Foraging and Farming in the Eastern Woodlands

4.2/5 ( ratings)

"The latest thinking in Eastern Woodlands paleoethnobotany; a volume which belongs on the bookshelf of every archaeologist and paleoethnobotanist who is concerned with plants and culture in North America."--Deborah M. Pearsall, University of Missouri

"The papers . . . provide succinct updates in a rapidly developing field [and] explore many facets of the cultural implications of plant remains, taking paleoethnobotanical interpretation in provocative new directions."--Gary W. Crawford, Erindale College

Combining broad chronological syntheses and regionally specific case studies, this volume presents up-to-date findings about plant use by prehistoric and early historic peoples who lived in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. The contributors stress that current depictions of the subsistence strategies, settlement patterns, and social relations of these earliest Americans need to be reformulated to accommodate our new understanding of both the importance of native crops and the variability in peoples' foodways.

Contents
Introduction, by C. Margaret Scarry

The Importance of Native Crops during the Late Archaic and Woodland Periods, by Richard A. Yarnell

The Archaic Period and the Flotation Revolution, by Jefferson Chapman and Patty Jo Watson

Early and Middle Woodland Period Paleoethnobotany, by Gayle J. Fritz

Farmers of the Late Woodland, by Sissel Johannessen

Variability in Mississippian Crop Production Strategies, by C. Margaret Scarry

New Methods for Studying the Origins of New World Domesticates: The Squash Example, by Deena S. Decker-Walters

Reanalysis of Seed Crops from Emge: New Implications for Late Woodland Subsistence-Settlement Systems, by Sandra L. Dunavan

Plants and People: Cultural, Biological, and Ecological Responses to Wood Exploitation, by Lee A. Newsom

Cultural Change and Subsistence: The Middle Woodland and Late Woodland Transition in the Mid-Ohio Valley, by Dee Anne Wymer

Agricultural Risk and the Development of the Moundville Chiefdom, by C. Margaret Scarry

Food, Dishes, and Society in the Mississippi Valley, by Sissel Johannessen

Wood Overexploitation and the Collapse of Cahokia, by Neal H. Lopinot and William I. Woods

Climate, Culture, and Oneota Subsistence in Central Illinois, by Frances B. King

Old Customs and Traditions in New Terrain: Sixteenth- and

Seventeenth-Century Archaeobotanical Data from La Florida, by Donna L. Ruhl

C. Margaret Scarry is staff archaeologist at the Program for Cultural Resource Assessment at the University of Kentucky and coauthor of Reconstructing Historic Subsistence: With an Example from Sixteenth-Century Spanish Florida.