Goosefoot Galore: Results from the Analysis of a Goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri) Cache in the American Bottom

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In precontact eastern North America, Indigenous peoples domesticated a unique crop system called the Eastern Agricultural Complex (EAC) before the arrival of maize (Zea mays). The EAC likely sustained past Indigenous populations beginning around 3900 B.P., to approximately 600 B.P. The EAC fell out of cultivation prior to European contact, so their domesticated forms only exist in the archaeological record. This poster focuses on one of these lost crops: goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri), a small-seeded, annual plant similar to quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa). Recent fieldwork at the Danny site (11S870), a multicomponent bluff-top settlement overlooking Silver Creek in the uplands east of the American Bottom, revealed a cache of approximately 275,000 charred seeds. We will conduct a morphological analysis of this seed cache focusing on seed diameter and testa (seed coat) thickness to explore the developmental plasticity present within this population. We will then compare our analysis to other goosefoot caches found across eastern North America. This study will contribute to recent goosefoot research that reframes its evolutionary history, and further illuminates the intricacies of past peoples’ relationship with this crop.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41609.0