Food production in the Early Woodland: macrobotanical remains as evidence for farming along the riverbank in eastern Tennessee

ABSTRACT

Open riverbanks and disturbed floodplains are targeted by archaeologists as optimal habitats for the growth of many of the weedy indigenous seed crops in eastern North America, but there is still little evidence for garden locations in the archaeological record. This article combines macrobotanical and geoarchaeological analyses from the Birdwell site (40GN228), located on the Nolichucky River, to give insight into where cultigens were planted and how they were managed in eastern Tennessee during the Early Woodland period. The recovery of uncharacteristic amounts of edible seeds and wood charcoal from the lower terrace of this site suggests that inhabitants were actively managing cultigens along the floodplain of this settlement. The presence of these remains in a non-midden context is evidence that precontact farmers in the Tennessee foothills took advantage of the newly created floodplains of the Early Woodland by implementing a burning regime, an early agricultural strategy aimed at increasing soil productivity and encouraging the growth of weedy annuals on the riverbank. In absence of lines of evidence such as preserved paleosols that can be examined for soil micromorphology, pollen, and phytoliths, integrated paleoethnobotanical and geomorphological analyses can be used to reconstruct land use and archaeologically identify prehistoric cultivated fields.

KEYWORDS:

• Paleoethnobotany
• Woodland period
• food production
• Eastern Agricultural Complex
• geoarchaeology
• Tennessee archaeology
• human-environment interactions

Acknowledgments

We thank Boyce Driskell and David G. Anderson for their insightful comments on the project. The Tennessee Department of Transportation was responsible for funding the excavation. Thank you to Matthew Gage and all of the crew members of the Archaeological Research Laboratory of the Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, who carried out this excavation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on the contributors

Jessie L. Johanson is an adjunct professor of anthropology at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida. She specializes in paleoethnobotany and Southeastern archaeology.

Kandace D. Hollenbach is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee and also serves as the associate curator of paleoethnobotany with the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture. She specializes in archaeology and paleoethnobotany.

Howard J. Cyr manages the Laboratory of Environmental Archaeology at the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture. He specializes in geoarchaeology and environmental reconstruction.

ORCID

Jessie L. Johanson http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6162-7964

Kandace D. Hollenbach http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4110-3933

Howard J. Cyr http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3439-3469

Data availability statement

All artifacts and data pertaining to the Birdwell (40GN228) and the Neas site (40GN229) are maintained in the Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee.

Additional information

Funding

The University of Tennessee Archaeological Research Laboratory and Department of Anthropology, as well as the Tennessee Department of Transportation provided funding for research at the Birdwell archaeological site.