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Farming and Foraging at the Crossroads: The Consequences of Cherokee and European Interaction Through the Late Eighteenth Century
Abstract
The 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.
... In short, this cyclical sequence carried out by humans boosted biodiversity and strengthened ecosystem services; one could even say that humans were providing ecosystem services through these practices (Bliege Bird and Nimmo 2018). The enhanced biodiversity created in this manner continued to serve Cherokees during the disruptions of the colonial period, as seen in additional archaeobotanical analysis demonstrating an increased reliance on wild foods as disruptions made it riskier to invest too much time in cultivation (VanDerwarker et al. 2013). ...
... This theory draws on the work of geographers and demographers who broke open the old ideas of a sparsely populated pristine continent (Dobyns 1983, Denevan 1992), yet is also problematic because it invokes a single mass death event from external diseases that spread uniformly across the Southeast. In reality, there were numerous death events one after another, hitting different communities at different times and intensities, and being countered by differing choices within the context of Indian agency (VanDerwarker et al. 2013). In Thornton's (1990) study of Cherokee population, we see the pattern of epidemics repeat itself almost without pause for centuries, leaving no significant time period in which Cherokee population could have begun to approach pre-incursion levels, and yet as VanDerwarker et al. (2013) have demonstrated, Cherokee groups experiencing population loss and other pressures did not abandon cultivation even when they increased their harvesting of wild plants. ...
... In reality, there were numerous death events one after another, hitting different communities at different times and intensities, and being countered by differing choices within the context of Indian agency (VanDerwarker et al. 2013). In Thornton's (1990) study of Cherokee population, we see the pattern of epidemics repeat itself almost without pause for centuries, leaving no significant time period in which Cherokee population could have begun to approach pre-incursion levels, and yet as VanDerwarker et al. (2013) have demonstrated, Cherokee groups experiencing population loss and other pressures did not abandon cultivation even when they increased their harvesting of wild plants. ...
The floodplains of the Southeast’s stream network once hosted immense brakes of rivercane ( Arundinaria gigantea ), a disturbance-dependent native bamboo with both cultural and ecological significance. Ecologically, rivercane alters its local environments, boosts biodiversity and biomass, and protects streambanks from erosion and storm damage. Indigenous peoples of the Southeast have used rivercane for millennia, for material and cultural purposes, and formerly maintained its health and extent through harvesting and fire. Settler-colonial incursions largely destroyed rivercane, through the more intense disturbance of different land management practices, and brakes now exist mainly in relatively small areas. While numerous rivercane restoration projects are in process throughout its natural range, no comprehensive inventory of living rivercane exists. In this paper, we present both human context and the results of LiDAR analysis that identifies canebrakes based on the physical characteristics of the plant and brake. In our study area on the Little Tennessee River in western North Carolina, we found rivercane on about 9 percent of the floodplain area, based on QL1 LiDAR data available from the state of North Carolina. The technique can be applied in any part of rivercane’s range, and the resulting inventory used in support of both cultural and ecological goals.
... For eighty-one years, residents of the Presidio San Agustín del Tucson endured the harsh conditions of the Sonoran Desert, and while many left for Mexico after the arrival of Americans in 1856, many also stayed and continued on within the community. Colonization has been shown to have sweeping effects on indigenous households in different parts of the world, including Sub-Saharan Africa, Mexico, the southeastern United States, and the southwestern United States, where many of these indigenous groups are subsistence farmers (e.g., Netting et al. 1989;Spielmann 1989;Stone 1994;VanDerwarker et al. 2013). Previously, much of the research regarding colonization focused on the destructive effects that colonization had on indigenous subsistence farmers, including the decimation of population due to introduced diseases, the acculturation of indigenous groups into the colonial regime, and the loss of agricultural biodiversity as indigenous farmers increased their focus on introduced cash crops (e.g., Corkran 1967;Hackenberg 1962;Russell 1908;Swanton 1998). ...
... "Economic success" here is defined as an indigenous group being able to maintain economic independence from colonizing groups (DeJong 2009;Kowalewski 2006;Netting et al. 1989;VanDerwarker et al. 2013). While valuable research has been done on the impacts of Spanish colonization on indigenous southwestern populations (e.g., Tarcan 2005), their groups of focus, including the Salinas pueblos along the Rio Grande and O'odham groups in extreme southern Arizona, were under the direct control of the Spanish missions, resulting in forced tribute payments and new subsistence strategies. ...
... Smith , 2015 and their capacity to explain agricultural origins (Smith 2016;Zeder 2012), albeit with continued debate Piperno et al. 2017), the underlying logic still provides a heuristic model against which to test empirical archaeological data to assess the apparent patterns of decision making that produced a given archaeological assemblage of plant or animal remains (e.g., Gremillion 2002;Marston 2009). Today, human behavioral ecology models find consistent use in zooarchaeological studies, especially of hunting (e.g., Elston and Zeanah 2002;Stiner et al. 2000), but relatively limited use in studies of agricultural economies (Gremillion 2014); a few notable exceptions focus on risk management (Marston 2011;VanDerwarker et al. 2013). Despite critiques of foraging models for agricultural origins, there is considerable potential to use such models more extensively to explore tradeoffs in agricultural decision making, especially in cases of agricultural innovation or environmental change. ...
... Risk is most effectively managed over scales that match the scales of both domesticate growth and the organizational structure of agriculture, which is one reason why distant and long-term consequences of human action are seen as less worrisome than those with more immediate (spatial and temporal) impacts. How agricultural decision making accounts for risk is best explained by microeconomic models of human behavioral ecology (Bird and O'Connell 2006;Winterhalder and Smith 2000), where risk is defined as variation in the returns from foraging activity (Winterhalder 1986), such as agriculture (Marston 2011;VanDerwarker et al. 2013;Winterhalder 1990). As farmers typically aim to produce at least a modest surplus, and sometimes many seasons of surplus to account for possible future crop failures (Halstead and Jones 1989;Kuijt 2015), risk minimization is a core facet of agricultural systems. ...
While agricultural origins have been recently revised in light of new genetic and archaeological evidence, parallel synthesis of subsequent developments in agricultural economies has lagged. This review summarizes recent advances in archaeological theory and method that contribute to an enhanced understanding of agricultural economies. Such advances address topics of persistent interest, including agricultural innovation, the introduction of new domesticates, risk and resilience, agricultural scaling, and the economic and environmental consequences of agricultural practices. Although points of complementarity and tension exist among varied contemporary discourses on agriculture, frameworks of resilience and entanglement offer particularly promising avenues for regional synthesis and worldwide comparison of agricultural economies.
