Vol. 12 No. 1 Spring 2008
  

How North American Agriculture Began

By Julian Smith

It’s impossible to pinpoint the beginning of agriculture, one of the greatest advances in human history, but it’s easy to imagine. Some hunter-gatherers are struck by a flash of inspiration. Plant this seed here today and take care of the plant that grows, and eventually tomorrow’s meal—and the next, and the next—will be there for the taking. No longer will they be exclusively reliant on hunting animals or searching for wild plants to eat.

It wasn’t that simple, of course. The birth of agriculture took thousands of years. It was a slow, uneven process that depended on rare sets of circumstances, and was undoubtedly punctuated by countless failures and dead ends. Still, the domestication of plants had a profound effect. The days of small groups of hunter-gatherers combing the landscape were over. Societies became more complex and newly permanent settlements began to grow. The onset of food surpluses and leisure time spurred the growth of new technologies, new social orders, and large-scale economies.

Contact and Conflict

By Constance E. Richards

The Berry site contains the ruins of the oldest Spanish settlement in what is now the United States. The archaeologists are searching for evidence of the Spanish fort, as well as trying to understand the nature of the interaction between the soldiers and the Native Americans. The two apparently coexisted peacefully, then, for reasons unknown, the natives attacked the fort, killing all but one soldier who managed to escape. The fort was burned to the ground, but the archaeologists are uncertain whether this occurred during the attack or sometime after. 

This project is unusual, according to archaeologist Christopher Rodning, because “the relationship between Fort San Juan and the native community of Joara is one in which native people were dominant, and, arguably, the Spanish soldiers were dependent upon native help and, perhaps even threatened by the possibility of troubled relations with native groups. This situation is very different than the more common scenario, especially later in time, of European dominance or at least influence.”

A Grand Tradition of Mound Building

By Kristin Ohlson

In 1990, archaeologist Joe Saunders was summoned by a landowner whose property included some Indian mounds that had been disturbed by looters. Saunders began a test excavation of the mound, which is part of a larger earthwork complex called Hedgepeth in north-central Louisiana. He found charcoal samples in a hearth that were radiocarbon dated to 5,000 years ago. The following summer, Saunders tested another Louisiana mound complex called Frenchman’s Bend. Once again he located bits of charcoal that were more than 5,000 years old.

This discovery surprised archaeologists, who assumed mound building commenced after people learned to grow crops around 2000 B.C. Until then, archaeologists believed Native Americans weren’t capable of building huge earthen mounds because were living a precarious existence in small nomadic bands and they didn’t have the power structures within their culture to organize and order that kind of labor. These and other mounds in the Southeast serve as proof of the sophistication of the region’s prehistoric peoples.

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