Uses Change Through Time
The crops known to us today have not always been important to the Indians, and the ways in which we use some crops are different from the ways they were first used by the Indians. Today we eat the flesh of squashes such as pumpkins, but the earliest squashes were hard-shelled with probably bitter flesh. Instead of eating the flesh, seeds were eaten and the hard shells were used for containers. Squashes first appear in the archaeological record of eastern North America during the Middle Archaic Period, prior to the invention of pottery. By heating small rocks and dropping them into a squash or bottle gourd bowl of liquid, one could quickly bring the liquid to a boil and yet not burn the container.
Stone boiling water in a hard-shelled squash container
Maize, relished by modern Americans as a food, may first have traveled across the American Midwest in shaman or medicine man bundles. Although a few cobs and kernels are found as early as the Middle Woodland Period about 1,800 years ago, maize did not become an important item in the diet for nearly 800 years, or not until about A.D. 800! We can chart the rise to importance of maize through a rise both in cob/kernel fragments in the trash at archaeological sites, and in a change in the heavy carbon isotope ratio in the bones of human skeletons (see You Are What You Eat).
Maize, relished by modern Americans as a food, may first have traveled across the American Midwest in shaman or medicine man bundles. Although a few cobs and kernels are found as early as the Middle Woodland Period about 1,800 years ago, maize did not become an important item in the diet for nearly 800 years, or not until about A.D. 800! We can chart the rise to importance of maize through a rise both in cob/kernel fragments in the trash at archaeological sites, and in a change in the heavy carbon isotope ratio in the bones of human skeletons (see You Are What You Eat).
For a final example of how uses may change through time, consider the sunflower. Actually, let’s begin with sumpweed. This is a plant that likes to grow in disturbed ground that was flooded the previous year. It produces an oily cypsela (seed) amazingly like a sunflower achene. Both sumpweed and sunflower were developed into domesticated crops by Indians in eastern North America by the Late Archaic about 4,000 years ago. Sumpweed, unlike sunflower, has a strong, perfumed odor. Yet, many historic accounts of sunflower (we have no definite historic accounts of sumpweed) describe using the seed oil on hair. You can’t help but wonder whether such a use was originally ascribed to sumpweed, then
later transferred to sunflower when sumpweed fell out of use! |
© Gail E. Wagner, 2014. The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of the page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of South Carolina. Page last updated 13 Sept. 2014.