... little attention, especially in terms of the consequences of colonization on colonists. Studies of plant and animal remains from post-Columbian colonial sites in the Americas show that responses by local Native Americans and colonists alike to colonial social, economic, and political forces were more strategic and varied than often presumed (e.g., Deagan and Reitz 1995;deFrance 1996deFrance , 1999deFrance , 2003deFrance and Hanson 2008;Gifford-Gonzalez and Sunseri 2007;Gremillion 1993Gremillion , 1995Lapham 2005;Pavao-Zuckerman 2000Pavao-Zuckerman and LaMotta 2007;Pavao-Zuckerman and Loren 2012;Pavao-Zuckerman and Reitz 2011;Reitz and McEwan 1995;Scott 2001Scott , 2007Scott , 2008VanDerwarker et al. 2013), as they were at other times and places (e.g., Crabtree and Ryan 1991;DeCorse 1998;Mondini et al. 2004;Stein 1998;Twiss 2007). Instead of Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans abandoning or maintaining traditional patterns of animal use, these were merged into novel patterns. ...
... Individuals in each colony may have originated in Europe, in Africa, or in other colonies claimed by another European power, either directly or indirectly (e.g., Reitz et al. 2010, pp. 20-29;VanDerwarker et al. 2013). Some colonists originated at outposts in Spanish, British, and French colonies elsewhere in the Americas, or elsewhere in the emerging global network of these and other European nations. ...
Data from early European-sponsored colonies on the coasts of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico in southeastern North America (USA) indicate that transformations in vertebrate use occurred quickly. Over half of the vertebrate individuals in a Spanish collection associated with the first permanent European settlement on the Atlantic coast (Florida), British collections associated with Charles Towne (South Carolina), and French collections from the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico (Alabama and Mississippi) are local wild vertebrates. This use of wild vertebrates occurred regardless of a colony’s national affiliation, the ethnicity of the colonists, or the century in which colonization occurred.
... The Westo, Yamasee, and Tuscarora, for example, moved closer to Carolina to trade with British-sponsored settlements. Indigenous people were central to trade throughout the colonial period, including trade in livestock (Waddell 1980;Oatis 2004;Bowne 2005;Ramsey 2008;Marcoux 2010;Plane 2010;VanDerwarker et al. 2013). Enslaved Indigenous people also were part of the early forcedlabor structure of the animal economy. ...
The emergence and evolution of Charleston, South Carolina’s (U.S.A.) economy is approached through two nodes in that economy: urban Charleston and rural production centers. The focus is on commodity production and landscape history associated with cattle (Bos taurus). Bone-chemistry data clarify cattle management strategies and trade networks, suggesting Charleston drew cattle from a wide area, but that rural production centers used local livestock. Sediment cores document multiple cycles of fire activity, some probably of anthropogenic origin, and an increase in grazing pressure. Both might be linked to the cattle industry. Dung from grazing animals also increases. Enslaved Africans applied knowledge of small-stream floodplains obtained while herding cattle to build extensive water-management systems designed to produce rice for global markets. This evidence highlights interconnected roles of cattle, fires, timbering, drainage projects, demographic changes, and commodity trade in Carolina’s cultural and physical landscapes between 1670 and 1820.
... Peaches finally reached the edge of the region to the west, in Arkansas, by at least 1673, when French explorer Marquette noted a wider variety of peaches in North America than in Europe 17 . At around this same time frame, c. 1670-1680, while they were already present in low numbers, Indigenous communities began to intensify their cultivation of peach trees as the presence of their fruit began to be found more widespread archeologically across North Carolina and the Appalachians 8,18,19 . Indeed, in a 1701 account, peach trees were witnessed growing in the North Carolina Piedmont with "minimal encouragement" 4,20 While peach trees were proliferating across the mission provinces, they were also doing so across the interior of the American Southeast, reaching as far west as Arkansas in just 30 years after their initial adoption by the Muscogee communities of the Oconee Valley. ...
We conduct a synthetic archaeological and ethnohistoric dating program to assess the timing and tempo of the spread of peaches, the first Eurasian domesticate to be adopted across Indigenous eastern North America, into the interior American Southeast by Indigenous communities who quickly “Indigenized” the fruit. In doing so, we present what may be the earliest absolute dates for archaeological contexts containing preserved peach pits in what is today the United States in the early to mid-16th century. Along with our broader chronological modeling, these early dates suggest that peaches were likely in the interior prior to permanent Spanish settlement in the American Southeast and that peaches spread independently of interactions with Spanish colonizers. We further argue that that eventual spread of peaches was structured exclusively by Indigenous communities and the ecologies produced through long-term Indigenous land management and land use practices, highlighting and centering the agency of Indigenous societies in the socioecological process of colonization.
... These include changes in aspects of a group's identity, or the rise of new identities (Allard 2015;Gremillion 2002;Reitz and Honerkamp 1983;Reitz and Waselkov 2015). However, archaeologists will often associate these changes more directly to survival strategies in response to new environments or to the pressures of colonialism rather than to identity (e.g., Melton 2018;VanDerwarker et al. 2013). ...
The question of Métis ethnic identity has been of interest to archaeologists for over half a century, but explorations of this topic have remained limited. In this paper, we present a new approach to Métis ethnic identity in archaeology that is based on the concept of foodways, using the example of late nineteenth-century Métis wintering (or hivernant) sites in Western Canada. This approach differs considerably from earlier studies by its use of a relational approach to key elements of Métis ethnic identity, namely kinship and the land, to discuss the role of foodways and food-related practices in the definition and enactment of that identity. We also argue that women stand out as key players in the relation between Métis community identity and foodways. While our conclusions remain theoretical at this stage, we demonstrate that archaeologists working on Métis archaeological materials are ready to move beyond hybridity frameworks and offer a few starting points for the application of the ideas presented in this paper.
... Archaeologists and others have long been interested in the causes and consequences of interactions among different cultures in distinct economic, geographical, political, and temporal settings (e.g., Beaule 2017;Campana et al. 2010;Crabtree and Ryan 1991;Lyons and Papadopoulos 2002;Mondini et al. 2004;Stein 2005). Interactions after 1492 CE in the Americas are of particular interest because they are relatively recent, their multifaceted impacts on Native peoples and ecosystems were profound, and the consequences persist (e.g., Becker 2013;Braund 1993;Deagan 2004;Gonzalez and Panich 2021;Gremillion 2002b;Jones 2016;Kelly and Hardy 2011;Lapham 2005;Larsen et al. 2001;Marcoux 2010;Mrozowski et al. 2008;Perttula 2010;Thomas 1990;Usner 1992;VanDerwarker et al. 2013;Waselkov 2004;Wesson and Rees 2002). Zooarchaeological studies elaborate on the extent to which animals were involved in these outcomes (e.g., deFrance 1999(e.g., deFrance , 2003deFrance and Hanson 2008;deFrance et al. 2016;Gifford-Gonzalez and Sunseri 2007;Grimstead and Pavao-Zuckerman 2016;Noe 2022;Pavao-Zuckerman and LaMotta 2007;Peres 2022;Sunseri 2017). ...
