Phaseolus vulgaris Seeds from the Late Sixteenth–Early Seventeenth Century AD Ancestral Oneida Diable Site, New York

Keywords: Paleoethnobotany, Taphonomy, Phaseolus vulgaris

Abstract

The ethnohistorical, ethnographic, and contemporary literatures all suggest that common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) was an important component of Northern Iroquoian agronomic systems and diets. Seemingly at odds with this is the sparse occurrence of whole and partial common bean seeds on fourteenth through seventeenth century AD village sites. The recovery of a large quantity of whole and partial bean seeds from the ancestral Oneida Diable site, dated here to between AD 1583 and 1626 with a Bayesian model using seven new AMS radiocarbon dates, provides clues as to when large quantities of rehydrated/cooked common bean seeds may occur in the archaeological record.

References

Archaeological Services Inc. 2012. The Archaeology of the Mantle Site (AlGt-334): A Report on the Stage 3-4 Salvage Excavation of the Mantle site (AlGt-34) Part of Lot 33, Concession 9, Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville, Regional Municipality of York, Ontario. Ontario Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sport, Toronto. Available at: https://asiheritage.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Mantle-Final-Report.pdf. Accessed on September 24, 2022.

Bennett, M., G. L. Hayes, and S. A. Young. 2007. The Diable Site (MSV-2-2): A Protohistoric Oneida Iroquois Village. The Bulletin of the Chenango Chapter of the New York State Archaeological Association 30(1):41–73.

Biggar, H. P., ed. 1929. The Works of Samuel de Champlain in Six Volumes. Vol. 3, 1615–1618. The Champlain Society, Toronto.

Birch, J. 2015. Current Research on the Historical Development of Northern Iroquoian Societies. Journal of Archaeological Research 23:263–323. DOI:10.1007/s10814-015-9082-3.

Birch, J., Manning, S. W., Sanft, S., and Conger, M. A. 2021. Refined Radiocarbon Chronologies for Northern Iroquoian Site Sequences: Implications for Coalescence, Conflict, and the Reception of European Goods. American Antiquity 86:61–89. DOI:10.1017/aaq.2020.73.

Bronk Ramsey, C. 2009. Bayesian Analysis of Radiocarbon Dates. Radiocarbon 51:337–360. DOI:10.1017/S0033822200038212.

de Souza, R. J., N. M. Bilodeau, K. Gordon, A. D. Davis, J. C. Stearns, M. Cranmer-Byng, K. Gasparelli, L. D. Hill, and S. S. Anand. 2021. Entsisewata’karí: teke (You Will be Healthy Again): Clinical Outcomes of Returning to a Traditional Haudenosaunee Diet. International Journal of Indigenous Health 16:82–119. DOI:10.32799/ijih.v16i2.33098.

Engelbrecht, W. 2003. Iroquoia: The Development of a Native World. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY.

Fecteau, R. D. 1985. The Introduction and Diffusion of Cultivated Plants in Southern Ontario. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Department of Geography, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Feranec, R. S., and J. P. Hart. 2019. Fish and Maize: Bayesian Mixing Models of Fourteenth-Through Seventeenth-Century AD Ancestral Wendat Diets, Ontario, Canada. Scientific Reports 9:1–9. DOI:10.1038/s41598-019-53076-7.

Fritz, G. J. 1990. Multiple Pathways to Farming in Precontact Eastern North America. Journal of World Prehistory 4:387–435. DOI:10.1007/BF00974813.

Fritz, G. J. 2011. The Role Of “Tropical” Crops in Early North America. In The Subsistence Economies of Indigenous North American Societies, edited by B. D. Smith, pp. 503–516. Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, Washington, DC.

Gibson, S. 1991. The Bean Pit, Msv2, Diable Site. The Bulletin of the Chenango Chapter of the New York State Archaeological Association 24(1):1–14.

Hart, J. P. 2021. The Effects of Charring on Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L) Seed Morphology and Strength. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 37:102996. DOI:10.1016/j.jasrep.2021.102996.

Hart, J. P. 2022. Diable Pit 2 Bean Measurements [website]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7093392. Accessed September 24, 2022.

Hart, J. P., and R. S. Feranec. 2020. Using Maize δ15N Values to Assess Soil Fertility in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century AD Iroquoian Agricultural Fields. PLOS ONE 15:e0230952. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0230952.

Heidenreich, C. E. 1971. Huronia: A History and Geography of the Huron Indians, 1600–1650. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto.

Keck-Carbon Cycle AMS. 2022. Protocols [webpage]. Available at: https://sites.uci.edu/keckams/protocols/. Accessed September 24, 2022.

King, F. B. 1987. Prehistoric Maize in Eastern North America: An Evolutionary Evaluation. Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database (UMI No. 8803089).

Manning, S. W., and J. Birch. 2022. A Centennial Ambiguity: The Challenge of Resolving the Date of the Jean-Baptiste Lainé (Mantle), Ontario, Site—Around AD 1500 or AD 1600?—and the Case for Wood-Charcoal as a Terminus Post Quem. Radiocarbon 64:279–308. DOI:10.1017/RDC.2022.23.

