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A Companion to American Agricultural History. Группа авторовЧитать онлайн книгу.

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Hoe and digging stick technology, along with multicropping and intercropping of Eastern Agricultural Complex crops and maize, probably made it unnecessary to incorporate a nitrogen-fixing legume in order to maintain soil fertility. Protein was unlikely to have been lacking in the diets of farmers who grew chenopod, sunflower, and other species more nutritious than maize.

      Beyond the Central Mississippi River Valley, pathways to agriculture were different than those just described for Cahokia. Pre-maize crops other than eastern pepo squash were minor economic concerns in northeastern North America, except at a few sites in Pennsylvania (Crawford 2011). Maize phytoliths have been reported from residues inside pots from New York dating to 100–300 BCE (Hart, Brumbach, and Lusteck 2007), but serious maize production did not occur until much later. Sites belonging to the first millennium CE Princess Point complex of southern Ontario yielded relatively high frequencies of maize fragments, but the onset of agriculture in New York and New England postdates 1000 CE, in some places by several centuries (Crawford 2011).

      Successful, productive agricultural systems predated Europeans across eastern North America south of the Great Lakes and Canadian Shield and north of southern Florida and the southern Texas Gulf Coast. Commonalities were that maize was the primary crop, women were the primary farmers, and wild plant resources were heavily harvested—also by women—in anthropogenic patches where the productivity of nuts and fruits was enhanced through frequent understory burning. Regions varied according to whether and on what scale Eastern Agricultural Complex crops had been grown, whether Eastern Agricultural Complex crops were intensified along with maize (as at Cahokia) or dropped soon thereafter, the timing of the adoption of beans, and the roles played by crops in political and ritual economies (VanDerwarker, Bardolph, and Scarry 2017).

      The Southwest

      BEGINNINGS OF MAIZE CULTIVATION

      Hunter-gatherer groups in the Southwest were thinly scattered across the landscape before some of them began planting maize no later than 2100 BCE. Sites yielding early maize are located at both lower and higher elevations in the Sonoran Desert of southern and central Arizona and Sonora, the Mogollon Highlands of southwestern New Mexico, and the Colorado Plateau where the states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona meet in a point giving its name to the Four Corners region (Figure 1.1). What early maize sites have in common is better-than-average access to moisture in the form of high local water tables or proximity to springs, seeps, or rainwater runoff (Hanselka 2017). Maize predating 1000 BCE had small cobs that archaeologists think were relatively low in food value compared to later varieties (L. Huckell 2006).

      Mitigation of cultural resources in the right-of-way of Interstate Highway 10 alongside the Santa Cruz River in the Tucson Basin revealed an astonishing cluster of deeply buried, early agricultural settlements dating between 2100 BCE and 100 CE, a time period called the Early Agricultural Period. Canal construction in the Tucson Basin began as early as 1500 BCE (Vint 2017). The site of Las Capas is remarkable due to its associated system of canals and rectangular fields, more than five acres (2 ha) of which were exposed by backhoes with 7-foot wide blades. By the first millennium BCE, an estimated 12.4 acres (5 ha) of land surrounding Las Capas might have been irrigated (Vint 2017).

      Occupation of the Santa Cruz floodplain was not necessarily continuous throughout the entire 2000-year time frame called the Early Agricultural Period, and degree of sedentariness, even during stretches of optimal climate, is a topic debated by archaeologists (Roth 2016; Vint 2017). Faunal and floral remains reflect a pattern of logistic mobility that included the hunting and harvesting of wild resources, without evidence for significant pressure on either large or small animals. Maize is estimated to have contributed approximately 30 percent of caloric intake on an annual basis, with amaranth and other weedy plants encouraged in and near fields as supplemental foods (Vint 2017).

      Firm evidence for domesticates other than maize in early components is surprisingly rare. Squash (Cucurbita pepo ssp. pepo) as old as 1700 BCE has been reported from McEuen Cave in the Gila Mountains of eastern Arizona, and fragments predating 500 BCE came from two sites—Sheep Camp Shelter and Bat Cave—in New Mexico (Hanselka 2017, table 15.2). Bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) phytoliths were reported from field sediments at Las Capas (Vint 2017). Common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) were apparently not grown by the earliest southwestern food producers, which is not surprising in light of the late initial domestication date for beans—c. 300 bce—in Mesoamerica (Kaplan and Lynch 1999).

      HOHOKAM AGRICULTURE

      By 450 CE, the culture known as Hohokam, which was based on intensive farming, developed in the Phoenix and Tucson basins and immediately surrounding areas. Maize was ubiquitous, as it had been previously, but additional crops had joined the system. These included common beans, lima beans (Phaseolus lunatus), and tepary beans (Phaseolus acutifolius). Teparies are supremely well adapted to Sonoran Desert aridity and were possibly domesticated north of the Mesoamerican culture area, in northwestern Mexico (Muñoz et al. 2006). Squash species grown along with Cucurbita pepo ssp. pepo include the cushaw squash (C. argyrosperma ssp. argyrosperma) and butternut squash (C. moschata). Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum var. punctatum) was an important Hohokam fiber crop, utilized locally and traded to regions where neither irrigation nor rainfall were adequate for meeting its moisture requirements (Adams and Fish 2011). Two species of cultigen amaranth—Amaranthus cruentus and A. hypochondriacus were grown for grain and probably other uses including edible green leaves (similar to spinach, mustard greens, collard greens) and dye (Fritz et al. 2009).


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