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Growing the lost crops of eastern North America's original agricultural system

Nature Plants volume 3, Article number: 17092 (2017) Cite this article

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Abstract

Thousands of years before the maize-based agriculture practiced by many Native American societies in eastern North America at the time of contact with Europeans, there existed a unique crop system only known through archaeological evidence. There are no written or oral records of how these lost crops were cultivated, but several domesticated subspecies have been identified in the archaeological record. Growth experiments and observations of living progenitors of these crops can provide insights into the ancient agricultural system of eastern North America, the role of developmental plasticity in the process of domestication, and the creation and maintenance of diverse landraces under cultivation. In addition, experimental gardens are potent tools for public education, and can also be used to conserve remaining populations of lost crop progenitors and explore the possibility of re-domesticating these species.

In the early days of EAC research, botanists and palaeoethnobotanists commonly conducted studies of living plants. For example, Yarnell23,31 synthesized studies of sumpweed both in the field and under cultivation, although these observations were actually made by botanists32. Heiser33,34 studied wild, weedy and cultivated sunflowers for decades, Asch and Asch18,35 made collections from the wild progenitors of all annual seed crops of the EAC and published their observations, and Munson and his students36 did the same, in addition to conducting several enlightening processing experiments. Observations of wild populations of EAC plants, as well as the results of small-scale harvesting experiments, were synthesized by Smith37. Since then, observation or experimental cultivation of EAC crop progenitors has been rare, with a few palaeoethnobotanists conducting informal experiments38,39, but with no new studies published. Most previous studies were of EAC crop progenitors in natural ecosystems. With the exception of Heiser's experiments with sumpweed and sunflower, nothing has been published on the behaviour of EAC crop progenitors under cultivation, despite the fact that these species sustained societies in ENA for thousands of years. We have initiated several research projects that involve growing the wild progenitors of these crops experimentally and in teaching gardens. These projects are nascent but show promise for expanding our understanding of the evolution and spread of food production as a knowledge system and the process of domestication40. In addition to these academic concerns, palaeoethnobotanists are also exploring the possibility of re-domesticating and commercializing ENA's original crops41, and using gardens as tools for teaching and public outreach42.

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Figure 1: Timeline of Eastern Agricultural Complex crop cultivation and domestication.
Figure 2
Figure 3: The lost crops of the Eastern Agricultural Complex.

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Acknowledgements

Funding and support for these projects was provided by the Arkansas Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Arkansas Archeological Survey, Arkansas State Parks, US National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant #58292, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellowship in American Culture Studies at Washington University, the Sugar Bush Foundation, Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University, and the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio University. We would also like to thank D. Piperno for her thoughtful comments, and G. Stone for his suggestion that we write this Perspective.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Washington University, 1 Brookings Drive, St. Louis, 63130, Missouri, USA

    Natalie G. Mueller & Gayle J. Fritz

  2. Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Food Studies Theme, Ohio University, 1 Ohio University, Athens, 45701, Ohio, USA

    Paul Patton

  3. Department of Archaeology, The Sewanee/Yale Collaborative for Southern Appalachian and Place-Based Studies, Sewanee University, 735 University Avenue, Sewanee, 37383, Tennessee, USA

    Stephen Carmody

  4. Arkansas State Archaeological Survey, Toltec Mounds Station, 490 Toltec Mounds Road, Scott, 72142, Arkansas, USA

    Elizabeth T. Horton

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Correspondence to Natalie G. Mueller.

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Mueller, N., Fritz, G., Patton, P. et al. Growing the lost crops of eastern North America's original agricultural system. Nature Plants 3, 17092 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2017.92

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