Few studies of post-Columbian animal economies in the Americas elaborate on the influence of traditional Indigenous knowledge on colonial economies. A vertebrate collection from Santa Elena (1566–87 CE, South Carolina, USA), the original Spanish capital of La Florida, offers the opportunity to examine that influence at the first European-sponsored capital north of Mexico. Santa Elena’s animal economy was the product of dynamic interactions among multiple actors, merging preexisting traditional Indigenous practices, particularly traditional fishing practices, with Eurasian animal husbandry to produce a new cultural form. A suite of wild vertebrates long used by Indigenous Americans living on the southeastern North Atlantic coast contributes 87% of Santa Elena’s noncommensal individuals and 63% of the noncommensal biomass. Examples of this strategy are found in vertebrate collections from subsequent Spanish and British settlements. This suggests the extent to which colonists at the Spanish-sponsored colony adopted some Indigenous animal-use practices, especially those related to fishing, and the speed with which this occurred. The new cultural form persisted into the nineteenth century and continues to characterize local cuisines.
... warfare, and population displacements)"(VanDerwarker et al. 2013:70), and here I add chipped stone tool manufacture to the list. When used in conjunction with other studies, such as research assessing risk-averse strategies used by southeastern groups during the slave trade (e.g.Melton 2018;VanDerwarker et al. 2013), an analysis of lithic raw material procurement and stone tool production and consumption can be complementary to such endeavors. This dissertation offers one means of lithic debitage analysis that may be used in conjunction with other specialized analysis that seek to identify the effects of the shatter zone. ...
The Contact Period in Eastern North America was a period of mutual two-way interactions in which societies on both sides of the Atlantic were dramatically transformed. While studies have detailed changes in lithic technologies brought about by the deerskin trade, there are few if any studies that have specifically focused on how living within a landscape of slaving, warfare, and disease may have influenced the proficiency of stone tool production within specific communities of practice. In this dissertation, a community of practice approach is employed to identify expressions of coalescence and variability in stone tool production from Cherokee household archaeological contexts in the Southern Appalachian region of North America. These are considered within the backdrop of a shifting political economy and reorganization of community that was occurring during the Contact Period. Specifically, this research seeks to discover how increasing Native American participation in the transatlantic deerskin and Indian slave trade, in turn, instigated changes in Cherokee household lithic tool production activities. To address such concerns, this research focuses on the artifact assemblages recovered from five Contact Period Cherokee houses (circa AD 1650-1740) excavated in western North Carolina as part of the Ravensford Archaeological Project. A spatial analysis of the lithic assemblages finds that the production of small multi-functional bifaces was segregated to potentially socially prescribed spaces within these structures. Signatures of skill identified through an experimental study designed to reproduce chipped stone tool bifaces are used as the basis of a comparative intersite analysis between earlier Mississippian and later Cherokee assemblages within the broader region. The results indicate that the later assemblages appear to display a material signature of a community of practice that during the production of chipped-stone bifaces, produced a debitage assemblage similar to those associated with novice flintknappers. Variability in tool manufacture appears to be more related to the proficiency of producing stone tools, rather than the process of production (chaîne opératoire) which remained unchanged. The results suggest that demographic collapse during the Contact Period may have disrupted communities of practice, tacit knowledge acquisition, and the mentorship of flintknapper apprentices.
... Archaeologists have shown that shifting economic and political circumstances, including incorporation into empires, may be associated to varying degrees with changes in daily life at the level of the household (Bermann 1997;Brumfiel 1991;Cutright 2015;Dorsey Vinton et al. 2009;Robin 2013). Rural populations developed ecological and social strategies to negotiate colonialism and reduce the risk of food insecurity that it often provokes (e.g., Acabado 2018; Langlie 2018; Rosenzweig and Marson 2018:95;Scarry 1993;VanDerwarker et al. 2013). As colonialism enacted slow violence on rural communities, farmers responded with foot-dragging, labor pooling, deception, and feigned ignorance, among many other options (Liebmann and Murphy 2010:4). ...
Farmers rarely feature prominently in accounts of Spanish colonialism. When they do, it is often because they assisted in staging rebellions. However, in Yucatán, Mexico, and elsewhere, the vast majority of the population consisted of farmers, who lived in places with long histories. The everyday decisions that they made about how to support the well-being of their households and communities influenced colonial trajectories. This dissertation tracks common farmers’ livelihood strategies at Tahcabo, Yucatán, throughout the Colonial period as a way of understanding how they negotiated colonial impositions and restrictions.
The research presented in this dissertation included interviews with current farmers, site survey, and excavation within residential and garden areas. Interviews provided information about the factors that farmers consider as they make agricultural decisions, and in particular how they use and understand dry sinkholes called rejolladas—landscape features often employed as gardens when located within settlements. The results of excavation within the rejolladas of central Tahcabo demonstrated some consistency in their specialized use through time. Excavations also took place at Colonial period residential areas located near the edges of town, where non-elite or recently arrived farmers lived.
Colonial policies enacted violence on rural livelihoods, resulting in food insecurity and inadequate resource access. In particular, they worked to narrow and constrict farming households’ activity portfolios, and encouraged dependence on field agriculture. After forcing many farmers from settlements across the countryside to relocate into designated towns, friars demanded that extended family households break apart into nuclear house lots. Nonetheless, excavation results show that, during the early Colonial period, town residents continued to live in extended family groups and pursued diversified livelihood activities, which included extended hunting and fishing trips. Nuclear family house lots were evident by the middle Colonial period. Heavy demands for commodities imposed as quotas for each adult family member led to activity intensification. Farmers responded to colonial violence through both mobility and place-making—strategies which remained in tension throughout the Colonial period. In short, this project provides new insights into the daily lives and livelihood decisions of ordinary families attempting to survive colonialism in Yucatán, Mexico.
... This led them to prioritize short-term strategies over those that would have ensured longer term security and continuity (Melton, 2018(Melton, : 2167. Wider studies of Cherokee and Catawba communities have similarly yielded evidence for intensified foraging and increased consumption of seasonal, fleshy fruits, which not only grew on the boundaries of agricultural areas close to settlements but also required less processing (Fitts, 2015: 312-15;VanDerwarker et al., 2013). ...
