Tuesday, September 20, 2011

A Macrobotanical Analysis

of Native American Maize Agriculture
 at the Smith's Point Site (on Cape Cod MA)
Graduate Masters Theses. Paper 8.
by Kelly A. Ferguson
August 2010

Typical sand dune plant communities on the Cape Cod seashore.

       "...European writers often did not credit Native Americans for actively shaping these landscapes. Alternatively, some researchers have argued that the role of Native Americans in creating the Late Woodland-Early Colonial landscape in New England was consciously downplayed or omitted from 16th and 17th century European documentary accounts as means of pro-colonial rhetoric (Bragdon 1996; Calloway 1997)...Additionally, while lightning fires burn indiscriminately, uncharred 17th- century artifacts and shell from the living area of the site may indicate that this area of the site was not burned (PAL 1991). Therefore, it is possible that the field area was selectively burned by Native American inhabitants and represents cultural burning at the site."

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