Time's River: Archaeological Syntheses from the Lower Mississippi Valley

14. Paleoethnobotanical Information and Issues Relevant to theI-69 Overview Process, Northwest Mississippi

14 Paleoethnobotanical Information and Issues Relevant to the I-69 Overview Process, Northwest Mississippi Gayle J. Fritz Introduction The overview process serves three broad purposes for dealing with paleoethnobotanical remains. First, it provides an opportunity to pull together information from previous reports, both in the immediate zone of potential impact and in the surrounding region. Second, based on this information, it makes it possible to assess relevant questions and issues. Third, it is a forum for making recommendations about future recovery and analysis of plant remains, framed within appropriate research domains. I begin by summarizing what we know— and things about which we would like to know more—in the realm of relationships between plants and people in northwest Mississippi and the wider southCentral and Lower Mississippi Valley (CMV/LMV). Throughout this discussion I suggest key questions that archaeologists might try to answer. I conclude with some suggestions for incorporating paleoethnobotanical research as an integral component of fieldwork and analysis during upcoming work in Mississippi. As summarized in Table 14.1, macrobotanical remains have been reported from at least 73 archaeological components in northwest Mississippi, eastern Arkansas, extreme southeast Missouri, southwest Tennessee, and northeast Louisiana. The plants from 27 of these components, however, were recovered during hand excavations or routine dry screening, without the benefit of finemesh flotation or water screening. Therefore, few items other than corn cobs, nuts, or persimmon seeds were found at those sites. Tables 14.2 through 14.6 summarize the types of nutshell and seeds reported for various time periods, along with remains of corn and squash. These are not complete tabulations. Acorn nutmeat is not included, nor are most taxa that analysts were unsure about, or several seed types represented by only one or two specimens. The tables nevertheless reflect changing temporal trends in subsistence and spatial variations across the broader area of concern. Continued on the next page Table 14.1. Continued Continued on the next page Table 14.4. Continued Continued on the next page Table 14.4. Continued Continued on the next page Table 14.5. Continued Continued on the next page Table 14.5. Continued Continued on the next page Table 14.5. Continued Continued on the next page Table 14.6. Continued Continued on the next page Table 14.6. Continued Continued on the next page Table 14.6. Continued Continued on the next page Table 14.6. Continued Paleoethnobotanical Information and Issues / 327 Paleoindian, Early Archaic, and Middle Archaic I could find no direct evidence for plant use by Paleoindians or Early Archaic peoples in this part of the Mississippi valley. Extrapolating from archaeobotanical remains from sites farther north and east such as Dust Cave in Alabama (Hollenbach 2005) and Icehouse Bottom in eastern Tennessee (Chapman and Shea 1981), it is likely that nuts were routinely harvested by the end of the Early Holocene and that wild seeds and fruits were used to some degree. Two Middle Archaic sites in northwest Mississippi—Denton (22QU522) and Longstreet (22QU523)—are included in the compilation by Cutler and Blake (2001:119) of “Plants from Archaeological Sites East of the Rockies.” Both of these sites yielded persimmon seeds and hickory,walnut,and acorn shell (Table 14.2). Butternut is included in the list of plants from Denton, but this identification should be confirmed through reanalysis of the remains if at all possible, because shell fragments of walnut and butternut can overlap in morphology, and to my knowledge butternuts do not grow today in the Mississippi Delta (see, for example, Gunn et al. 1980). Pecan and possible wild bean (Strophostyles sp.) seeds also came from Longstreet. As riverine adaptations developed, bottomland taxa and aquatic plants probably became increasingly important. The Middle Holocene was the time when native Cucurbita pepo ssp. ovifera gourds began to be used for multiple purposes and spread to groups living beyond their natural range (Decker-Walters et al. 1993; Fritz 1999a; Hart and Sidell 1997; King 1985). Wild Cucurbita gourds could have grown freely across Mississippi and adjoining states during this time, so fisher-hunter-gatherers in the Delta may well have participated in early stages of cultivation and domestication . Fine-mesh flotation is necessary to recover...