In recent years, archaeological studies of long-term change and transformation in the human past have often been dominated by the discussion of dichotomous processes of ‘collapse’ and ‘resilience’. These discussions are frequently framed in relatively narrow terms dictated by specialist interests that place an emphasis on the role of single ‘trigger’ factors as motors for historic change. In order to address this issue, in this article I propose that the study of the ‘shatter zone’—a term with origins in physical geography and geopolitics that has been more recently harnessed in anthropological research—has the potential to facilitate multi-scalar, interdisciplinary analyses of the ways in which major historical changes unfold across both space and time, at local, regional, and inter-regional levels. This article unpacks the concept of the shatter zone and aligns this with existing archaeological frameworks for the study of long-term adaptive change. I then situate these arguments within the context of recent studies of colonial interaction and conflict in the Eastern Woodlands of North America during the sixteenth to eighteenth century. The study demonstrates how a more regulated approach to the shatter zone has the potential to yield new insights on the ways in which populations mitigate and react to instability and change while also facilitating comparative studies of these processes on a broader, global scale.
... Three specific measures are ideal for cross-project analysis: ubiquity, abundance, and richness. These measures have become standard in paleoethnobotanical analysis (Gumerman 1991(Gumerman , 2002Hastorf 2003;Hastorf and Popper 1988;Popper 1988;VanDerwarker and Peres 2010;VanDerwarker et al. 2013). They also can be used in artifact analysis . ...
... Since raw counts are used as input, the Shannon-Weaver index does not account for variation in representation related to seed production, differential preservation, or taphonomic factors. Nevertheless, it can be used to explore broad trends in taxonomic diversity in archaeobotanical assemblages (Popper 1988:68; e.g., Carmody and Hollenbach 2013;VanDerwarker et al. 2013). To address equitability we used the related Sheldon Index (V'), which incorporates H' in its calculation. ...
Communal eating events or feasts were important activities associated with the founding and maintenance of Mississippian communities in the southeastern United States. More often than not, however, archaeological deposits of food refuse are interpreted along a spectrum, with household-level consumption at one end and community-wide feasting at the other. Here, we draw attention to the important ways that domestic food practices contributed to social events and processes at the community level. We examine ceramic, botanical, and faunal assemblages from two fourteenth-century contexts at Parchman Place (22CO511), a Late Mississippi period site in the northern Yazoo Basin. For the earlier deposit, everyday ceramics and plant foods combined with high-utility deer portions and exotic birds suggest potluck-style feasting meant to bring people together in the context of establishing a community in place. We interpret the later deposit, with its pure ash matrix, focus on serving wares, and purposeful disposal of edible maize and animal remains, as the result of activities related to maize harvest ceremonialism. Both practices suggest that household contributions in general and disposal of domestic food refuse in particular are critical yet underappreciated venues for creating and maintaining community ties in the Mississippian Southeast.
... Within this managed agro-ecosystem, the MSP floods would have depressed maize yields through field destruction, as the geoarchaeological evi- dence above shows, but they also would have increased the diversity of small-seeded ruderal plants, which thrive in fallow fields. As maize yields declined, Las Capas community members may have diversified their food production and foraging practices as a risk management strat- egy (Marston 2011;VanDerwarker, Marcoux, and Hollenbach 2013). Therefore, any diversity detectable in the archaeobotanical record could indicate either an absolute increase of different resources available to the community with a con- gruent change in diet, a change in more diverse harvesting and foraging practices independent of plant type abundance, or both. ...
The following changes have been made to the originally published version of this article (Sinensky and Farahani, 2018): Supplemental Table 2 has been updated to include an attribution column, and Supplemental Text 1 and Supplemental Text 2 have been updated to reflect the change in Supplemental Table 2.
... Within this managed agro-ecosystem, the MSP floods would have depressed maize yields through field destruction, as the geoarchaeological evi- dence above shows, but they also would have increased the diversity of small-seeded ruderal plants, which thrive in fallow fields. As maize yields declined, Las Capas community members may have diversified their food production and foraging practices as a risk management strat- egy (Marston 2011;VanDerwarker, Marcoux, and Hollenbach 2013). Therefore, any diversity detectable in the archaeobotanical record could indicate either an absolute increase of different resources available to the community with a con- gruent change in diet, a change in more diverse harvesting and foraging practices independent of plant type abundance, or both. ...
The analysis of more than 1,300 flotation samples from thousands of excavated cultural features dating to the San Pedro phase (1220–730 BC) at the Las Capas site in southern Arizona provides evidence of long-term continuity and change in plant cultivation and collection practices in response to environmental disturbances during the Late Archaic period (2100 BC–AD 50). Although preceramic foodways in the region are widely considered to have been stable for roughly 2,500 years following the introduction of maize prior to 2100 BC, analyses of macrobotanical data reveal that moderate-intensity flood events during the Middle San Pedro phase (930–800 BC) preceded the greatest richness and diversity of harvested plants, while reliance on maize was reduced. In contrast, in periods with little environmental disturbance maize was more dominant, with less diversity in other cultivated and foraged plants. Novel cultivation, processing, and foraging practices were initiated in response to disturbance but persisted after floodplain conditions stabilized. It is argued that the reciprocal relationship between disturbance and botanical diversity is integral for understanding the long-term resilience of Late Archaic foodways and that this relationship is best modeled using ecological theories termed the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis and the Intermediate Productivity Hypothesis.
... However, risk and/or uncertainty can also impact food preferences, sharing practices, and collection/production strategies (Larson, Johnson, and Michaelsen 1994;Marston 2011;VanDerwarker, Marcoux, and Hollenbach 2013;Winterhalder 1986). ...
Engagement in sustained encounters with colonial actors had long-lasting demographic, social, and political consequences for Native American inhabitants of Southeastern North America during the colonial period (AD 1670–1783). Less clear is whether Native peoples who did not regularly trade with colonists also felt the destabilization experienced by more closely affiliated groups. This article explores Native lifeways in the seventeenth-century Eno River valley of the North Carolina Piedmont, a context for which archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence have produced divergent narratives. While extant archaeological findings suggest that daily life from 1650 to 1680 continued virtually unchanged from the preceding Late Woodland period, ethnohistoric accounts indicate that this area was victimized by Native slavers who abducted countless women and children. Seeking to reconcile these narratives, I conducted a diachronic analysis of botanical remains and architecture. Archaeobotanical data reveal that Jenrette site (AD 1650–1680) occupants adopted foodways that differed significantly from those of their Late Woodland predecessors, while architectural evidence indicates a brief village occupation. I argue that Eno River valley inhabitants introduced risk-averse subsistence practices that would have aided in coping with the threat and consequences of slave raiding and that these practices occurred within a social climate of fear and uncertainty that is documented ethnohistorically.
