Eastern Agricultural Complex Research Articles

Evidence for the Eastern Agricultural Complex Crops in the Upper Delaware Valley: Botanical Analysis from the Manna Site (36Pi4)

AbstractFrom the Archaic period onward, Indigenous populations across the Eastern Woodlands cultivated a suite of crops known to archaeologists as the Eastern Agricultural Complex. However, aside from squash (Cucurbita pepo) and sunflower (Helianthus annuus), little evidence exists for the cultivation of these plants in the northeastern Algonquian homeland. Botanical analysis from the Manna site (36Pi4), located in the Upper Delaware Valley, provides evidence for the cultivation of the full suite of Eastern Agricultural Complex crops. Flotation samples analyzed from Manna provide the first evidence for possible Lenape cultivation of chenopodium (Chenopodium berlandieri), squash, sunflower, and marshelder (Iva annua) from contexts dating to AD 0–1650 (Middle and Late Woodland) at Manna. Lenape cultivation of these crops complicates the traditional view of Indigenous agricultural systems in northeastern North America and raises questions about when and how these species were introduced to the region.

Reframing the question of Baytown food production: plant remains from the Oliver site, northern Yazoo Basin, Mississippi

ABSTRACT Site densities in Mississippi's Upper Yazoo Basin indicate that populations increased in numbers during the Late Woodland period. Plant remains recovered during salvage operations at the Oliver site in Coahoma County contribute to a database confirming the importance of both wild and cultivated resources for Baytown people of that time. Because the samples reported here were retrieved by water screening rather than flotation, small seeds are uncommon. Still, all four starchy seed taxa and both oily seed crops belonging to the Eastern Agricultural Complex were recovered, along with the unidentified grass known as Type X. The abundance of acorn shell at Oliver and nearby sites with Baytown components calls for more inquiry into how acorns were accessed, processed, cooked, and eaten. We call attention to the pottery that occurs in high frequencies, suggesting that much of it was used to store, cook, and leach tannins from acorns, as well as to prepare other foodstuffs. Discussions of early agriculture in the Yazoo Basin once focused on corn, subsequently incorporating pre-corn native crops. We propose an expanded concept of food production that includes management of nut tree groves and tending of gardens to partially explain the thickly populated Late Woodland Delta landscape.

Caries as an archaeological problem-solving tool: reconstructing subsistence patterns in late prehistoric west-central Tennessee

The dentition from two Middle Mississippian period (~AD 1100-1350) site samples (Gray Farm [~AD 1150-1400], Link/Slayden [~AD 1200-1400]) from the Kentucky Lake Reservoir of west-central Tennessee area are examined for the presence of caries to assess whether a maize-intensive subsistence economy is evident or the retention of the cultivation of domesticated native seeds (i.e., the Eastern Agricultural Complex). Given the absence of archaeological context, the caries prevalence operates as an archaeological problem-solving tool. The caries prevalence by tooth type are compared to a Late Woodland period (~AD 400-900) site sample (Hobbs) from the Kentucky Lake Reservoir as well as three unequivocal maize-intensive site samples from the Late Mississippian period (~AD 1300-1550) of East Tennessee. The Gray Farm site aligns statistically with the maize-intensive samples; Link/Slayden does not and resembles the caries prevalence of the Hobbs sample. The Mississippianization process in the Kentucky Lake Reservoir clearly varies in the adoption of maize as a primary cultigen. This may reflect the difference in geo-political location of Gray Farm and Link/Slayden relative to neighboring Mississippian economies, particularly to the east (Middle Cumberland Culture), or it may reflect potential temporal differences among the Middle Mississippian period settlements within the Kentucky Lake Reservoir.

Food Production in Native North America: An Archaeological Perspective by Kristen J. Gremillion

