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Gender and the Early Cultivation of Gourds in Eastern North America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Gayle J. Fritz
Gayle J. Fritz*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology CB 1114, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
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Abstract

Discovery and AMS dating of mid-Holocene Cucurbita pepo fragments from central Maine and north-central Pennsylvania necessitate the reevaluation of the status of the earliest gourds in noncoastal areas of the Eastern Woodlands and the role of women in their cultivation. Gourds may have been spread initially in conjunction with improvements in fishing techniques, with small gourds used primarily as net floats. In this scenario, people passed temperate, Eastern (ovifera-type) gourds northward from the coastal plains of the Southeast into river valleys of the Midwest and Northeast as fishing became more significant in Archaic subsistence systems. The growing of gourds was fully compatible with a fisher-gatherer-hunter lifeway, and it did not necessarily trigger a transition to farming. Women may have grown gourds, but the possible role of women in fishing activities is more ambiguous than is their role in gathering and eventually domesticating the food plants of the Eastern North American agricultural complex.

Résumé

Résumé

El descubrimiento y elfechado de radiocarbono AMS de los fragmentos del Holoceno medios Cucurbita pepo del estado de Maine central y del norte central de Pennsylvania, hace necesario reevaluar la condición de las primeras calabazas cultivadas en las areas no litorales de las selvas orientates y del papel que jugó la mujer en su cultivo. El desarrollo inicial de la calabaza pudo haber ocurrido conjuntamente con la mejora de la técnica de la pesca, usando principalmente calabazas pequeñas como flotadores para las redes. Teniendo en mente este escenario, la gente pasó, moderademente, la calabaza oriental (tipo ovifera) del litoral del sur-este hacia el norte, a los valles de los ríos del oeste medio y noreste, de la misma forma en que la pesca pasó a ser más significativa en sistemas subsistentes Arcaicos. El cultivo de la calabaza fue totalmente compatible con la vida depescadorescolectores-cazadores, y no necesariamente provocó la transición a la argricultura. Es posible que las mujeras hay an cultivado la calabaza, pero el posible papel de la mujer en la pesca es más ambiguo que su papel en la recolección y, eventualmente, domesticíon de las plantas comestibles del complejo agrícola de Norte América oriental.

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , July 1999 , pp. 417 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1999

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