Eastern Agricultural Complex (Other Keyword)
1-2 (2 Records)
The ethnographic record is replete with examples of farming societies for whom the maintenance and exchange of seed stock was imbued with ritual significance. Seed keeping is often an institutionalized role for families or individuals: a matter of pride, as aspect of identity, and a heavy responsibility. The establishment of these rituals and institutions may have been crucial to the domestication of annual plants and the development of food producing economies. What would seed keeping and seed...
Seeds as artifacts: Investigating the spread of agroecological knowledge in Eastern North America, c. 1000 BCE-1300CE (2016)
For crops to spread successfully, transmission of knowledge about how, when, and where to grow them is just as important as the seed itself. Seed morphology can be used as a proxy for this knowledge in two ways: 1) Domesticated seeds have been shaped by many generations of human cultivation, and agricultural practices can be reconstructed from their morphology; and 2) plasticity causes morphological variation that is a function of the growth environment created by communities for their crops. I...