134 The Michigan Historical Review Kristen J. Gremillion. Food Production in Native North America: An Archaeological Perspective. Washington, DC: The SAA Press (Society for American Archaeology), 2018. Pp. 194. Appendices, Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Paper: $31.95. Gremillion’s book, published by the Society for American Archaeology as part of its “Current Perspectives” series, is a wonderful overview of the evidence, origins, and dispersal of plant domestication in the New World as documented through prehistory and early historic records. In Gremillion’s words, her book “provides a highly selective survey of Native North American food production systems from an archaeological perspective [with] four major foci: the domestication and intensification of indigenous seed crops in the East; the introduction and spread of maizebased farming systems that incorporated crops of Mesoamerican origin, including maize; the persistence of diverse low-intensity forms of food production in societies that evade the classic forager-farmer dichotomy; and the impact of introduced crops after AD 1492” (p. ix). The theoretical framework used in Gremillion’s thesis “is both evolutionary and ecology [sic, ecological]; her book does not propose a single dominant causal factor or argue for identical historical pathways to food production; instead, it looks at those pathways as historical enactments of cultural, evolutionary, and ecological processes that affect human societies worldwide” (pp. ix-x). As an overview, Gremillion’s book would make a great “reader” for graduate courses dealing with prehistoric North American gatherer/hunter food-getting strategies to food production requirements for full-scale, threesisters (maize-beans-squash) agriculturalists. Organized into seven chapters (“A Coevolutionary Continuum,” “The Eastern Agricultural Complex,” “Origins and Development of Maize-Based Agriculture in the Southwest,” “The Rise of the Three Sisters: Maize in the Eastern Woodlands,” “Food Production without Farming,” “A World of Difference: Food Production in Postcontact North America,” and “Synthesis”), the book has a very useful appendix that provides a listing of scientific names of plants and animal taxa (domesticated and not), is wonderfully referenced (including a References Cited section that reads like a who’s-who in paleoethnobotanical or archaeobotanical research), and is well indexed. Although generally North American in scope, the book is quite regionalized, and noticeably biased toward geographical areas reflecting where the majority of “early” evidence of plant domestication has been found: e.g., the Ohio/Mississippi/Illinois river valleys and the American Southwest, although some discussion is given to the American Northwest and Northeast. I would have preferred greater discussion about evidence of Book Reviews 135 domesticated plant remains for the Great Lakes region; albeit, there is a brief discussion regarding tobacco and maize agriculture in southern Ontario (p. 73). And although a good portion of the book addresses therise and adoption of maize agriculture north of Mexico, there is no mention of the copious amounts of maize excavated at the Tyra site from Saginaw County in Michigan, or evidence of domesticated cultigens found at more famous, and well-studied, Michigan prehistoric sites like Schultz or Winter, to name just a couple recently receiving significant study (obviously, my bias is toward the archaeology of the Great Lakes area). But as Gremillion points out (p. 4), her book is regionallyoriented and addresses theprocess of domestication in only “some” areas of North America. Despite this minor shortcoming, this book is a must-have, with great potential as a reader for graduate North American archaeology courses, or courses dealing with the rise of plant domestication. Kenneth C. Carstens Missouri State University Lawrence B. A. Hatter. Citizens of Convenience: The Imperial Origins of American Nationhood on the U.S.-Canadian Border. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017. Pp. 267. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $30.49. The Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the American Revolution, generously ceded to the United States territory west to the Mississippi River and north to Lake of the Woods. The new border split in two the domain of the Montreal-based fur trade, much to the dismay of its merchants and traders. While the US was given nominal control of this territory, the government was too weak to secure the new border. Canadians—British subjects—continued to trade furs south of the Great Lakes. For the next three and...

AN EARLY WOODLAND DOMESTICATED CHENOPOD (CHENOPODIUM BERLANDIERISUBSP.JONESIANUM) CACHE FROM THE TUTELA HEIGHTS SITE, ONTARIO, CANADA

A cache of charred, domesticated chenopod (Chenopodium berlandierisubsp.jonesianum) seeds is reported from the Early Woodland (930–915 cal BC) Tutela Heights site (AgHb-446) in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. This is the northernmost report of the crop, approximately 800 km northeast of Kentucky where the previous northernmost occurrences contemporary with Tutela Heights are reported. The Tutela Heights chenopod dates to about 1,500 years before the earliest maize is reported in Ontario and is the earliest Eastern Agricultural Complex crop in Canada. The chenopod may represent a crop that was not grown locally. In this scenario, the crop was strictly an exchange item that was circulating in an interregional exchange system that extended south to the US Midwest region and east to the Maritime provinces. Another possibility, although less likely given our current understanding of Early Woodland plant use in Ontario, is that chenopod was introduced to Southern Ontario in this exchange network and subsequently became a crop in a low-level food producing economy during the Ontario Early Woodland. However, no ecological indicators of cultivation have been found at Tutela Heights, and continuity of domesticated chenopod utilization from the Early Woodland period in the province has not yet been documented.

