Читать книгу A Companion to American Agricultural History - Группа авторов - Страница 16

Many questions surround the initial acquisition—or more likely, multiple early acquisitions—of maize by Eastern Woodlands societies. Groups in the core Midwest-riverine zone were already producing pre-maize crops, whereas others incorporated maize into hunting-gathering-fishing economies that lacked earlier domesticates except bottle gourds or native pepo squash/gourds. The earliest evidence for maize is currently in the form of microbotanical remains: starch grains and phytoliths (opaline silica bodies) preserved in residues on pots dating to c. 300 BCE to 100 CE (Hart and Lovis 2012; Raviele 2011; Albert et al. 2018). These early reports come from Michigan and New York, unexpectedly far north and east for a crop that spread into eastern North America from the Southwest. Maize-like fragments from a handful of sites were believed to date to the early or middle first millennium CE, but several of these finds have been reexamined and redated: most were either not really maize or were centuries younger than expected (Adair and Drass 2011; Simon 2017). Stable carbon isotope evidence for increased maize consumption postdates 900 CE (Emerson et al. 2020).

Archaeologists have offered diverse explanations for why maize was available but did not become a staple food for so many centuries after its initial introduction (Scarry 1993; Hart and Lovis 2012; Simon 2014, 2017; Gremillion 2018). These include lack of adaptation to the new environment, lack of storability, use restricted to rituals, and farmer conservatism. What seems certain is that maize was not quickly embraced as a substantial source of carbohydrates, at least not at a scale visible in the isotopic or archaeobotanical records.

A dramatic shift occurred shortly before or after 900 CE, as reflected by high frequencies of cob and kernel fragments after that date (Simon and Parker 2006; Simon 2014, 2017). Intensification of maize did not, however, result in the abandonment of Eastern Agricultural Complex crops, particularly not in the American Bottom region of southwestern Illinois where Cahokia—the largest center north of Mesoamerica—arose quickly and dramatically after 1000 CE. With more than 100 mounds and multiple plazas in the central precinct alone and dozens more in the larger vicinity, Cahokia was an urban complex whose core area and surrounding countryside were inhabited by tens of thousands of people attracted by the rich resources of the floodplain and adjacent upland zones (Pauketat 2004, 2009; Iseminger 2010).

Massive amounts of flotation and archaeobotanical analyses in the greater American Bottom leave no doubt that Eastern Agricultural Complex crops were produced along with maize in greater quantities during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries CE (Lopinot 1994; Simon and Parker 2006; Fritz and Lopinot 2007; Fritz 2019). This strategy combined the seasonal staggering of early-season and late-season species with risk-reducing mechanisms including high agrobiodiversity and the scattering of fields across alluvial and upland landforms that vary in degree of soil moisture content and drainage capacity (Fritz 2019). Maize was a key staple at early Cahokia and became more dominant throughout the centuries of Cahokia’s occupation, but chenopod, erect knotweed, maygrass, eastern pepo squash, sunflower, and sumpweed did not disappear until after depopulation of the region at 1350–1400 CE. A new squash—the cushaw (Cucurbita argyrosperma ssp. argyrosperma), domesticated in Mesoamerica—had spread into eastern North America by 1000 CE, appearing at Cahokia both in the archaeobotanical record and on a stone figurine depicting an Earth Mother deity hoeing the body of a feline-headed serpent (Fritz 1994b).

Common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), also domesticated in Mesoamerica and thought to have spread across the Plains via the Southwest, were latecomers to Cahokia, appearing after 1250 CE, when thousands of people had already moved away (Pauketat and Lopinot 1997; Simon and Parker 2006). Hoe and digging stick technology, along with multicropping and intercropping of Eastern Agricultural Complex crops and maize, probably made it unnecessary to incorporate a nitrogen-fixing legume in order to maintain soil fertility. Protein was unlikely to have been lacking in the diets of farmers who grew chenopod, sunflower, and other species more nutritious than maize.

Beyond the Central Mississippi River Valley, pathways to agriculture were different than those just described for Cahokia. Pre-maize crops other than eastern pepo squash were minor economic concerns in northeastern North America, except at a few sites in Pennsylvania (Crawford 2011). Maize phytoliths have been reported from residues inside pots from New York dating to 100–300 BCE (Hart, Brumbach, and Lusteck 2007), but serious maize production did not occur until much later. Sites belonging to the first millennium CE Princess Point complex of southern Ontario yielded relatively high frequencies of maize fragments, but the onset of agriculture in New York and New England postdates 1000 CE, in some places by several centuries (Crawford 2011).

Full-blown agriculture among the historical Haudenosaunee and their ancestors (Iroquois speakers who founded the Six Nations League of upstate New York) was dominated by maize, beans, and squashes, crops so important that they were called the Three Sisters and “were included among those beings to whom religious ceremonials were addressed” (Waugh 1916). Maize was planted in low hills and spaced approximately 1 m apart with its stalks supporting bean vines. Squash could be planted on the sides of hills to spread across the ground, facilitating soil moisture retention and controlling weed growth. Agronomist Jane Mt. Pleasant (2006, 2015) has studied and practiced traditional Three Sisters agriculture, correcting old myths about low productivity and need for frequent shifting and fallowing. Yields actually obtained during Mt. Pleasant’s experiments and yields described by early observers or estimated from their accounts are higher than those achieved by colonial Euro-American farmers growing Old World crops, and the plows introduced by Europeans depleted soil fertility much more rapidly than hoe and digging stick techniques, contributing to the need for colonists to expand westward and displace more and more Native farmers from their land.

Successful, productive agricultural systems predated Europeans across eastern North America south of the Great Lakes and Canadian Shield and north of southern Florida and the southern Texas Gulf Coast. Commonalities were that maize was the primary crop, women were the primary farmers, and wild plant resources were heavily harvested—also by women—in anthropogenic patches where the productivity of nuts and fruits was enhanced through frequent understory burning. Regions varied according to whether and on what scale Eastern Agricultural Complex crops had been grown, whether Eastern Agricultural Complex crops were intensified along with maize (as at Cahokia) or dropped soon thereafter, the timing of the adoption of beans, and the roles played by crops in political and ritual economies (VanDerwarker, Bardolph, and Scarry 2017).