” leaf-shaped blades demonstrates that there are no significant differences in morphology between them and unequivocally Middle Holocene leaf-shaped blades. Until such time as evidence demonstrates otherwise, there is no reason to accept that these leaf-shaped bifaces are diagnostic of a Pleistocene, much less pre-Late Glacial Maximum, occupation in eastern North America.

Do Cucurbita pepo Gourds Float Fishnets?

2004 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. Hart ◽  
Robert A. Daniels ◽  
Charles J. Sheviak
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Cucurbita Pepo ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Dried Fruits ◽  
Far North ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Indigenous Crops

Among the various pre-maize indigenous crops of eastern North America, Cucurbita pepo gourd is the most enigmatic.C. pepogourd remains have been found on mid-Holocene (8000–4000 B.P.) archaeological sites as far north and east as Maine. Their presumably extremely bitter flesh would have made the fruits inedible. Two not mutually exclusive hypotheses for use of the fruit are currently being debated: (1) the nutritious seeds were processed to remove bitterness and consumed, and (2) dried fruits were used as fishnet floats and/or containers for general use. We report on a series of experiments that demonstrate the gourds function extremely well as fishnet floats. These results lend support to the second hypothesis, but do not conclusively prove they were used for this purpose.

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