The sleeping crops of eastern North America: a new synthesis

Abstract

Indigenous peoples in eastern North America domesticated a diverse group of annual crops. Several of these crops fell out of cultivation around the time of European colonization, and their domesticated forms are known only from the archaeological record. These crops have previously been characterized as lost, but in the context of a renaissance in Indigenous agriculture in this region, they are perhaps better understood as sleeping: this ancient agricultural system and its myriad ecosystem interactions could be reawakened. I briefly review the history of research on native eastern North American crops, and then synthesize recent research in terms of three themes: new models of domestication based on ecological, experimental and archaeological studies; new insights into the evolution of ancient agrobiodiversity; and an increasingly expansive understanding of the domesticated landscapes of ancient eastern North America. I conclude by suggesting some priorities for future research, and considering this sleeping agricultural system as a source of alternative crops and methods for the North American midcontinent in an era of rapid climate change.This article is part of the theme issue 'Unravelling domestication: multi-disciplinary perspectives on human and non-human relationships in the past, present and future'.

Keywords: Eastern Agricultural Complex; North American; agrobiodiversity; domestication; landscape domestication.

Figure 1.

An overview of the native crops of eastern North America, sometimes referred to as the Eastern Agricultural Complex (EAC). See figure 2 for the locations and dates of earliest evidence for domestication of each species.

Figure 2.

Map of the core area of the Eastern Agricultural Complex, shaded in grey. Locations and calibrated ages for the earliest domesticated assemblages are shown [,–12]. The earliest directly dated maize remains in the core area are also shown [13]. Maize was domesticated in Mexico and spread to eastern North America via the southwest, yet its earliest archaeological remains are from the northeast [14]. See text for details and figure 1 for an overview of each species.

Figure 3.

Generalized view of the domesticated landscape of eastern North America. This image was generated using ChatGPT 4 and DALL·E.