Tracing the Movement of European-introduced Foods into Cherokee Country

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "New Avenues in the Study of Plant Remains from Historical Sites" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper examines the routes European-introduced foods traveled into Cherokee towns during European colonization (the sixteenth- to eighteenth-centuries). We know that peaches, cowpeas, watermelons, and sweet potatoes were all new foods Cherokees adopted from Europeans. However, I argue that each food was traded through different paths, and the timing of their arrival was variable. Using archaeobotanical and historic data, I show the likely origin and route each of these foods took into Cherokee country. I also discuss how the movement of these foods may also reveal the social and political relationships Cherokees had with other American Indian groups and European colonizers in the eighteenth century.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Avenues in the Study of Plant Remains from Historical Sites   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology