Farming and Foraging at the Crossroads: The Consequences of Cherokee and European Interaction Through the Late Eighteenth Century

Abstract

AbstractThe material remains of daily subsistence within Cherokee communities reflect strategies that households enacted while adapting to disruptions associated with European colonialism. Plant subsistence remains dating from the late Pre-Contact period through the end of the Revolutionary War (A.D. 1300–1783) reveal how Cherokee food producers! collectors fed their families as they navigated an increasingly uncertain landscape. Framing our analysis in terms of risk mitigation and future-discounting concepts from human behavioral ecology, we argue that Cherokee households responded to increasing risk and uncertainty by shifting towards subsistence strategies that had more immediate rewards. Although Cherokee plant subsistence remains exhibit continuity in how people farmed and foraged, our study shows that households made strategic decisions to alter their food production and collection with respect to looming uncertainty. Archaeobotanical analysis from multiple sites spanning the Colonial period (ca. A.D. 1670–1783) reveal a stepwise process of declining maize production, increased foraging, and overall diversification of the plant diet. This case underscores the relevance of concepts from human behavioral ecology to complex colonial situations by demonstrating that strategies of risk prevention and mitigation have applicability beyond ecological factors.