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

found. Seeds of at least 10 kinds of fleshy fruits were
identified from the Late Woodland and/or Contact
occupations.
The Tracy Farm site had more than 1,100 seeds from
the Late Woodland and Contact occupations. The
seed assemblage was particularly interesting because
of the frequent occurrence of edible seeds of the
weedy plants Amphicarpa bracteata (hog-peanut),
Chenopodium berlandieri (chenopod), Desmodium spp.
(tick-trefoil), and Helianthus spp. (wild sunflower).
These seeds represented 37 percent of all seeds identified,
including unknown and fragmentary seeds.
Grass seeds, mostly wild rye (Elymus spp.), were also
very abundant.
Tick-trefoil (Desmodium spp.) was the most abundant
(32.8 percent) and ubiquitous seed found in both
the Late Woodland and Contact features at Tracy
Farm. Altogether, 373 seeds were identified from 17
features. Small quantities of tick-trefoil were found in
association with maize agriculture at three other
Maine sites—Little Ossipee North, Sandy River, and
Norridgewock Mission. There are references to the
use of the entire plant or the roots for medicine, but
there are no historic references to the use of tick-trefoil
for food (Moerman 1998). However, at Cloudsplitter
Rockshelter in Kentucky, tick-trefoil loments were
found stored in a small pit with 7 liters of cultivated
sumpweed, sunflower, goosefoot, maygrass, and
erect knotweed (Cowan 1985:240; Fritz 1990:405).
A total of 11 hog-peanut (Amphicarpa bracteata) seeds
were found in 4 features at the Tracy Farm site. Three
of the features contained maize. Two hog-peanut seeds
were identified at the nearby Sandy River site. Hogpeanut
is “ . . . a slender-stemmed vine which climbs or
twines over other plants and shrubs . . . grows along
shadowy lanes in damp woods or moist thickets . . . ”
(Dwelley 1977). Amphicarpa produces small seeds in
pods as well as fleshy, single-seeded subterranean
fruits (Kindscher 1987).
Thirty-two reticulate, biconvex seeds of
Chenopodium berlandieri (goosefoot, lamb’s-quarters)
were recovered from three Late Woodland or Contact
features from the Tracy Farm site. Twenty-one C.
berlandieri seeds were also found in two features at the
Norridgewock Mission site. The chenopod could
have grown as a weed in the maize fields, and the
seeds could represent a food that was used when the
maize supply was exhausted.
One achene resembling sunflower (Helianthus spp.),
but too small to be the cultivated or weedy common
sunflower (H. annuus), was recovered from a Contact
feature at Tracy Farm in association with maize, cucurbit
rind, wild rye, and tick-trefoil seeds. There is only
one species of wild sunflower, Helianthus decapetalus, a
perennial that grows in woods and along streams in
Somerset County. The Tracy Farm achene has not been
compared with specimens of H. decapetalus.
Grass seeds made up about 11 percent of the seeds
at the Tracy Farm site, the most common being wild
rye (Elymus spp.), with 126 seeds from 8 features.
Although wild rye seeds were eaten by western
Indians (King 1984), there are few ethnographic references
to the use of grass seeds for food in eastern
North America. The Iroquois used wild rye and other
plants as medicine to soak corn seeds before planting
(Moerman 1998:208-209). The grass seeds may be
present as a by-product of using grass stems and
leaves for technological purposes such as thatching,
pit lining, matting, and fire starting. In support of this
idea is evidence of grass stems in six of the eight Tracy
Farm features with wild rye seeds. The two features
lacking grass stems each contained only one wild rye
seed. Of the seven features containing grass stems,
only one did not also contain grass seeds. Each of the
pits containing grass stems was classified as a storage
pit that had been reused for refuse disposal. Wild rye
seeds have not been specifically identified at other
Maine sites.
In the Northeastern U.S., big bluestem (Andropogon
gerardii) is the grass species that was used for lining
maize storage pits (Bendremer, Kellogg, and Largy
1991). A single seed of big bluestem, was identified in
Feature 20 at Tracy Farm. As in the case of wild rye,
the big bluestem seed was probably introduced as a
by-product of using the stems for technological purposes.
Big bluestem seeds have not been specifically
identified at other Maine sites.
The great variety of Late Woodland/Contact food
remains at Tracy Farm indicates that nuts and fruits
were an important part of the diet and that there were
thickets and openings in the vicinity, probably related to
agricultural activities. All of the weedy plants and grass
plants identified from seeds at Tracy Farm are perennials,
with the exception of Chenopodium berlandieri. An
interesting question is, can this unusual assemblage of
seeds that are associated with agriculture at Tracy Farm
and other Maine sites (Table 13.3) be used as an indicator
of probable agriculture at sites where there is no
direct evidence of domesticated plants?
Broome Tech Site
The Broome Tech site is located in the wide floodplain
of the Chenango River in southern New York
252 Sidell