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If only... Ancient History (~1200 BCE) (piefed.cdn.blahaj.zone)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/historymemes@piefed.social
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[–] 3 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Many of the costal socities of the southeastern united states became quite sedentary actually. All while still relying on wild food sources.

Of the Southeast? I thought you were talking about the Northwest. You can't be serious. The Southeast was overwhelmingly farmer-dominated, and there's only one set of mounds known to have been constructed in the area by hunter-gatherers.

We are disagreeing on how much time these things take. The historic accounts, ethnographic accounts, and archaeological evidence points to them having what I would classify as “a lot” of free time. Or at least more than you are assuming.

Curious, because it seems to me all the evidence points in the opposite direction - that hunter-gatherers did not have an overwhelming amount of free time when compared to subsistence farmers.

We know they had time for arts and mound construction.

Okay? So did sedentary farmers?

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    I did also specify coastal societies. Evidence suggests that while there was some light agriculture that was no where near the bulk of their calories. Those primarily came from marine sources.

    Florida and coastal Georgia are the best examples.

    You find mounds scattered throughout, but you are right the largest examples are typically connected to farming reliant groups. Except on the coast you'll see the opposite. However these do tend to be much smaller mound sites, and no I'm not speaking about the shell middens. You can argue if those were intentional or created as a result of natural refuse accumulation

    Also great point on the farmers having time for other activities too. That's a good point and I have no counter for it

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (1 child)

    I did also specify coastal societies. Evidence suggests that while there was some light agriculture that was no where near the bulk of their calories. Those primarily came from marine sources.

    Everything I know about Native American coastal societies in the southeast, which admittedly is nowhere near my specialization or main field of interest, refers to them in context as agricultural and maize-oriented. Only a few societies along the the Caribbean were both sedentary and predominantly dependent on the sea for their sustenance, and the largest I know of, the Calusa, practiced aquaculture, which is more comparable to pastoralists than hunter-gatherers.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    Everything I know about Native American coastal societies in the southeast, which admittedly is nowhere near my specialization or main field of interest, refers to them in context as agricultural and maize-oriented.

    It's both the area I've attended university and worked in for several years. While not necessarily my specialty either, based on my limited coursework on the subject, proffessors, and colleagues there is a tendency to call the entire southeast maize-oriented but this is a generalization and dependent on specific regions.

    The largest inland population centers absolutely were maize dominated. Just costal groups had different foodways. You do find maize, but in much smaller amounts. Isotope analysis of remains also indicate a reliance on marine foods over maize. At least I know this is true with Florida through South Carolina

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