Feeding Cahokia, Diet of the Mound Builders with Gayle Fritz PhD — WildFed Podcast #132
In this episode:
Gayle Fritz PhD | Professor Emerita of Archaeology & World Expert on Ancient Crops
Podcast discussion:
Cahokia — one of America's best-kept secrets
How Gayle came to this work
The Eastern Agricultural Complex — and how this fundamentally rewrites our understanding of North American history and reframes our understanding of the life way of the people who inhabited this region
Understanding paleofeces
The role of tobacco in Cahokia
Diet of the Cahokia region
The myth of slash and burn
Bringing back lost crops
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Episode Resources:
Meet Gayle Fritz
Gayle J. Fritz, PhD is Professor Emerita of Archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis, having retired recently after more than three decades of teaching archaeology and ethnobotany. Fritz works with archaeobotanical remains to answer questions about how people interacted with plants so that they could eat and drink well, manage their landscapes, restore and maintain health, perform rituals, negotiate trade relationships, and enhance many other economic and social activities.
Much of Fritz's research focuses on processes of plant domestication and sequences leading to the development of agricultural systems worldwide, but especially in North America and Mexico. General concerns and approaches involve cultural, ecological, and biological aspects of subsistence change and continuity. She has conducted research in the Ozarks and elsewhere in the trans-Mississippi South (on pre- and post-maize agriculture), the Lower Mississippi Valley (transition to farming by complex hunter-fisher-gatherers), the American Bottom region (biologically diverse Cahokian farming systems), and the Greater Southwest (earliest farmers in Chihuahua and Hohokam amaranth use). Certain plants continue to grab her attention, notably grain amaranth and chenopod, maygrass, tobacco, and hickory nuts. She was fortunate to collaborate with Cherokee colleagues in eastern Oklahoma in interviewing modern makers of ku-nu-che, the traditional hickory nut soup, gaining ethnoarchaeological insights along with appreciation for the continuing relevance of ancient foods for American Indian people.
Fritz is also interested in foodways resulting from interaction between Native Americans and European colonizers. She worked at the Berry site in western North Carolina as a member of the Exploring Joara project, seeking to understand relationships between 16th century Spanish soldiers and the Joarans, especially Native women who grew and prepared the corn that dominates the assemblage. She recently completed the book Feeding Cahokia (University of Alabama Press, January 2019), in which she takes a broad look at early agriculture in the American Bottom region. Emphasis is again on women as farmers and key agents of decision making and social integration.