Eastern Agricultural Complex
Pre-maize agriculture in eastern North America.
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The Eastern Agricultural Complex refers to a set of indigenous plant species domesticated in the woodlands of eastern North America, one of about ten independent centers of plant domestication in the prehistoric world. Incipient agriculture in this region dates back to about 5300 BCE, and by 1800 BCE Native Americans were cultivating several food plants, marking a transition from hunter-gatherer economies to agriculture. The complex is notable because it demonstrates that agriculture in the Eastern Woodlands preceded the introduction of maize from Mexico, challenging earlier assumptions that farming was imported.
Quick Facts
- Earliest domestication site
- Riverton Site, Illinois, circa 1800 BCE
Facts from the source article.
Origin of name and concept
The term Eastern Agricultural Complex was popularized by anthropologist Ralph Linton in the 1940s, who proposed that Eastern Woodland tribes integrated maize cultivation from Mayans and Aztecs into their pre-existing agricultural practices. Ethnobotanists Volney H. Jones and Melvin R. Gilmore expanded on Linton's work through studies of cave and bluff dwellings in Kentucky and the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. George Quimby also promoted the term 'Eastern complex' in the same decade. Authors Guy Gibbons and Kenneth Ames later suggested that 'indigenous seed crops' is a more appropriate term. Until the 1970s and 1980s, most archaeologists believed agriculture in the Eastern Woodlands had been imported from Mexico along with maize, beans, and squash. However, new archaeological techniques demonstrated that by 1800 BCE Native Americans had independently cultivated indigenous crops, and that these formed an important part of their diets. A key evidence for domestication was the larger size and thinner seed coat of cultivated plants compared to wild relatives. When cultivation of most indigenous plants ceased around 900 CE in favor of maize, seed sizes and coat thickness reverted to wild forms.
Cultivated species
The earliest cultivated plant in North America is the bottle gourd, with remains from Little Salt Spring, Florida dating to 8000 BCE. Squash (Cucurbita pepo var. ozarkana) is considered one of the first domesticated plants in the Eastern Woodlands, found in the region about 5000 BCE, though possibly not domesticated there until about 1000 BCE. This squash was raised for edible seeds and small containers, not for thick flesh. Other plants of the Eastern Agricultural Complex include goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri), sunflower (Helianthus annuus), sumpweed or marsh elder (Iva annua), little barley (Hordeum pusillum), maygrass (Phalaris caroliniana), and erect knotweed (Polygonum erectum). These are often divided into oily types (sunflower and sumpweed, with oil-rich seeds) and starchy types (erect knotweed, goosefoot, maygrass, and little barley, the latter two being grasses yielding grain for flour).
Development
Humans were collecting these plants from the wild by 6000 BCE. The region of this early agriculture is the middle Mississippi valley, from Memphis north to St. Louis and extending about 300 miles east and west, mostly in Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The oldest known site in the United States where Native Americans were growing food rather than gathering it is Phillips Spring in Missouri, dating from 3000 BCE. There, archaeologists found abundant walnuts, hickory nuts, acorns, grapes, elderberries, ragweed, bottle gourd, and seeds of Cucurbita pepo larger than those of wild plants, inferred to result from cultivation. By 1800 BCE, several plants were being cultivated. At the Riverton Site in the Wabash River valley of Illinois, near present-day Palestine, ten house sites indicated a population of 50 to 100 people. Among hearths and storage pits, archaeologists found many chenopod seeds (Chenopodium berlandieri) with husks only a third as thick as wild seeds, showing selective breeding for easier access.
Domestication
Some species cultivated by Native Americans for food are today considered undesirable weeds: marshelder (also called sumpweed) and chenopods (derisively called pigweed, though the South American species quinoa is a health food). Many such plants are colonizers of disturbed soil, springing up after events like floods. The domestication process cannot be described precisely, but scholars including Bruce D. Smith note that three domesticates—chenopods, Iva annua, and Cucurbita pepo—thrived in disturbed soils of river valleys. After floods killed old vegetation and created bare, fertile soil, these pioneer plants grew in dense, often pure stands, then disappeared after a season. Native Americans learned that seeds of these species were edible and easily harvested in quantity. Cucurbita pepo was also important because its gourd could be made into a lightweight container. Chenopods have edible leaves related to spinach and chard; their seeds are starchy. Marsh elder has a nutritious oily seed similar to sunflower seeds. In gathering seeds, some were dropped in sunny, disturbed settlement soil, where they sprouted. Over time, seeds that germinated quickest (with thinner seed coats) and fastest-growing plants were most likely to be tended, harvested, and replanted. Through unconscious and later conscious selection, domesticated weeds became more productive, with larger seeds and thinner seed coats. For example, domesticated chenopodium seed coats are less than 20 microns thick, while wild ones are 40 to 60 microns. When cultivation ceased, seeds reverted to wild thickness within a few years.
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