Documenting the Evolution of Agrobiodiversity in the Archaeological Record: Landraces of a Newly Described Domesticate (Polygonum erectum) in North America

Relatively few farmers today actively maintain crop biodiversity, but for most of the history of agriculture this was the norm. Archaeobotanical analyses can reveal the processes that led to the evolution of crop biodiversity throughout the Holocene, an issue of critical importance in an era of climate change and agrobiodiversity loss. Indigenous eastern North Americans domesticated several annual seed crops, called the Eastern Agricultural Complex, beginning c. 1800 BC. Using population morphometrics, this paper reports new evidence for the evolution of a domesticated sub-species of one of these crops, erect knotweed (Polyongum erectum L.), and its subsequent diversification under cultivation. Morphometric analyses were conducted on archaeological erect knotweed populations spanning its ancient cultivated range, and these were directly dated to c. 1–1350 AD, anchoring the evolution of this crop in both time and space. Domesticated erect knotweed first appears c. 1 AD in the Middle Ohio Valley. A diachronic series of populations from western Illinois shows that this species was domesticated again c. 150–1000 AD. This study shows how agricultural knowledge and material were maintained and shared (or not) by communities during an important era in eastern North America’s history: when small communities were aggregating to form the earliest urban center at Cahokia, in the American Bottom floodplain. A distinctive landrace was developed by farmers in the American Bottom which is significantly different from cultivated populations in other regions. Subsequent Mississippian assemblages (c. 1000–1350 AD) indicate divergent agricultural communities of practice, and possibly the eventual feralization of erect knotweed. Archaeobotanical studies have a vast untapped potential to reveal interaction between communities, or their isolation, and to investigate the evolution of crops after initial domestication.

The earliest occurrence of a newly described domesticate in Eastern North America: Adena/Hopewell communities and agricultural innovation

Archaic and Woodland period communities in eastern North America domesticated a suite of annual seed crops referred to the Eastern Agricultural Complex (EAC), some of which subsequently fell out of cultivation and were lost. Recently, a domesticated sub-species of one of these lost crops, erect knotweed (Polygonum erectum) has been described. This paper reports the earliest example of this domesticated sub-species, which was recovered from a sub-mound context at an Adena/Hopewell site in central Kentucky (Walker-Noe, 15Gd56) dating to c. 1 AD. Contemporary Middle Woodland erect knotweed assemblages from habitation sites in western Illinois are not domesticated. A review of the paleoethnobotanical record suggests that farmers on the western front of the Appalachian Mountains developed several innovative agricultural practices, beginning around 1000 BC, that subsequently were adopted across the core area of EAC cultivation. The ethnography and sociology of 20th and 21st century farmer networks suggests that Adena/Hopewell exchange and community integration at mounds and earthworks may have been instrumental to this process. Additional analyses of botanical assemblages from mounds and earthworks, especially morphometric analyses of crop seeds, are necessary to test this hypothesis. The dynamics of social learning involved in this process may also be implicated in the spread of crop varieties and agricultural techniques in other regions.

FORAGING MODELS, NICHE CONSTRUCTION, AND THE EASTERN AGRICULTURAL COMPLEX

Some proponents of niche construction challenge the validity of optimality models for investigating agricultural origins, but offer no alternative strategy for understanding the economic context of human foraging decisions. They refer to the Eastern Agricultural Complex as an example of how seed cultivation can result from resource enhancement rather than population-induced resource depression, contradicting a prediction inferred from the prey choice model. Low-return seed cultigens were harvested in environments offering more highly ranked hickory nuts in abundance, apparently supporting their interpretation. A marginal value model demonstrates that in years of low mast yield, foragers could more profitably fill food stores from nearby seed plots than from distant hickory trees. Cultivating seeds would have been economically worthwhile when population circumscription constrained mobility, consistent with trends indicating regional population growth. Surges in walnut shell relative to small seeds are also consistent with the model, suggesting that foragers intensified their use of local, anthropogenic vegetation communities as populations grew, stimulating development of horticultural economies. This illustrates the value of foraging models used in conjunction with niche construction for investigating agricultural origins, particularly when model predictions initially fail to accord with archaeological evidence.

