No. 2 – October 1990

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VOLUME 51. NUMBER 2
LATE WOODLAND DIET ON NANTUCKET ISLAND:
A STUDY USING STABLE ISOTOPE RATIOS
Christian C. Medaglia, Elizabeth A. Little and Margaret J. Schoeninger
INTRODUCTION
A long-standing question in New England archaeology concerns the presence or absence
of maize in the diet of the Late Woodland Period. The question arises due to the apparent
absence of maize from most archaeological sites while it appears to have played a major role
in subsistence in the historic record. This paradox merits further exploration for several
reasons. The role which maize, America's principal cultigen. played in the development of
many native cultures cannot be overemphasized. Secondly, the settlement patterns of hunters,
fishermen and foragers are different from those based on maize agriculture, and our
perceptions of prehistoric inhabitants of Nantucket Island are molded by our assumptions
concerning their subsistence strategies.
ARCHAEOLOGY
Prior to the 1970's, the methods applied to questions of diet and subsistence strategies
included analyses of plant and animal materials recovered from sites (Ritchie 1969). These
analyses were often interpreted in conjunction with information derived from ethnographic
investigations. Floral and faunal remains from several Woodland sites on Nantucket have
been identified. These sites include: Squam Pond, Hughes and Herrecater Swamp (Bullen and
Brooks 1947, 1948, 1949), Quidnet (Carlson 1990; Little 1984), Thompson and Ram Pasture I
(Waters 1965), Marshall (Pretola and Little 1988) and Quaise (Luedtke 1980); see Table 1.
The traditional methods of floral analysis and ethnographic research, as applied in
Nantucket, are not sufficient for developing diet models for several reasons. The direct
analysis of plant and animal materials is inconclusive because flotation was not performed on
the soil from these excavations and sieving was done with quarter-inch mesh only. Such large
mesh does not retain small pieces of plant matter such as fragments of carbonized maize.
At the same time, information from ethnographic investigations comes to us only
indirectly, usually through historic accounts which describe the populations inhabiting Cape
Cod and mainland Massachusetts. These accounts indicate territorial groups that moved camps
seasonally and subsisted on such foods as deer, fish, shellfish, occasionally dog (Butler and
Hadlock 1948) and a variety of terrestrial and possibly some marine plants. For example, the
explorer Samuel de Champlain (1968) reported in 1606 widespread cultivation of "Indian
corn" at Nauset, Cape Cod. But this report describes the situation several hundred years after
the lives of the humans in our study.
With the traditional methods unable to provide reliable information for the Woodland diet,
we need to explore and utilize other techniques. The technique used in this study was stable
isotope analysis of bone collagen and faunal and floral tissue samples.
Copyright 1990 Christian C. Medaglia, Elizabeth A. Little and Margaret J. Schoeninger
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