... Social differentiation, systems of production and exchange, religion-based dietary restrictions, and other cultural transitions introduce constraints and prospects to this balance over time, which people can manage in many ways. Adoption of new dietary behaviors is a central research focus in anthropology, reflecting aspects of indigenous resistance (VanDerwarker et al., 2013), destabilization (Kuhnlein and Receveur, 1996), social organization and reorganization (Morehart and Eisenberg, 2010) and changing health (Mailer and Hale, 2015). Isotopic studies of past human populations complement anthropology's ethnographically based understandings of how people mediate demographic and sociopolitical transitions impacting health and behavior, and of how malleable people are in adjusting diets to new cultural, environmental, and biological circumstances. ...
... Acorns and hickory nuts also were common food items, along with G. triacanthos, but they could have been gathered, and the tree presence near settlements could be the result of land use practices, such as burning [17,19,40,[57][58][59]. The appearance of weedy plant species with Cherokee settlement suggests that land clearing was common [54,55], which also would favor G. triacanthos. ...
A long-term assumption in ecology is that species distributions correspond with their niche requirements, but evidence that species can persist in unsuitable habitat for centuries undermines the link between species and habitat. Moreover, species may be more dependent on mutualist partners than specific habitats. Most evidence connecting indigenous cultures with plant dispersal is anecdotal, but historical records suggest that Native Americans transported and cultivated many species, including Gleditsia triacanthos ("Honey locust"). Gleditsia triacanthos was an important medicinal/culinary (e.g., sugar), cultural (e.g., game sticks) and spiritual tree for the Cherokee (southeastern U.S. Native Americans). This study tests the hypothesis that a Cherokee cultivation legacy drives current regional G. triacanthos distribution patterns. Gleditsia triacanthos occurs in rocky uplands and xeric fields, but inexplicably also occurs in mesic riverine corridors and floodplains where Cherokee once settled and farmed. I combined field experiments and surveys in the Southern Appalachian Mountain region (U.S.) to investigate G. triacanthos recruitment requirements and distribution patterns to determine whether there is a quantifiable G. triacanthos association with former Cherokee settlements. Moreover, I also investigated alternate dispersal mechanisms, such as stream transport and domestic cattle. The results indicate that a centuries-old legacy of Native American cultivation remains intact as G. triacanthos' current southern Appalachian distribution appears better explained Cherokee settlement patterns than habitat. The data indicate that the tree is severely dispersal limited in the region, only moving appreciable distances from former Cherokee settlements where cattle grazing is prevalent. Human land use legacy may play a long-term role in shaping species distributions, and pre-European settlement activity appears underrated as a factor influencing modern tree species distributions.
... In the context of losing land to Europeans, family and friends to disease and raiding parties, and husbands and brothers to war campaigns, many eastern North American women farmers were faced with insufficient land and labor for producing food. Some women responded to these risks by cultivating a wider variety of plant foods (e.g., Bonhage-Freund et al. 2002), while others significantly reduced field cultivation and primarily foraged for the bulk of their food resources (e.g., VanDerwarker et al. 2013a). For example, Bonhage-Freund et al. (2002) analyze 19th century Ojibwe (Chippewa) assemblages from central lower Michigan; this was a period when the Ojibwe people and their lands were impacted by European colonizers via interaction at trading posts, the introduction of Western goods, and the modification of local ecosystems. ...
This article evaluates the current state of paleoethnobotany since Hastorf’s 1999 review published in this journal. We discuss advances in methods, ancient subsistence reconstructions, the origins and intensification of agriculture, and how plants inform on issues of political economy and identity. Significant methodological developments in the extraction, identification, and analysis of starch grains and phytoliths have led to advancements in our knowledge of early plant domestication and the transition to food production. Paleoethnobotanists increasingly are using more complex quantitative techniques to characterize their data, which have resulted in more nuanced interpretations of plants that fall within the purview of social archaeology and allow us to address issues related to gender, identity, and ritual practice.
... Behavior associated with food is an ideal means to study cultural identity because not only does food permeate daily practice but its archaeological correlates are also readily available in most contexts (Mills, 2008). For example, VanDerwarker et al. (2007) use macrobotanical data to demonstrate that during the contact period, the Sara Indians in North Carolina retained their cultural identity by maintaining their plant diet and consuming familiar foods. Consumption of familiar foods was ubiquitous in both daily and feasts during a time of cultural upheaval and colonial threats to traditional lifestyles. ...
The measurement of taxonomic diversity and richness is central to the interpretive mission of the analysis of archaeological plant remains—a subdiscipline of archaeology commonly referred to as paleoethnobotany or archaeobotany. Archaeologists
using archaeological plant data often wish to assess whether some sites or time periods contained a richer assemblage of wild or domesticated plant foods (i.e., diet breadth), whether particularly diverse or narrow plant assemblages were formed by pre- and post-depositional natural processes (i.e., taphonomy), and how cultural practices may have modified the range of plant taxa deposited on any particular archaeological site (i.e., cultural
formation processes). In all of these cases, the methods by which researchers estimate the taxonomic richness or diversity
of recovered plant remains has a direct bearing on the interpretation of these socio-natural phenomena of interest.
Measures developed by ecologists and other bioscientists are uniquely suited for paleoethnobotanical data because they have been established and refined to identify plant and animal biodiversity in a wide range of contemporary observational and experimental contexts at differing spatial resolutions. Nevertheless, despite important foundational work by paleoethnobotanists trying to address this issue, diversity and richness measures are less commonly employed in paleoethnobotanical research in comparison to zooarchaeological
and other archaeological remains. Moreover, many of these infrequent applications present point estimates (e.g., sample mean) and/or single measures such as a single Shannon diversity
index value to characterize an entire plant assemblage for a given site, or a temporal interval that may represent tens or sometimes hundreds of samples collected in the process of fieldwork or excavation.
This chapter illustrates the benefits on both theoretical and empirical grounds of specific implementations of diversity estimation techniques used widely in ecology and affiliated biosciences that match the nature of paleoethnobotanical sample-based abundance and incidence data. The theoretical challenges inherent to archaeological plant assemblages are discussed
in consideration of the assumptions of most measures of diversity
and richness. Following that, the utility of these measures is highlighted through the analysis of the richness and diversity of archaeological plant assemblages from three discrete temporal intervals at the site of Las Capas, located in the Sonoran Desert of the US Southwest. A major conclusion is that the implementation of diversity and richness estimation tools, broadly favored in studies of biodiversity, allows for a more accurate comparison of human–plant relationships in the past at a number of temporal and spatial scales, albeit while paying close attention to the specific mathematical and theoretical assumptions inherent in these approaches.