Manning, S. W., J. Birch, M. A. Conger, and S. Sanft. 2020. Resolving Time Among Non-Stratified Short-Duration Contexts on a Radiocarbon Plateau: Possibilities and Challenges from the AD 1480–1630 Example and Northeastern North America. Radiocarbon 62:1785–1807. DOI:10.1017/RDC.2020.51.

Monckton, S. G. 1992. Huron Paleoethnobotany. Ontario Archaeological Reports 1. Ontario Heritage Foundation, Toronto.

Mt. Pleasant, J. 2016. Food Yields and Nutrient Analyses of the Three Sisters: A Haudenosaunee Cropping System. Ethnobiology Letters 7:87–98. DOI:10.14237/ebl.7.1.2016.721.

Ngapo, T. M., P. Bilodeau, Y. Arcand, M. T. Charles, A. Diederichsen, I. Germain, O. Liu, S. MacKinnon, A. J. Messiga, M. Mondor, S. Villeneuve, N. Ziadi, and S. Gariépy. 2021. Historical Indigenous Food Preparation Using Produce of the Three Sisters Intercropping System. Foods 10: 524. DOI:10.3390/foods10030524.

Ounjian, G. L. 1998. Glen Meyer and Prehistoric Neutral Paleoethnobotany. Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada. Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database (UMI No. NQ35273).

Parker, A. C. 1910. Iroquois Uses of Maize and Other Food Plants. New York State Museum Bulletin 144. University of the State of New York, Albany.

Pfeiffer, S., J. C. Sealy, R. F. Williamson, S. Needs-Howarth, and L. Lesage. 2016. Maize, Fish, and Deer: Investigating Dietary Staples Among Ancestral Huron-Wendat Villages, as Documented from Tooth Samples. American Antiquity 81:515–532. DOI:10.1017/S0002731600003978.

Pratt, P. P. 1976. Archaeology of the Oneida Iroquois (No. 1). Man in the Northeast, George's Mills, NH.

Reimer, P. J., W. E. N. Austin, E. Bard, A. Bayliss, P. G. Blackwell, C. Bronk Ramsey, M. Butzin, H. Cheng, R.L. Edwards, M. Friedrich, P. M. Grootes, T. P. Guilderson, I. Hajdas, T. J. Heaton, A. G. Hogg, K. A. Hughen, B. Kromer, S. W. Manning, R. Muscheler, J. G. Palmer, C. Pearson, J. van der Plicht, R. W. Reimer, D. A. Richards, E. M. Scott, J. R. Southon, C. S. M. Turney, L. Wacker, F. Adolphi, U. Büntgen, M. Capano, S. M. Fahrni, A. Fogtmann-Schulz, R. Friedrich, P. Köhler, S. Kudsk, F. Miyake, J. Olsen, F. Reinig, M. Sakamoto, A. Sookdeo, and S. Talamo. 2020. The IntCal20 Northern Hemisphere Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curve (0–55 cal kBP). Radiocarbon 62:725–757. DOI:10.1017/RDC.2020.41.

Sanft, S. M. 2022. The Circulation of Shell and Copper Objects in the Circa 1450–1600 Haudenosaunee Homeland. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

Smith, B. D. 1992. Rivers of Change: Essays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.

Thwaites, R. G. (editor). 1898. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents; Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791, 71 volumes; the original French, Latin, and Italian Texts, with English Translations and Notes. Burrows Bros. Co., Cleveland, OH.

Wagner, G. 1987. Uses of Plants by Fort Ancient Indians. Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO. Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database (UMI No. 8809599).

Waugh, F. W. 1916. Iroquis [sic] Foods and Food Preparation. Gov’t. Printing Bureau, Ottawa.

Weiskotten, D. H. 1989. Areas of Recorded Excavations as of 5/10/1989, Diable Site, MSV-2-2. Unpublished manuscript on file at the New York State Museum, Albany, accession number A2008.02A.

Weiskotten, D. H. 2007. Summary of Excavations Done on the Diable Site, MSV-2-2 (NYSM #665), Stockbridge, New York: Principally Those on the Southwest Point, September-November 1985. The Bulletin of the Chenango Chapter of the New York State Archaeological Association 30(1):75–103.

Whyte, T. R. 2019. An Experimental Study of Bean and Maize Burning to Interpret Evidence from Stillhouse Hollow Cave in Western North Carolina. Southeastern Archaeology 38:230–239. DOI:10.1080/0734578X.2019.1616275

Wrong, G. M., ed. 1939. Sagard’s Long Journey to the Country of the Hurons. The Champlain Society, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Two rows, in grayscale, of bean-shaped cotyledons on the top row and maize kernels on the bottom row.
Published
2022-10-24
How to Cite
Hart, J. P. (2022). Phaseolus vulgaris Seeds from the Late Sixteenth–Early Seventeenth Century AD Ancestral Oneida Diable Site, New York. Ethnobiology Letters, 13(1), 49–57. https://doi.org/10.14237/ebl.13.1.2022.1834
Section
Research Communications