Woodland Tradition Plant Use and Foodways in the Western Great Lakes: A View from Southeastern Wisconsin

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Histories of Human-Nature Interactions: Use, Management, and Consumption of Plants in Extreme Environments" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper implements a multiproxy approach to Woodland foodways, integrating plant macrobotanical studies, faunal analyses, ceramic morphological and use-wear analyses, and absorbed residue analyses. Datasets from southeastern Wisconsin and the surrounding region highlight diachronic trends of wild resource procurement, processing, and consumption. In southeastern Wisconsin, foodway data suggest that Early and Middle Woodland populations were seasonally mobile foragers reliant on a variety of wild plants and animals with limited use of domestic cultigens. Late Woodland contexts have yielded evidence of domestic and tropical cultigens, as well as nuts and wild seeds. Recent analysis of Finch site (47JE0902) data has yielded a wealth of information regarding Woodland Tradition foodways owing to the recovery of well-preserved plant macrobotanical and animal remains, as well as associated ceramics. The foodway data from the Finch site demonstrate a shift in foodways from the Early to Middle Woodland period involving an intensification of hickory nut harvesting, an increased emphasis on gardening, and development of innovative food processing technologies. Maize does not appear to be present prior to the late tenth century but becomes ubiquitous in Late Woodland times.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Histories of Human-Nature Interactions: Use, Management, and Consumption of Plants in Extreme Environments   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32690