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

Figure 2.17. Sample of Late Prehistoric storage feature
shapes from the Sunwatch Village site (taken from
Nass 1987).
occurred in the absence of any subsistence change
(Wymer 1992).
With a return to dispersed farming households,
families would be able to take advantage of microclimatic
variation to arrange their farming plots among
patchy locations. This tactic would help maximize
access to multiple planting sites with good soils,
aspect, water availability, and ease of garden clearance,
planting, maintenance, and harvesting.
Although spatially separate, reciprocities of labor
among households, when necessary, could have
helped maximize resource harvesting. Storage was
becoming more important, as evidenced by the occurrence
of larger pit features at some sites. While such
features could easily replace several ceramic storage
containers, their occurrence may have more to do
with advances in storage technology.
At the same time as the change in community pattern,
a new technology, that of the bow and arrow,
made an appearance across the region. The bow and
arrow offered an improved hunting technique that
increased its efficiency. This no doubt increased the
availability of high ranking, low density meat
resources such as deer and wild turkey. The tactic of
intensive predation, however, can lead to a localized
reduction in the live weight of deer (Shott and Jefferies
1992). In turn, these strategies proved beneficial in that
human population increased, as evidenced by the
numerous late Late Woodland phases documented
across the central Ohio Valley. This increase hints that,
in contrast to earlier periods, migration and population
dispersion were no longer feasible alternative buffering
tactics for subsistence risks.
Sometime after A.D. 800, maize moved from a diet
incidental to a high ranking dietary staple for some
households and populations across the central Ohio
Valley. Hart (1999b) has outlined a convincing model
that states the conditions surrounding the adoption of
maize by populations in the Eastern Woodlands. One
important argument in this thesis is that, once the
benefits of maize farming are able to outweigh the
liabilities connected with its production (i.e., its planting,
harvesting, and storage), it would then move up
the order of high ranking resources. Based on data
from the central Ohio Valley, Hart’s model does
account for the randomness of maize’s presence and
its rapid ascension after A.D. 800.
Although successful, this late Late Woodland pattern
was short-lived in most places across the central Ohio
Valley. Beginning around A.D. 1000, transitional Late
Prehistoric sites (denoted by the addition of shell tempering)
begin to appear within the archaeological
record of the region (Church 1987). These were still
small and variably situated in the same kinds of settlement
locations as were late Late Woodland sites.
Settlement and subsistence data support the proposition
that the success of the late Late Woodland strategy
carried over into the transitional Late Prehistoric.
While maize is a ubiquitous component of the botanical
record of these sites, its integration into the lives of
populations also coincided with a set of linked or interconnected
events that included a reduction in niche
width (Breitburg 1992) and an increasing reduction in
group mobility.
We believe that the tactic of intensifying maize
farming was due to the success of the late Late
Woodland dispersed settlements that were able to
maximize the potential of EAC cultigens. Dispersed
households aggregated to form household clusters,
but this time, instead of depending upon the forager
buffering strategy of interhousehold sharing of
resources, the population relied upon reciprocities of
labor to coordinate the planting, maintenance, and
harvesting of crops from more concentrated but larger
agricultural plots. Although a growing local and
Chapter 2 Central Ohio Valley During the Late Prehistoric Period: Subsistance-Settlement Systems’ Responses to Risk 37