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

or earlier in interior southwestern Maine in the Saco
River Valley. In Figure 13.5, the data point for maize
(0.01 frags. >2 mm/g) at 810 B.P. at the Little Ossipee
North site represents a mean date; a direct date for
maize at that site was 570 B.P. for a fragment found in
a feature dating to 1010 B.P. A greater quantity and
variety of seeds is generally recovered from Maine
sites after about 1000 B.P., which is an indication that
the activities associated with agriculture had an effect
on the surrounding plant communities (Asch Sidell
1999d).
Indicator species that may be associated with maize
agriculture are considered in more detail in the
Memorial Park site and Tracy Farm site discussions
below.
EVIDENCE OF ANTHROPOGENESIS
Many archaeological sites provide evidence of
anthropogenesis, since plant foods tend to be most
concentrated and most easily collected from open or
disturbed areas. Focusing upon changes that may
have occurred with the adoption of maize agriculture,
there are certain indicator species that are associated
with maize at the Memorial Park and Tracy Farm
sites. Selected data are also presented from two sites
in southcentral New York, for which there is possible
evidence of landscape alteration by the use of fire.
Memorial Park Site
The clearest evidence of anthropogenesis is found
at the deeply stratified Memorial Park site in
Pennsylvania, where a large increase in seed density
is associated with the presence of maize agriculture
and the growing of some species of the Eastern
Agricultural Complex (Figure 13.5). Of the Late
Woodland (A.D. 760-1385) seeds, two-thirds were
those of native cultivated plants, including little barley,
two domesticated forms of Chenopodium
berlandieri, tobacco, and possibly sunflower, although
the single sunflower kernel was wild-sized.
Altogether 64 percent of the identifiable seeds were
little barley (Hordeum pusillum), which occurred in
more than half of the 46 samples containing seeds.
Among the fleshy fruits and berries was black nightshade
(Solanum americanum). Black nightshade was
associated with a period of intensive agriculture in
westcentral Illinois and the American Bottom (D. Asch
and N. Asch 1985a:388-389). Since it has not been
recorded from Archaic sites, it is presumed that disturbances
associated with prehistoric agriculture permitted
an increase in the abundance of black nightshade.
Today, black nightshade is widely distributed in open
and disturbed habitats (Magee and Ahles 1999). At the
Memorial Park site, black nightshade represented 52
percent of the fruit and berry seeds in the Late
Woodland features.
Another possible indicator of anthropogenesis at
the Memorial Park site is a substantial increase in the
percentage of oak and hickory wood charcoal coincident
with the appearance of maize agriculture.
Sample size is not equal for each data point in Figure
13.5. The largest samples of wood charcoal are 605 fragments
for the Terminal Archaic Canfield (2100-1640
B.C.) component and 150 fragments for the Early
Clemson Island (A.D. 760-830) component. The
amount of oak and hickory wood charcoal for these
components is 47.93 percent and 88.33 percent, respectively.
The increase in oak and hickory wood is accompanied
by an increase in the nutshell index from 2.05 in
the Terminal Archaic Canfield to 5.61 in the Early
Clemson Island, as predicted by the nut tree–nutshell
model presented earlier. There was also an increase in
the seed index from 0.03 to 2.12 seeds per gram of charcoal,
indicating more open habitat for seed collection in
the Early Clemson Island occupation.
Tracy Farm Site
In Maine, the Norridgewock Mission study compared
archaeobotanical evidence with historic
accounts of plant use to serve as a baseline for assessing
prehistoric plant assemblages (Asch Sidell 1996a).
At the Tracy Farm site across the river from
Norridgewock Mission, there were differences in the
plant remains through time (Asch Sidell 2000d).
Among the three features that were unquestionably
attributed to the Middle Woodland (200 B.C.-A.D.
600) 2 occupation, there was a lack of nutshell, seeds,
and domesticated plants. However, because of collection
techniques, only one of the samples could have
been expected to contain seeds or nuts. Most of the
Late Woodland/Contact (A.D. 1300-1690) 2 features at
the Tracy Farm site contained a mixture of various
seeds and nutshell. All types of nuts that grew in the
area were recovered in small quantities from the Late
Woodland and/or Contact occupations of the Tracy
Farm site, and the nutshell occurred ubiquitously in
81 percent of the features. Of 32 Late Woodland or
Contact features, 21 (or two-thirds) contained maize,
5 had squash/pumpkin rind, 3 had wheat, and 1 contained
bean. One wild-sized sunflower seed was also
250 Sidell