Documenting domestication in a lost crop (Polygonum erectum L.): evolutionary bet-hedgers under cultivation

This study uses morphometrics and digital image analysis to document domestication syndrome in an annual seed crop, Polygonum erectum L. (erect knotweed), which was cultivated by Native Americans for c. 2,500 years in eastern North America. This plant is one of several seed crops referred to as the Eastern Agricultural Complex, a pre-maize agricultural system that supported societies in a core area centred on the central Mississippi valley for millennia. The extinct domesticated subspecies P. erectum ssp. watsoniae N. G. Muell. described here, exhibits some classic markers of domestication, including larger fruits and reduced germination inhibitors in comparison to its wild progenitor. Domesticated P. erectum also exhibits greatly reduced germination heteromorphism. Germination heteromorphism is the classic example of evolutionary bet-hedging in plants: wild P. erectum sacrifices maximum fitness per generation for a reduction in fitness variance over many generations. It does so by producing two different types of fruits: ones that germinate immediately in the spring after they are produced (smooth morphs), and ones that remain in the soil seed bank for one or more growing seasons before germinating (tubercled morphs). Tubercled morphs allow populations to recover after adverse events. Under cultivation, the selective pressures that maintained this strategy were relaxed as humans saved seeds and created predictable microenvironments for seedlings, resulting in homogenous harvests and reliable germination for ancient farmers.

A record of sustained prehistoric and historic land use from the Cahokia region, Illinois, USA

In eastern North America, large prehistoric settlements were concentrated in and along the floodplains of the midcontinent, but few sedimentary records have been examined adjacent to these sites to evaluate the impacts of Native American land use on terrestrial ecosystems. Here we report a high-resolution and multiproxy paleoecological record from Horseshoe Lake, an oxbow lake in the central Mississippi River valley that is adjacent to the Cahokia site (Illinois, USA), the largest prehistoric settlement north of Mexico. Palynological and carbon isotope data document pronounced vegetation changes over the past 1700 yr driven primarily by land use, including 900 yr (450–1350 CE) of sustained prehistoric human impacts. Rapid forest clearance was followed closely by the proliferation of indigenous seed crops of the Eastern Agricultural Complex beginning ca. 450 CE, centuries before the emergence of Cahokia at 1050 CE. Agricultural intensification that included the use of maize ( Zea mays subsp. mays ) followed this initial clearance, with peak land use intensity between 900 and 1200 CE. A large flood event ca. 1200 CE marks the onset of agricultural contraction and Cahokia’s decline. Reforestation follows the abandonment of the Cahokia region at ca. 1350 CE. The Horseshoe Lake record thus indicates that regional agricultural activity began abruptly at 450 CE and intensified over the following centuries, well before the formation of Cahokia and other large prehistoric settlements. The evidence that a major flood coincided with the onset of Cahokia’s decline is noteworthy, but will require corroboration from additional records.

Environmental Change Since the Woodland Period in the Mid-Ohio Valley: Results from Patton Bog Sediment Core Palynological Analyses

Palynological analyses of sediment cores from Patton Bog in southeastern Ohio recorded environmental changes from ca. 1000 B.C. to the present, representing the first pollen core analyzed from this region. Pollen data show an increase in prairie species, implying periodic expansion of grassland environments during the Woodland period coeval with the initial collection and eventual domestication of Eastern Agricultural Complex seeds. It is suggested that these environmental changes influenced human decisions concerning plant domestication and diet in the mid-Ohio Valley.

Reevaluating What We Know About the Histories of Maize in Northeastern North America: A Review of Current Evidence

The adoption of maize in northeastern North America is often seen as a catalyst for the development of settled village life. In this review we develop a theoretical framework centered on shifting-balance theory (SBT) and domesticated landscapes through which to understand the context for the adoption of maize agriculture in the Northeast. We review micro- and macrobotanical evidence and stable carbon isotope data from various sources to reevaluate maize histories and adoption trajectories. These data are coupled with contributions of subregionally significant predecessor plants, such as those constituting the Eastern Agricultural Complex, and wild rice. We find no evidence for rapid transitions to settled village life as a result of maize adoption. Maize was grown for centuries before settled village agricultural systems evolved. It was grown for a sufficiently long time that the potential for local selection leading to Northern Flint is a viable working hypothesis. We call for a refocusing of research questions and a systematic application of contemporary techniques as a means by which to strengthen future inferences based on comparative information sets.

