Foodways and Identity in the Great Lakes: Investigating Western Basin Tradition Food Production Using Starch Grain and Macrobotanical Analysis.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Farm to Table Archaeology: The Operational Chain of Food Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent excavations at the early Late Woodland (A.D. 1,000-1,300) Western Basin Tradition Arkona sites have called into question our conceptualization of Algonquian food production, landscape construction, and mobility in southwestern-most Ontario. Isotopic analyses have also revealed a vast underestimation of the amount of maize consumed by WBT peoples at this time, likely a reflection of the limited excavation and botanical analyses undertaken at these sites. This paper will present the results of paleoethnobotanical analyses including macrobotanical identification from flotation at the Arkona sites, as well as starch grain analysis of dental calculus from the nearby Lucier site. This paper will examine WBT food production and consumption practices as compared with their maize-bean-squash cultivating Iroquoian neighbors. New data suggests previous culture-historical models have created a false dichotomy between WBT ‘hunter-gatherer’ subsistence strategies and Iroquoian farmers. This paper will take a more nuanced approach to WBT identity as created through complex food production practices occurring at the periphery of Iroquoian territory and influence to provide more meaningful cross-cultural comparisons of foodways during the early Late Woodland period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Farm to Table Archaeology: The Operational Chain of Food Production

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24361