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Books > Business & Economics > Industry & industrial studies > Primary industries > Agriculture & related industries
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Feeding Cahokia - Early Agriculture in the North American Heartland (Paperback)
Loot Price: R780
Discovery Miles 7 800
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Feeding Cahokia - Early Agriculture in the North American Heartland (Paperback)
Series: Archaeology of Food
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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An authoritative and thoroughly accessible overview of farming 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.
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