Rivers of Change

Essays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America

by Bruce D. Smith

Book cover: Rivers of Change

Extent: 318 pages

Publisher: Heinrich-Barth Institute

Subjects: American Studies, Anthropology

Language: English

Paperback (Out of print)

(December 1992)

ISBN: 9781588340467

Price: $32.50

Out of stock

Rivers of Change is the first comprehensive consideration of eastern North America as an independent, primary center of plant domestication and agriculture. Focusing on date derived from the expanding discipline of archaeobotany, Bruce Smith presents a provocative alternative theory of how prehistoric North American societies developed from hunting and gathering systems to food-producing economies.

I. RIVERS OF CHANGE Chapter 1. Intoduction: Fields of Opportunity, Rivers of Change II. AN INDEPENDENT CENTER OF PLANT DOMESTICATION Chapter 2. The Floodplain Weed Theory of Plant Domestication in Eastern North America Chapter 3. The Independent Domesticationof Indigenous Seed-Bearing Plants in Eastern North America Chapter 4. Is It an Indigene or a Foreigner? III. PREMAIZE FARMING ECONOMIES IN EASTERN NORTH AMERICA Chapter 5. The Role of Chenopodium as a Domesticate in Premaize Garden Systems of the Eastern United States Chapter 6. Chenopodium berlandieri ssp. Jonesianum: Evidence for a Hopewellian Domesticate form Ash Cave, Ohio Chapter 7. The Economic Potential of Chenopodium berlandieri in Prehistoric Eastern North America Chapter 8. The Economic Potential of Iva annua in Prehistoric Eastern North America Chapter 9. Hopewellian Farmers of Eastern North America Chapter 10. In Search of Choupichoul, the Mystery Grain of the Natchez IV. SYNTHESIS Chapter 11. Origins of Agriculture in Eastern North America Chapter 12. Prehistoric Plant Husbandry in Eastern North America

  • By (author) Bruce D. Smith

"[T]he best single source on the questions, methods, and database pertaining to the origins of plant domestication and food production in eastern North America." American Anthropologist "[T]he most insightful, broadly cast examination of pre-maize candidates for domestication yet published." American Antiquity "Smith has put the pieces of the puzzle together and made a compelling case for recognizing the Eastern Woodlands as an independent center of domestication." Journal of Anthropological Research "This book stands as a major statement by a noted North American archaeologist and is recommended to anyone interested in crop origins." Quarterly Review of Biology