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

undoubtedly played a role in this process.
Such changes may have been accompanied by
shifts in social organization at this time, specifically a
shift from a pattern of patrilineality typical of many
Northeastern Algonquian populations to a preference
for matrilineality and matrilocal post-marital residence.
According to the early Dutch records, at the
time of contact the landholding units of the Mohican
were matrilineages (Brasser 1978:200). The focus of
these lineage tracts appears to have been the garden
lands in proximity to the Hudson River and its major
tributaries rather than the lands in the interior used
for hunting. Although we are not invoking Late
Woodland period “big women” to explain these
changes in subsistence and settlement behavior, we
must consider that the sociospatial arrangements
termed matrilineality and matrilocality, while attributed
to the Mohican as well as the Munsee (Brasser
1978:200), were not typical of the Algonquian-speaking
populations of the Northeast. In contrast, these
patterns do appear to have been common among the
New York Iroquois and their linguistic relatives and
might well have predated their adoption of horticulture.
Like our current knowledge of maize, we don’t
know when or from where the Mohican adopted
these practices. However, the increased focus on horticulture
during the Late Woodland period turned
garden lands and crops into valuable resources controlled
by women and their families.
While the model of subsistence change presented
here has been only briefly described, it is apparent
that it derives more from settlement geography,
ceramic production, and site features than from the
floral and faunal remains themselves. Future research
in the Hudson Valley hopefully will be directed to filling
in these gaps through greater attention paid to
flotation of feature and midden samples. The recovery
of additional dated samples of maize, as well as
bean and squash, will help refine, and if necessary,
redraw this model. Additionally, our study of subsistence
and settlement change has brought into focus
interesting questions relating gender, social organization,
and the processes through which foragers
become horticulturists.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the many individuals and
institutions who aided us in this research: James
Walsh and the members of the Auringer-Seelye
Chapter of the New York Archaeological Association,
Karen Hartgen, Andy Krievs, Beth Wellman, Robert
Funk, Robert Jarvenpa, Glen Paris, Skidmore College,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University at
Albany. An earlier version of this paper was presented
at the New York State Museum Natural History
Conference VI, Albany, New York. We thank the
organizers, John Hart and Chris Rieth, for inviting us
to participate in that session.
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