This study examines the archeological seed assemblage of Anle, a middle Neolithic site located in the Lower Yangtze region, China. The Lower Yangtze is thought to be the origin of domesticated rice and most studies of this region to date have focused on rice domestication and cultivation within its paleoenvironmental setting. In contrast, we highlight here diverse uses of non-rice plant resources. In addition to large quantities of rice remains (carbonized grains and spikelet bases), we identify both foxtail and broomcorn millet, both AMS radiocarbon dated earlier than 5750 cal BP, demonstrating the dispersal of millet cultivation to the Lower Yangtze in the middle Neolithic, earlier than previously securely documented. While most wild species identified in macrobotanical assemblages are traditionally categorized as weeds or incidental intrusions among food residues, many can be exploited for food and medicinal purposes. By analyzing the ecological and functional implications of identified plants, we infer ecological niches of cultivation, gathering, and possible propagation of wild plants as food and medicine. Analyses of diversity and seasonality of plant resources identified show that residents of Anle created a complex seasonal sequence of temporally compatible crops, constructing niches for two crops (rice and millet) and actively structuring opportunities to exploit available wild plant resources in their immediate environment.
Des analyses archéobotaniques et archéoentomologiques ont été réalisées sur des sédiments provenant d’une structure datée du tournant du XIXe siècle, retrouvée au site de l’îlot des Palais (CeEt-30), à Québec. Les macrorestes végétaux et les restes entomologiques retrouvés nous permettent d’en apprendre davantage sur les habitudes alimentaires et la vie quotidienne des habitants de Québec durant une période d’importants changements politiques, économiques et sociaux. En effet, le début du XIXe siècle est marqué par une augmentation de la population de la ville, l’arrivée d’un grand nombre d’immigrants anglophones et le développement accéléré de l’industrie navale. Nous soutenons la thèse voulant que, malgré la mise en place de nouveaux réseaux d’échanges et de nouvelles traditions culinaires, une partie des pratiques alimentaires des Canadiens français de la Basse-Ville de Québec soient restées relativement inchangées. Grâce à cette recherche, nous sommes en mesure de mieux comprendre l’influence des premières décennies du Régime britannique sur l’ancienne capitale de la Nouvelle-France ainsi que sur la vie quotidienne de ses habitants.
Archaeobotanical and archaeoentomological analyses were conducted on soil samples taken from an early 19th century privy found at the îlot des Palais site (CeEt-30) in Quebec City. The insect and seed remains identified inform us about the consumption habits and the daily lives of the city’s inhabitants, during a period of great political, economic and social changes. In fact, the early 1800’s were marked by a population increase, the arrival of a large number of Anglophone immigrants and an accelerated development of the shipbuilding industry. We argue that despite the implementation of new trade networks and culinary traditions, a part of the the French Canadian foodways remained relatively unchanged. Thanks to this research, we now have a better understanding of the impact the first decades of the British rule have had over New France’s old capital and the daily lives of its inhabitants.
Historical archaeologists can access a variety of ethnobotanical information using historical records, oral histories, archaeological plant remains, and clues remaining in existing landscapes. We can infer foodways, health/healing, agricultural practices, landscape use, and environmental interactions. These all tie in to current themes of inquiry for historical archaeology, including identity, colonialism, plantation economies, landscape management, and urbanization, among others. Botanical subjects can also connect historical archaeologists to current trends in food politics and food history, such as globalization, food security and sovereignty, “ingredients” biographies, and observations and responses to climate change. This field potentially links the past to the present through climate change, resource management, food security and sovereignty, Indigenous knowledge, and community projects, among others. Human–plant interrelationships are rapidly changing through societal and ecological shifts, and environmental historical archaeology holds key lessons from the past. In this chapter, we review major trends in botanical studies within historical archaeology published since 2000.
European colonization brought innumerable changes and choices to Native groups across the Southeast. Scholars continue to examine the various ways communities navigated these disruptions. Studying the remains of daily practice offers a window into how communities negotiated continuity and change. Wood charcoal, representing the remains of daily fires, provides an important, but underutilized, method for examining people’s daily routines and interactions with their surrounding landscapes. This paper examines wood charcoal assemblages from several sites in the North Carolina Piedmont that span the precontact to early colonial periods (AD 1400–1705). Fuelwood collection models are used to consider the environments, practices, and preferences that influenced the composition of wood charcoal assemblages. Comparison of these datasets shows a consistent significant pattern of high-quality fuelwood selection with additional patterns potentially related to long-term use of the same environment and factors related to colonialism. Altogether, these patterns suggest continuity of some daily practices despite disruptions to other aspects of life.
This paper promotes an explicit study of archaeologies of empire and environment, and advances theories and methods in environmental archaeology that demonstrate that environmental practices articulate people's relationships to imperial authority. While many studies of empire take for granted that centralized organization and surplus production lead to political control and social inequity, in the papers assembled for this special issue, the very relationship between human-environment interactions and political power becomes the object of study. In this introduction, we review established archaeological approaches to empire, explain how environmental frameworks productively recast our understandings of imperialism, and proffer a number of avenues for continued research on the subject, including those provided by the articles in this issue. We present three overarching themes for the study of empire and environment—scale, legacy, and resilience and resistance—and discuss their implementation with the papers that follow. Ultimately, we argue that imperialism entails the management of heterogeneous peoples and environments, and therefore, archaeologies of empire require the integrated study of humans, landscapes, and biota.
Interest in the study of foodways through an archaeological lens, particularly in the American Southeast, is evident in the abundance of literature on this topic over the past decade. Foodways as a concept includes all of the activities, rules, and meanings that surround the production, harvesting, processing, cooking, serving, and consumption of food. We study foodways and components of foodways archaeologically through direct and indirect evidence. The current synthesis is concerned with research themes in the archaeology of Southeastern foodways, including feasting, gender, social and political status, and food insecurity. In this review, I explore the information that can be learned from material remains of the foodstuffs themselves and the multiple lines of evidence that can help us better understand the meanings, rituals, processes, and cultural meanings and motivations of foodways.