Using Evolutionary Archaeology and Evolutionary Ecology to Explain Cultural Elaboration: The Case of Middle Ohio Valley Woodland Period Ceremonial Subsistence

We propose a Darwinian evolutionary model for the development and disappearance of Woodland period cultural elaboration in the Ohio River Valley, and specifically the “climax” of this behavior known as the Hopewell phenomenon. We combine aspects of evolutionary archaeology and evolutionary ecology to provide a model that (1) has testable empirical consequences, and (2) specifically addresses the historical context of development of the phenomenon being explained. Our model builds on Smith's (1987) coevolutionary scenario for the development of symbiosis between Eastern Agricultural Complex (EAC) crops and the human populations exploiting them. After presenting our model, we explore the empirical consequences of ceremonial subsistence and the types of data that would be required to test the model. In our discussion of the extant data we also contrast our scenario with a competing evolutionary explanation for the Hopewell phenomenon: the “waste” hypothesis. The limited available evidence is in line with the empirical expectations of the ceremonial subsistence model and is, to varying degrees, at odds with the empirical expectations for the “waste” explanation. Our ceremonial subsistence model offers a testable alternative that is not falsified by the extant data. However, we recognize the problem is far from solved. Our primary aim is to promote renewed theoretical discussion of the issues raised herein and to encourage new problem-oriented research to provide empirical evidence to test both explanations.

The Paleoethnobotanical Assemblage from the 1971–1977 Excavations at the Seip Earthworks

AbstractThis chapter summarizes the paleoethnobotanical data procured from the 1972 through 1975 excavations seasons at the Seip site. Samples from the recent flotation processing of sediment collected from two features (1974 Feature 7 and 1975 Post mold E-3) as well as specimens collected in the field during the 1972, 1973, and 1974 excavations were examined and materials identified. Although the samples were limited in number and site contexts nonetheless a variety of charred plant material, including wood charcoal, bark, nutshell, squash rind, and seeds were identified. At least six distinct taxa of wood have been identified in the samples, with hickory and oak prevalent. The carbonized seed assemblage yielded a few specimens of what may be members of the Eastern Agricultural Complex and one definite squash rind specimen was extracted from the 1974 Feature 7 contents. In addition, the chapter also summarizes the recent paleoethnobotanical research conducted on materials from a variety of Ohio Hopewell ...

Prehistoric Human Use of Fire, the Eastern Agricultural Complex, and Appalachian Oak-Chestnut Forests: Paleoecology of Cliff Palace Pond, Kentucky

Fossil pollen assemblages from Cliff Palace Pond, Kentucky, characterize changes in forest composition through the past 9,500 years of the Holocene. Early-Holocene spruce and northern white cedar stands were replaced by mixed mesophytic forests after 7300 B.P. Hemlock declined around 4800 B.P., and eastern red cedar became locally important. After 3000 B.P, mixed oak-chestnut and pine forests were dominant. The fossil charcoal record from Cliff Palace Pond demonstrates that Late Archaic and Woodland peoples cleared forest gaps to cultivate native plants in the Eastern Agricultural Complex and that anthropogenic fires served to increase populations of fire-tolerant oaks, chestnut, and pines in upland forests of the northern Cumberland Plateau.

Identification of Cultigen Amaranth and Chenopod from Rockshelter Sites in Northwest Arkansas

The cultigenAmaranthus hypochondriacushas been recognized in four samples of desiccated plant remains from Holman Shelter in Madison County, Arkansas. That site, excavated in 1932, yielded the domesticatedChenopodium berlandierissp.nuttalliaedescribed by Hugh Wilson (1981). Cultigen chenopod has been found in one other Madison County rockshelter. Samples containing the two species are described in detail and placed in general cultural context by combining information from excavation notes with regional archaeological data. Mesoamerican origins would exclude both cultigens from the Eastern Agricultural Complex. Current evidence favors a late prehistoric introduction into the eastern United States, but determination of spatial and temporal ranges will depend upon future recovery and analysis.

Comments on Struever's Discussion of an Early "Eastern Agricultural Complex"

AbstractIn a recent article, Stuart Struever made certain statements which deserve comment. Discussion of the possibility of pre-maize agriculture in the eastern United States appeared in print as early as 1924. Sunflower and marshelder seem to have been among the plants domesticated, but not giant ragweed. The evidence for cultivation of amaranth and chenopod needs more careful evaluation. The archaeological occurrence of unusually large seeds may be good evidence of domestication, but the occurrence of chenopod at the Pomranky and Hodges sites in Michigan does not appear to be good evidence.