Archaeobotanical Analysis from the Cane River Site (31Yc91)

Summary

In this paper, we present the results of archaeobotanical analysis from the Cane River Site in Yancey County, NC. Thirty-three samples were collected during the 2013-2014 field season from features associated with different spatial contexts such as household architecture and palisades. Our results show that corn, beans, and squash are ubiquitous in the assemblage, indicating that Cane River has unexpectedly high amounts of domesticates given its higher elevation and lack of lowland floodplains. In addition to the evidence for agricultural practices, wild plant foods such as mast seeds and acorns demonstrate that a broad variety of mountain resources were exploited. We will compare the thriving cultivation of domesticates and collection of a wide variety of wild plant resources at Cane River to other Mississippian botanical assemblages from adjacent South Appalachian sites to determine how it fits into a broader pattern of Mississippian food practices in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Pisgah Culture and Mississippian Adaptation on the Appalachian Periphery   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15716