Feeding Cahokia: Early Agriculture in the North American Heartland

Archaeology of Food

by Gayle J. Fritz

An authoritative and thoroughly accessible overview offarming and food practices at Cahokia
 
Agriculture is rightly emphasized as the center of the economy in most studies of Cahokian society, but the focus is often predominantly on corn. This farming economy is typically framed in terms of ruling elites living in mound centers who demanded tribute and a mass surplus to be hoarded or distributed as they saw fit. Farmers are cast as commoners who grew enough surplus corn to provide for the elites.
 
Feeding Cahokia: Early Agriculture in the North American Heartland presents evidence to demonstrate that the emphasis on corn has created a distorted picture of Cahokia’s agricultural practices. Farming at Cahokia was biologically diverse and, as such, less prone to risk than was maize-dominated agriculture. Gayle J. Fritz shows that the division between the so-called elites and commoners simplifies and misrepresents the statuses of farmers—a workforce consisting of adult women and their daughters who belonged to kin groups crosscutting all levels of the Cahokian social order. Many farmers had considerable influence and decision-making authority, and they were valued for their economic contributions, their skills, and their expertise in all matters relating to soils and crops. Fritz examines the possible roles played by farmers in the processes of producing and preparing food and in maintaining cosmological balance.
 
This highly accessible narrative by an internationally known paleoethnobotanist highlights the biologically diverse agricultural system by focusing on plants, such as erect knotweed, chenopod, and maygrass, which were domesticated in the midcontinent and grown by generations of farmers before Cahokia Mounds grew to be the largest Native American population center north of Mexico. Fritz also looks at traditional farming systems to apply strategies that would be helpful to modern agriculture, including reviving wild and weedy descendants of these lost crops for redomestication. With a wealth of detail on specific sites, traditional foods, artifacts such as famous figurines, and color photos of significant plants, Feeding Cahokia will satisfy both scholars and interested readers.

Genres: History, Food, Nonfiction, Archaeology, Indigenous, Nature, American History

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 2019

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must-read book for any North American ethnobotanist

[Ryan Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cahokia was the biggest city north of Mexico in the Americas 1000 years ago. It was situated in the American Bottom, an area just outside of East St. Louis, IL, at the crossroads of the Ozarks, the Great Plains, and the forests of the east coast. My interest in this book was to learn about Illinois' agricultural potential beyond today's destructive monocropping of corn. In fact, though, corn is famously associated with the diet of Cahokia. Fritz argues against what I'm guessing is the widespread "zeacentrism" of studies about Cahokia and argues for the importance of other crops, many of which are no longer domesticated and consumed by people: marshelder, erect knotweed, chenopod, little barley, maygrass, and the squash-bean-corn "three sisters" triad. I love that her conclusions about the Cahokian diet are based on examining their trash pits and on "paleofecal analysis."

I discovered this book at the Cahokia Mounds Interpretive Center, which is funny because Fritz definitely has some low-key strong opinions on the historiographical presentation of Cahokia at the Interpretive Center. The book is actually riddled with some really great subtle sarcasm, most notably in the conclusion, where she seems to disavow the significance of her own work: "Archaeologists and historians like to believe that knowledge gained from the past can enlighten modern societies... In grant proposals and occasionally in journal publications, our insights are framed in terms of 'broader significance.'" For me, though, the book had some really profound insights: that farming was almost entirely women's work, that a major city can be abandoned and temporary, that archaeologists are able to carefully construct the past on such limited evidence, that we have lost so much botanical knowledge from the pre-Columbian era, that Illinois is capable of large-scale biodiverse agriculture, and, most fundamentally, that the land I'm on can be lived on in a radically different way.

[AskNezka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent discussion of varied plant use in the American Bottom, with explanations of archeological methods for a general reader. Corn has often dominated the discussions of agriculture in American indigenous settlements but there were many more plants used, that today are no longer domesticated.

[Rooth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about as dry as a charred seed remain. I like the inclusion of native ameican recipes, but this book vastly lacks the ability to take you back into the times and life of these peoples. The summary was probably the most interesting section.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good introduction to paleoethnobotany of the American bottom. Accessible & readable!