|
Abstract:
|
Ethnographic, biogeographic, and archaeological data suggest that root crops were an important part of the Late Archaic diet in northeastern California. Definitive evidence for the prehistoric existence of this pattern remains equivocal, however, requiring the need for new approaches to the problem. One of the more promising methods to accomplish this is starch-grain analysis, which has the potential to improve our understanding of root crop use and its significance with respect to broader issues of resource intensification and environmental change. This thesis examines curated collections from three different regions of northeastern California (Pit River Uplands, Madeline Plains, Secret Valley), as they relate to the prehistoric exploitation of root crops. This required the development to a standardized morpho-metric starch grain methodology and reference collection to analyze starch grains recovered from a sample of flaked and ground stone artifacts from sites in each of the three study regions. Many plant taxa starch grains are morphologically and metrically distinct, allowing for their identification. Four plant taxa (Perideridia sp., Lomatium sp., Triteleia sp., and Quercus sp.) and one more inclusive plant family (Apiaceae) were identified. This provides direct evidence of prehistoric root and nut use that has until now formerly been largely unconfined based on inferential archaeological evidence. This demonstrates that northeastern California Native American groups made use of many types of wild root crops that were prepared with a variety of tools, depending on the resource involved. It further demonstrates that starch grain analysis has tremendous potential to improve our understanding of prehistoric diets, as they relate to often-critical food staples that leave few physical traces in the archaeological record. |