We consider the causes and timing of maize (Zea mays) intensification in the central Illinois River valley and argue that an understanding of changes in maize production requires a consideration of changes occurring in the entire plant subsistence system. To this end, we explore trends in the collection and production of plant foods from the Late Woodland (A.D. 600-1100) to Early Mississippian periods (A.D. 1100-1200). The plant data reveal a stepwise decrease in nut collection during the Late Woodland period, and again during the transition to the Early Mississippian period. This pattern is accompanied by statistical increases in maize abundance, indicating an intensification of maize production around A.D. 1100. We consider these patterns in light of similar maize increases occurring throughout the Eastern Woodlands and evaluate several possible interpretations related to population pressure, climate change, competitive generosity, and cultural emulation, the latter which appears to have been inspired by prolonged contact between local populations and Mississippian groups in the greater Cahokia area.
We conducted an analysis of economic transaction records from the Fort Wilkinson Factory Store in central Georgia in an attempt to understand trade behaviors by the Muscogee Creek people of the southeastern United States. Between February 4, 1804, and November 29, 1806, factory personnel recorded 2,168 trade transactions at Fort Wilkinson. During this period, 38,226.5 deerskins and skins, 482 hides and rawhides, and 569 furs entered the fort. In exchange for these items, the Creek Indians primarily received cloth, followed by manufactured items such as kettles, gun supplies, and consumable groceries. We analyze the month-by-month exchange trends and compare the trade-good assemblages to archaeological sites that represent Creek occupations that date to the same time period in Georgia and Alabama. Further, we assess the biases of the data and interpret the data in relation to existing historical and archaeological studies of the Muscogee Creek people.
The landscape of North American archaeology has been dominated by regional perspectives, chronologies, and cultural and environmental reconstructions. Lack of interregional comparisons has hampered our understanding of pan-North American developments and events. By comparing land-use strategies across regional boundaries, several broad patterns emerge. They encompass basic structural dynamics of the land-scape, important economic plant families, and key interregional events marked temporally by the expansion of two exotic cultigens, corn (Zea mays ssp. mays) and beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). Of course there are various regionally and locally important plant resources not included in this survey, but my purpose is to focus attention upon broad patterns of plant use common to eastern and western North American landscapes.
This book focuses on the American Cherokee people and the South Carolina settlers in the years 1608, when Charleston was established as the main town in the region, until 1785, when a treaty effectively removed the Cherokees from the region. The two cultures and their communities are treated in parallel chapters. After 70 years of regular trade and nominal alliance, relations were exacerbated, especially during the Cherokee-English war of 1759 to 1761. The book is concerned as much with the interation between the two groups as the contrasts between them. The book contributes in major ways to understanding Indian-White relations in Colonial America.
This sweeping regional history traces the metamorphosis of the Native South from first contact in 1540 to the dawn of the eighteenth century, when indigenous people no longer lived in a purely Indian world but rather on the edge of an expanding European empire. Using a framework that its author calls the “Mississippian shatter zone” to explicate these tumultuous times, this book examines the European invasion, the collapse of the precontact Mississippian world, and the restructuring of discrete chiefdoms into coalescent Native societies in a colonial world. The story of one group—the Chickasaws—is closely followed through this period.
Bad Year Economics explores the role of risk and uncertainty in human economics within an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural framework. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, and ancient and modern history, the contributors range widely in time and space across hunting, farming and pastoralism, across ancient states, empires, and modern nation states. The aim, however, is a common one: to analyse in each case the structure of variability - particularly with regard to food supply - and review the range of responses offered by individual human communities. These responses commonly exploit various forms of mobility, economic diversification, storage, and exchange to deploy local or temporary abundance as a defence against shortage. Different levels of response are used at different levels of risk. Their success is fundamental to human survival and their adoption has important ramifications throughout cultural behaviour.
This dissertation examines plant use during the Late Woodl and -Mississippian transition in the Black Warrior Valley of west-central Alabama. Archaeological and archaeobotanical data from the Late Woodl and West Jefferson and Mississippian Moundville I phases are used to investigate questions about the switch from reliance on foraging/gardening to dependence on crop production. An approach to the quantitative analysis of plant remains based on exploratory data analysis is introduced and found to have utility for detecting patterns in plant data. Witness tree records are used to reconstruct forest communities. This provides a basis for examining plant resource distributions and for underst and ing changes in procurement strategies. Analysis of wood charcoal suggests a shift in firewood procurement from upl and to bottoml and forests as subsistence strategies increasingly focus on agriculture. Several questions about maize production in the Black Warrior Valley are addressed. Comparison of maize growth requirements to climatic data indicates that severe crop losses would have been extremely rare, and that agricultural risk was probably not a factor in the emergence of the Moundville chiefdom. Analysis of plant food remains indicates that maize production began to increase during the West Jefferson phase and that by early in the Moundville I phase the new subsistence economy was well established. Analysis of maize cobs using a K-means cluster procedure indicates that the Moundville-era population raised at least two maize cultivars, and that one of those evolved through time. Increased maize production was accompanied by changes in the proportions in which some other plant food were used. Within the West Jefferson phase acorn procurement increased along with maize production, but hickory procurement was stable. Between West Jefferson and Moundville I acorn and particularly hickory use decreased markedly relative to maize production. Fruit use did not vary much over time. Product/procurement of small grains (e.g., chenopod and maygrass) varied little within the periods investigated. This suggests increased crop production focused on maize rather than increasing production of all crops. Within Moundville I use of plant food was remarkably stable, relative proportions of the different resources vary little within the phase.
Bad Year Economics explores the role of risk and uncertainty in human economics within an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural framework. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, and ancient and modern history, the contributors range widely in time and space across hunting, farming and pastoralism, across ancient states, empires, and modern nation states. The aim, however, is a common one: to analyse in each case the structure of variability - particularly with regard to food supply - and review the range of responses offered by individual human communities. These responses commonly exploit various forms of mobility, economic diversification, storage, and exchange to deploy local or temporary abundance as a defence against shortage. Different levels of response are used at different levels of risk. Their success is fundamental to human survival and their adoption has important ramifications throughout cultural behaviour.
Archaeological studies of foodways address the social contexts of food production, preparation, and consumption. Such a perspective extends analysis of archaeobotanical remains beyond subsistence and furthers our understanding of past social dynamics. In this article we explore social aspects of Cherokee foodways through a spatial analysis of archaeobotanical data from the Coweeta Creek site, a late prehistoric and proto-historic Cherokee town in the Appalachian Summit region of southwestern North Carolina. We consider the gendered patterns of food processing and consumption as they relate to public spaces. Based on a higher incidence of plant food byproducts in public areas of the site, we argue that women processed foods publicly and communally for town events.
