Horticulture and the Maintenance of Social Complexity in Late Woodland Southeastern New England

Abstract

Macrobotanical data from several southeastern New England sites are reviewed to provide a framework for examining changing social organization during the Late Woodland (ca. a.d. 800–1600). This article argues that the degree to which incipient maize horticulture entailed shifts in social complexity has not been well-defined by researchers. Minimally, introduction of maize into traditional economies gave rise to comparatively more complex relationships between resident late prehistoric groups and local environmental regimes. A gradually increasing commitment to economic systems which included maize and other seed-bearing plants led to increased levels of complexity in labor organization and land-use practices. Changing perceptions of cultural “belongingness,” prompted by competition for lands suitable for cultivation, influenced how local groups conceived and expressed intra-and intergroup sociopolitical identities. Such shifts in perceptions of sociopolitical differences in late prehistory are traceable in ideological structures reflected in mortuary patterning represented in the regional archaeological record.