The timing of the adoptions of maize and squash across eastern North America has been a topic of long-standing interest among archaeologists and paleoethnobotanists. The use of flotation for macrobotanical remains beginning in the 1960s and 1970s coupled with the application of accelerator mass spectrometry dating beginning in the 1980s has led to substantial revisions of knowledge about the history of these crops in the region. A complementary source of evidence for the crops' histories in the eastern North America comes from opal phytoliths. Analysis of phytolith assemblages recovered from charred food residues has shown that maize and squash were being used in central New York well before the macrobotanical record indicates. In combination with previously analyzed samples, 16 additional residue assemblages help to clarify the history of maize and squash in central New York. The results indicate that maize and squash were being used in New York by 2270 B.P. and 2945 B.P., respectively.
The timing of crop introductions, particularly of maize (Zea mays), has been of long-standing interest to archaeologists working in various regions of eastern North America. The earliest confirmed macrobotanical evidence for maize in New York is A.D. 1000. We report on the results of accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) dating, phytolith analysis, and stable carbon isotope analysis of carbonized cooking residues adhering to the interior surface of pottery sherds from three sites in the northern Finger Lakes region of New York. Maize, squash (Cucurbita sp.), wild rice (Zizania aquatica), and sedge (Cyperus sp.) were identified in phytolith assemblages dating to as early as the first half of the calibrated seventh century A.D. The results demonstrate that low δ13C values on cooking residues cannot be used to preclude the possibility that maize was cooked in vessels. Two of the maize-bean-squash crop triad were present in New York at least 350 years earlier than previously documented, and the Northern Flint Corn Complex was present in New York by at least the first half of the seventh century A.D. This research highlights the potential of cooking residues to provide new insights on prehistoric plant-based subsistence.
The interplay of gender and spatial organization of labor receives little attention in archaeological discussions of huntergatherer society. To help remedy this situation, our ethnoarchaeological research among subarctic Dene (Chipewyan) communities employs a gender-resource mapping approach, including the spatial dimension of hunting for a complex of major subsistence resources. Analysis reveals both profound differences and interconnections between female and male hunters as they procure and process materials and move across the landscape in the sociological context of three team types. The data offer a means of modeling gender dynamics in archaeological contexts as well as rectifying the often invisible role of women in archaeological interpretations of hunting in high-latitude societies. An analysis of historical shifts between “bush-centered” and “village-centered” hunts demonstrates how both women's and men's behavior can be incorporated in site formation processes and general subsistence settlement models, such as Binford's forager/logistical collector framework.
The Owasco culture is a critical taxon in William A. Ritchie's culture history of New York. In its final construction, Owasco was viewed by Ritchie as representing the onset of recognizable northern Iroquoian traits. This interpretation is widely accepted among archaeologists currently working in New York. An examination of the history of the taxon shows that it is nothing more than a subjectively defined unit based on the thoughts of Ritchie and his predecessor Arthur C. Parker. Recent empirical research has shown that the key traits Ritchie used to define Owasco have very different histories than he thought. Owasco does not stand either theoretically or empirically and should be abandoned as a unit of analysis.
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