In this sweeping regional history, anthropologist Robbie Ethridge traces the metamorphosis of the Native South from first contact in 1540 by Hernando De Soto to the dawn of the eighteenth century, when indigenous people no longer lived in a purely Indian world but rather on the edge of an expanding European empire and in a new social landscape that included a large population of Europeans and Africans. Despite the fact that thousands of Indians died or were enslaved and virtually all Native polities were radically altered in these years, the collapse of this complex Mississippian world did not extinguish the Native peoples of the South but rather transformed them. Using a new interpretive framework that Ethridge calls the Mississippian shatter zone" to explicate these tumultuous times,From Chicaza to Chickasawexamines the European invasion and the collapse of the precontact Mississippian world and the restructuring of discrete chiefdoms into coalescent Native societies in a colonial world. Within this larger regional context, she closely follows the story of one group-the Chickasaws-throughout this period. With skillfully synthesized archaeological and documentary evidence, Ethridge illuminates the Native South in its earliest colonial context and sheds new light on the profound upheaval and cultural transformation experienced by the region's first peoples. © 2010 The University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved.
The long-term significance of the household as a social and economic force-particularly in relation to authority positions or institutions-has remained relatively unexplored in North American archaeology. Households and Hegemony makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the role households played in long-term cultural change after contact with European traders and settlers. Drawing together information from ethnohistoric records and data from one of the largest excavations in Alabama's history (the Fusihatchee Project), Cameron B. Wesson reexamines changes in early Creek culture from before and after contact with Europeans, beginning in the sixteenth century. Casting the household as a multifaceted cultural institution, he contends that important social, economic, and political transformations occurred during this time-changes that redefined the relationship between Creek households and authority. As avenues for exchange with outsiders broadened and diversified, prestige trade goods usually associated with Creek elites became increasingly available to individual households, so that contact with Europeans contributed to empowerment for Creek households and a weakening of traditional chiefly authority. Wesson demonstrates that change within Creek culture in the historic period was shaped by small-scale social units and individual decisions rather than by the effects of larger social and political events. Households and Hegemony enriches our understanding of Creek history and makes a key contribution to comparative archaeological models of cultural change.
The late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries were an extremely turbulent time for southeastern American Indian groups. Indeed, between the founding of the Charles Town colony along the south Atlantic coast in 1670 and the outbreak of the Yamasee War in 1715, disease, warfare, and massive population displacements dramatically altered the social, political, and economic landscape of the entire region. This volume examines issues of culture contact and social identity by exploring how this chaotic period played out in the daily lives of Cherokee households, especially those excavated at the Townsend site in eastern Tennessee. Marcoux studies the material remains of daily life in order to identify the strategies that households enacted while adapting to the social, political, and economic disruptions associated with European contact. The author focuses on households as the basic units of analysis because these represent the most fundamental and pervasive unit of economic and social production in the archaeological record. His investigations show how the daily lives of Cherokee households changed dramatically as they coped with the shifting social, political, and economic currents of the times. He demonstrates that the community excavated at the Townsend site was formed by immigrant households who came together from geographically disparate and ethnically distinct Cherokee settlements as a way to ameliorate population losses. He also explores changes in community and household patterning, showing how the spatial organization of the Townsend community became less formal and how households became more transient compared to communities predating contact with Europeans. From this evidence, Marcoux concludes that these changes reflect a broader strategic shift to a more flexible lifestyle that would have aided Cherokee households in negotiating the social, political, and economic uncertainty of the period. © 2010 by The University of Alabama Press. All rights reserved.
Traditionally, farmers have evolved several ways to deal with disaster: selling part of their assets (such as livestock), using on farm stocks and family savings, and seasonally migrating to places where there is work, sending money to those who stay on the farm. These are described for farmers in India, Tanzania, and El Salvador. However, the effectiveness of occupational mobility and access to nonfarm incomes in offsetting farm income losses depends largely on the covariance between agricultural and nonfarm income within and across regions. The alternative at the farm level is the use of risk-preventing techniques, which include resource and enterprise diversification and adjustments to husbandry techniques within cropping systems. Crop diversification, intercropping, and flexibile input use are the best-known practices to reduce production risk. Strong evidence was found that tenancy has also actively been used in rural south India to spread production risk both within and between cropping years. They also explore the implicit insurance implications of fixed rentals, crop sharing, and other forms of leasing in India. -from Editors
A considerable difficulty in understanding the Mississippian-Historic transition among southeastern native cultures lies in the discontinuities that exist in most forms of data available to researchers. Zooarchaeological methods have the advantage of providing rigorously comparable data from one time period to the next. Faunal assemblages from several different environments and different degrees of colonial penetration are examined to explore changes that occurred in the vertebrate subsistence patterns of southeastern peoples during this pivotal time. Despite the arrival of Europeans and the introduction of their domestic animals, the data indicate notable continuity in subsistence strategies through time.
This chapter pursues dual goals. The first goal is to argue in favor of the use of future-discounting concepts when modeling choices among subsistence activities with dissimilar delay to reward, such as the choice to practice foraging versus farming. While foraging theory makes the value of all options commensurate by expressing them as a rate of gain per unit time, people may subjectively devalue options with long waiting times, such as agricultural harvests. A literature review and guide to discount rates are presented for readers unfamiliar with these concepts. The second goal is to demonstrate the applicability of future discounting models by presenting a simple dynamic model explaining why Mikea of Madagascar prefer labor-extensive cultivation despite the high risk and low mean payoff, and despite their familiarity with the techniques and benefits of intensive farming. Mikea cultivate because the rewards are high compared with foraging, but they refrain from intensification because immediate needs limit their capacity for future investment.
Diversity is a concept that is used to discuss variability in the archaeological record. Application of the concept of diversity requires the specification of a measure of diversity and a sufficient understanding of the quantitative behavior of the measure to permit inferences concerning the archaeological record. This paper discusses simple measures of the two dimensions of diversity. -from Author
What has frequently been termed "contact-period" archaeology has assumed a prominent role in North American archaeology in the last two decades. This article examines the conceptual foundation of archaeological "culture contact" studies by sharpening the terminological and interpretive distinction between "contact" and "colonialism." The conflation of these two terms, and thereby realms of historical experience, has proven detrimental to archaeologists ' attempts to understand indigenous and colonial histories. In light of this predicament, the article tackles three problems with treating colonialism as culture contact: (1) emphasizing short-term encounters rather than long-term entanglements, which ignores the process and heterogeneous forms of colonialism and the multifaceted ways that indigenous people experienced them; (2) down-playing the severity of interaction and the radically different levels of political power, which does little to reveal how Native people negotiated complex social terrain but does much to distance "contact" studies from what should be a related research focus in the archaeology of African enslavement and diaspora; and (3) privileging predefined cultural traits over creative or creolized cultural products, which loses sight of the ways that social agents lived their daily lives and that material culture can reveal, as much as hide, the subtleties of cultural change and continuity.