Northeast Subsistence-Settlement Change: A.D. 700 –1300

economy (Stothers et al. 1998b).
Bender (1978) and Hayden (1990) both have suggested
that the transition to food production took place
in a context of wild resource harvesting and limited
horticulture among relatively communal societies.
They further suggested that food production was pursued
by groups who specialized in the production of
surplus, which they exchanged for other commodities
and raw materials available elsewhere. Smith (1989)
has suggested that food harvesting occurred relatively
early in North American prehistory, producing a complex
of indigenous domesticated starchy plants that
required little tending, and in addition, grew well in
the disturbed soils around reoccupied floodplain settings.
While the evidence for these indigenous crops
has been lacking for the most part in the lower Great
Lakes and Northeast, their presence has been recently
documented (Hart and Sidell 1997). Exotic domesticates
were added slowly, and as we will argue, supplemented
fishing and wild crop harvesting economies.
The technology for agricultural intensification, then,
predates even the introduction of maize in the Eastern
Woodlands. Rather than environmentally or demographically
induced need, we suggest that a prestige
economy focused on competitive feasting and votive
offerings to the dead promoted the intensified production
of exotic domesticates, in this case maize, as sumptuary
foods.
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY IN
NONSTRATIFIED SOCIETIES
It is axiomatic that no human kin group is
autonomous—they depend on other kin groups to
secure the resources they need to survive, not just
physically, but as a society. They use local surplus (i.e.,
commodities) to secure desired or necessary resources
outside their access. In this context, power is defined
simply as the ability to manipulate people and
resources. It need not be overt. In fact, it is often
shrouded in myth and ritual that characterizes social
inequality as a “natural” state. Politics is defined as the
mode of manipulation. It need not be coercive, and in
fact, may have some functionality in smoothing over
the conflicts inherent in any relationship of trade
(Hayden 1995b). The distribution of resources includes
not only food, human labor, and land, but the also the
material culture of social reproduction. “Things” are
not only created by culture, they also have a role in
reproducing the norms and ideals they symbolize
(Hodder 1982). Their acquisition may be seen as just as
necessary for survival as food, and societies will go to
great lengths to manipulate them.
Dispersed human populations seek opportunities
for aggregation to negotiate exchanges of resources
(Polanyi 1963; Sahlins 1972). These aggregations serve
both economic and sociopolitical functions, and
involve social rituals that serve to mediate potential
conflicts, distribute resources, and encourage cooperation
between socially and economically diverse groups
(Godelier 1975). Numerous examples of these recurrent
gatherings are present in the ethnographic literature
(Jackson 1991; Polanyi 1963; Sahlins 1972).
A basic mechanism of resource distribution is the
feast (Hayden 2001). It likely dates to the earliest stages
of human culture, acting as a mechanism to regulate
the distribution of limited food resources among a
community. Clear rules of resource distribution promote
solidarity within a community by creating roles
of social and economic interdependence. It can also be
competitive, and Hayden (1990, 1992, 1995a, 1995b,
1996) differentiates intracommunal (solidarity) and
intercommunal (competitive) feasting. The first seems
to occur predominantly in economies lacking surplus,
such as exist among foraging and early sedentary horticultural
societies, in which corporate groups seek to
retain control of their limited food resources through
redistribution among the producers themselves. The
latter type of feasting often involves large surpluses,
such as occur in advanced harvesting and agricultural
societies, in which competing peer polities and their
local leaders attempt to outdo their neighbors by hosting
the most elaborate feast.
Hayden (1995b, 1996) suggests that the impetus for
horticultural intensification may be found in the practice
of competitive feasting among peer polities. He
argues that in an environment of widespread and stable
subsistence production, commodities, rather than
subsistence resources, take over the primary function
of reproducing social relations. They are surplus
goods, usually of limited availability, which seal
alliances through their distribution as gifts and bring
the donors political prestige. Competing polities hosted
feasts to draw large numbers of people together,
influence them, and potentially gain their cooperation—thus
extending their sphere of influence and
strengthening their reproductive potential (Ford 1972;
Rappaport 1968). Exotic and sumptuary foods were
served during the feasts that gained the host group
prestige among their peers. The feasts may be associated
with elaborate communal burial rituals. The conspicuous
consumption of valuable resources, either
through feasting, votive destruction and burial, or
90 Stothers and Abel