Native American 'garden agriculture' in south-eastern North America
The Native Americans of south-eastern North America are sometimes described as gardeners and sometimes as agriculturalists. Neither label conveys an accurate sense of farming practices that employed polycropping and shifting cultivation to produce substantial surpluses. Ethnohistorical accounts prov...
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Published in | World archaeology Vol. 37; no. 2; pp. 259 - 274 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
01.06.2005
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The Native Americans of south-eastern North America are sometimes described as gardeners and sometimes as agriculturalists. Neither label conveys an accurate sense of farming practices that employed polycropping and shifting cultivation to produce substantial surpluses. Ethnohistorical accounts provide tantalizing glimpses of the production and storage of cultivated foods among the native societies of the Southeast. Archaeological investigations in Apalachee Province have yielded further evidence regarding the sizes and distribution of elevated granaries in one native chiefdom. Archaeobotanical data provide information about varied reliance on agricultural products in several polities in Alabama and Mississippi. We weave together these various threads of evidence to survey the cropping strategies (e.g. scale of production, diversity of crops, labor and storage practices) of Mississippian peoples and their historic descendants in the Southeast. Reprinted by permission of Routledge, Taylor and Francis Ltd. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Feature-1 |
ISSN: | 0043-8243 |
DOI: | 10.1080/00438243500095199 |