The Nature and Pace of Change in American Indian Cultures: Pennsylvania, 4000 to 3000 BP ed. by R. Michael Stewart, Kurt W. Carr, and Paul A. Raber (review)

The region now known as Pennsylvania has been occupied by humans for at least 11,000 years—it boggles the mind to think about it. As the population gradually increased through time, the mode of settlement and subsistence changed as people developed cultural means to cope with ever-increasing competition for limited food resources. These changes are most apparent when viewed from the extreme ends of this continuum. During the earliest times, small groups of highly mobile people occupied large territories in which they hunted and gathered naturally occurring foods. By the time of European contact, relatively large populations resided in fortified villages and relied heavily on corn-based agriculture for sustenance. The papers in this volume focus on the interval between 4,000 to 3,000 years Before Present (BP), during which the transformation between these two extremes occurred at an accelerated rate. Archaeologists aptly refer to this time between the tail end of the hunter-gatherer (Archaic) period and the beginning of the horticultural (Woodland) period as the Transitional Period. Most contributors to this volume accept the premise that the rapid changes occurred as a result of natural population growth in conjunction with detrimental climatic and environmental change.

Humans are unique, for they, more than any other mammal, can alter the carrying capacity of their environment. As populations increase in size and the amount of food resources per capita decrease, humans are capable of mitigating the pressures caused by group competition by manipulating the ways in which they acquire, process, preserve, and store food, and by forming more complex systems of social organization.

As alluded to above, prior to circa 4,000 BP, Native Americans in Pennsylvania subsisted by hunting, fishing, and collecting a wide variety of edible plants. Tools used by these early groups were fashioned of stone, bone, and wood. Food preparation and storage containers were leather, wood, or woven-plant materials. As populations grew, and as food resources became scarce, groups adapted to their environment by developing technological and social mechanisms for acquiring sufficient food. There are several examples of this. People began using new (or previously underutilized) foods that were often more labor-intensive to acquire and/or process (such as seeds and roots). They developed methods of plant husbandry and modified hunting and food-processing methods to encompass new types of tools, traps, and fishing gear. Improved methods of food preservation and storage, such as drying, smoking, and caching surplus in in-ground pits, above-ground silos, or in waterproof containers, also came about.

Social mechanisms developed that supported intergroup cooperation, such as ritualized or institutionalized trade and feasting, and reinforced a greater degree of mutually beneficial interdependence as a buffer against future food shortages. The practice of long-distance trade during the Transitional Period is evidenced by the wide distribution of quarried tool-stone materials (such as rhyolite from Adams County, jasper from Berks and Lehigh counties, and steatite from the greater Philadelphia region). A greater reliance on cooperative food acquisition during this time is suggested by the ubiquity of extremely large platforms of fire-cracked rock (FCR) near rivers, possibly used to cook and/or dry large quantities of diadromous fish for ritualized feasting and as a source of preserved protein for later community-wide consumption. Perhaps the most important technological development occurring during the Transitional Period was the appearance of containers carved from soapstone (steatite) and, later, made of fired clay. Though relatively heavy and fragile, these kinds of containers allowed for more efficient cooking and longer-term storage of food surpluses.

These topics and others are explored in the papers presented in this volume. In the introduction and following a brief summary of each of the seven chapters, R. Michael Stewart...