Change and continuity in prehistoric foodways: A paleoethnobotanical analysis of the Middle to Late Woodland transition at the Gast Farm site (13LA12) in southeast Iowa

The Middle to Late Woodland transition in the midcontinental United States is generally recognized as a rapid area-wide sociopolitical transformation characterized by regionally and locally varying degrees of change as well as continuity. Containing substantial segregated Middle Woodland Havana and early Late Woodland Weaver occupations dating to ca. 2000 to 1450 B.P., the Gast Farm site (13LA12) in southeast Iowa offers an excellent setting for explicating the processes involved in this transition in the Upper Midwest. This research explores the Middle to Late Woodland transformation as manifested in the archaeobotanical remains from the Gast Farm site using a foodways approach—i.e., an integrated economic analysis focused on the place of food in its wider social and cultural context.; Using a standardized set of paleoethnobotanical techniques, the archaeobotanical remains from the Havana and Weaver components of the Gast Farm site were recovered, sampled, sorted, identified, and quantified. Analysis of these remains indicates that the Weaver residents utilized a similar but wider set of plant foods at more intensive levels than their Havana counterparts. This intensification is discernible in both the diversification of the plant food base in general and the specialized focus on spring-harvested starchy-seeded crops and fall-harvested hickory nuts in particular. This mosaic pattern of intensification likely necessitated significant changes in the organization of subsistence labor and the scheduling of subsistence activities.; Broadening the paleoethnobotanical analysis to incorporate other material aspects of foodways indicates that complementary changes are apparent in faunal remains, ceramic food residues, and features. Taken together as evidence for prehistoric modes of production, these trends implicate internal social processes as major factors driving the Middle to Late Woodland transition in the Upper Midwest. In particular, active renegotiations of the gendered social relations of production appear to be of crucial importance, as the separate domestic and corporate-ceremonial spheres of Havana societies were unified in the circular-plaza villages of Weaver societies. As these daily practices of renegotiation are themselves enmeshed in long-term structures, the change apparent in the Middle to Late Woodland transformation is tempered by significant degrees of continuity.