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

Figure 13.6. Broome Tech Site selected plant remains.
where Braun’s (1950:395) map indicates intrusion of
southern species along the major river valleys. The
Transitional (ca. 950-200 B.C.) and Late Woodland (ca.
A.D. 1000-1250) components at Broome Tech had a high
percentage of oak and hickory wood charcoal (Figure
13.6). Those components also had a high nutshell index
of 4.3 and 3 fragments of nutshell larger than 2 mm per
gram of charcoal. In contrast, the early Middle
Woodland (ca. 10 B.C. - A.D. 900) component at Broome
Tech had a much higher percentage of beech and maple
wood charcoal, with a very low nutshell index (0.2).
This was the only component with beechnut shells,
which represented 73 percent of the nutshell.
Gardner (1997) proposes that Late Archaic foragers
may have had incentives to manage local mast-producing
trees to increase yields by girdling nonproductive
trees. An open canopy favors increased nutshell
production and growth of fruit-producing shrubs,
berries, and herbaceous plants. The resulting openings
in the canopy would have increased available habitats
for sun-loving weeds, with the likely consequence that
the diet expanded to include alternative foods such as
weed seeds (Gardner 1997:177).
The seed assemblage in the Broome Tech
Transitional component (Table 13.4) was dominated by
weedy species that can be of economic importance,
Ambrosia trifida (giant ragweed), Chenopodium
berlandieri (goosefoot), Desmodium spp. (tick-trefoil), Iva
spp. (marshelder), and Polygonum scandens (false buckwheat).
Although similar species were cultivated and
collected in other parts of the eastern United States at
that time (Fritz 1990), none of the Broome Tech seeds
were domesticated varieties. The C. berlandieri and
marshelder were wild type annual seeds. The false
buckwheat (Polygonum scandens) is a twining perennial
(up to 5 m) rather than a low annual plant (up to 50 cm)
like the Polygonum erectum that was cultivated and perhaps
domesticated in Illinois and the Ozarks (N. Asch
and D. Asch 1985; Fritz 1990). Giant ragweed seeds are
found repeatedly in third and fourth millennium B.P.
contexts that implicate giant ragweed as a cultivated
annual plant or a utilized garden weed in eastern
Kentucky, westcentral Illinois, and the Ozarks (D. Asch
and N. Asch 1985b; Cowan 1985; Fritz 1990). Tick-trefoil,
as previously mentioned, is a perennial legume
with tiny edible seeds that was associated with cultivated
native seeds at Cloudsplitter Rockshelter in
Kentucky (Cowan 1985) and with maize agriculture in
Maine (Asch Sidell 1999d). It is difficult to interpret the
presence of minor amounts of the above assemblage of
economically important weedy species in the Broome
Tech features in a nonagricultural context, particularly
since there are no native species of marshelder that
grow in southcentral New York today (House 1924).
The presence of economically important annual
and perennial weedy species in the Transitional levels
in combination with the unusual abundance of nutshell
and oak wood suggests that the landscape may
have been an open woodland. The presence of
hawthorn wood and seeds as well as a yellow star-
254 Sidell