Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

From Foraging To Food Production On The Southern Cumberland Plateau Of Alabama And Tennessee, U.S.A., Stephen Byrnes Carmody

Doctoral Dissertations

Research involving the origin of plant domestication remains as important today as ever. While early anthropologists viewed plant domestication as a necessary precondition for cultural development, more recent ethnographic studies have shown that agriculture was a much more labor intensive subsistence practice than hunting and gathering, leading many to question the reasons behind the prehistoric transition. Today, research and advances in technology have provided conclusive evidence to include the Eastern Woodlands of North America as one of the eight global centers of indigenous plant domestication. Although the timing of domestication and the plants involved in early horticultural systems are well …