People, Plants, and Landscapes: Studies in Paleoethnobotany

10. Interregional Patterns of Land Use and Plant Management in Native North America

CHAPTER 10 Interregional Patterns of Land Use and Plant Management in Native North America JULIA E. HAMMETT The landscape of North American archaeology has been dominated by regional perspectives, chronologies, and cultural and environmental reconstructions. Lack of interregional comparisons has hampered our understanding of pan-North American developments and events. By comparing land-use strategies across regional boundaries, several broad patterns emerge. They encompass basic structural dynamics ofthe landscape , important economic plant families, and key interregional events marked temporally by the expansion of two exotic cultigens, corn (Zea mays ssp. mays) and beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). Let me begin by admitting that these observations were originally inspired by a variant of Dr. Yarnell's obligatory doctoral written exam question. As his only student ofwestern North America, my special task was to compare the current eastern paleoethnobotanical data base with other,less well understood, western North American data. In the process of carrying out this task, I discovered several broad-based trends. These observed trends are tentative because of scant coverage and the limited availability of regional overviews. Of course there are various regionally and locally important plant resources not included in this survey, but my purpose is to focus attention upon patterns of plant use common to eastern and western North America. Landscape Our best and earliest accounts of the native North American landscape are derived from the eastern seaboard. The map illustrated in fig195 Figure IO.I. Deerskin map with Charlestown (Charleston), South Carolina (English copy, c. 1721. Colonial Office Library 700, North American Colonies, General No. 6[1], Public Records Office, Kew, London. Photographic duplicate provided by the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill). 197 Land Use and Plant Management in Native North America ure 10.1 provides a rare regional perspective from the viewpoint of a Native American leader of the eighteenth century. The inscription on this map specifies it was "Copyed from a Draught Drawn & Painted upon a Deer Skin by an Indian Cacique [chief]." Waselkov (1988) has deduced that this map was made by a cacique of the Catawba Confederation and the map in figure 10.2 by a leader ofthe Chickasaw Nation. Landscape ecologists (Forman and Godron 1986) have noted the importance of studying landscape structure in terms of three basic features : patches, corridors, and surrounding matrix. On this map cognized patches represent nations, towns, and settlements. Trails, paths, rivers, and other transportation arteries are here designated as corridors. Along travel and trade corridors, there are some types of protection, although there are some concomitant vulnerabilities. The large amounts ofunbounded space on these maps are apparently lands adjacent to and between territories controlled by specific Indian nations. In the southern Great Lakes region, Hickerson (1965) has documented politically acknowledged buffer areas that had the direct effect of insulating various patch types, including settlements, fishing and hunting grounds, and gardens, and several indirect effects related to resource management, conservation , and military defense. Together with patches and corridors, these buffer areas provided the basic structural components of anthropogenic landscapes in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. The centers ofhabitation sites in th,e Eastern Woodlands were typically composed of domestic structures and small garden plots similar to the "dooryard" gardens found throughout much of Latin America today (Chavero and Averez-BuyllaRoces 1988;Kimber 1973).Adjacent to the core of the community were fields of crops, interlaced with old fields lying fallow. In these open old-field areas, perennial crops such as berries, fruit and nut trees, and several economically valuable "weeds" typically thrived (Bartram 1973). A wooded zone beyond the fields served as an extremely valuable combination of orchard, hunting park, and wood lot, supplying the local inhabitants with many of their basic needs and a gradual territorial margin. This landscape was maintained through a series of management procedures. Less well known are indigenous western landscapes, with the exception ofPueblo cultures ofthe semiarid Southwest. Pueblo landscapes have changed remarkably little since first contacts with Spaniards in the late 1500s. The older parts ofPueblo towns are still characterized by rectangular stone houses situated around courtyards or plazas. Dooryard Figure IO.2. Deerskin map with Mississippi River (English copy, c. I723. Colonial Office Library 700, North American Colonies, General No. 6[2], Public Records Office, Kew, London. Photographic duplicate provided by the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill). 199 Land Use and Plant Management in Native North...