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by Dr. Patricia M. Samford*
^ hat did you eat for din-
B Ab ||^B ner last night? That's
pretty easy to remem-
H
Ш
her, right? What about
fl W your dinner a year
ago? Stumped you on
that one, I bet! Now think about trying
to learn what Native peoples in North
Carolina ate thousands of years ago.
Archaeologists face this challenge when
they study the past.
Digging to unearth information
about how people lived in the past is
called archaeology. Archaeologists are
the specialists who do this work. They
dig in places where people have lived
and worked. On these sites, archaeolo¬
gists find physical evidence of homes,
gardens, cooking pits, and items left
behind by earlier people.
Archaeologists learn about the diet
of the American Indians who lived first
in North Carolina in several ways.
When Native peoples prepared food
and ate meals, they threw away animal
bones, marine shells, and other inedible
food remains like eggshells and crab
claws. These items can survive in the
ground for thousands of years. Other
food evidence includes seeds, corncobs,
and microscopic traces of plants such
as pollen. Archaeologists find many of
these types of food remains. By
studying them, they draw conclu¬
sions about what the first North
Carolinians ate.
As an example, let's look
at American Indians
who lived five to six
hundred years ago
in the eastern part
of the state. These tribes included the
Tuscarora, Meherrin, Waccamaw,
Coree, and Nottoway. They were
C WHAT NATIVE
BfflUNIANS ATE
W
farmers living in small villages. In
addition to growing com, squash, and
beans, they hunted, fished, and gath¬
ered wild plants. Animal bones found
in cooking pits and trash
dumps show they ate
deer, bear, raccoon,
opossum, rabbit,
turkey, and turtle.
Fish and shellfish —
such as clams and oysters — formed an
important part of these American
Indians' diets. Archaeologists made one
unusual find in Onslow County in
1995. While studying the burial site of a
woman who lived around six hundred
years ago, they discovered walnut¬
sized clumps of fish bone. The mullet
and pinfish bones were found where
her stomach had once been. They were
remains from her last meal!
Traces of plants found in cooking
pits include burned corncobs and ker¬
nels, acorn shells, and hickory nuts.
Archaeologists also find seeds and
pollen from wild plants like maypop
and garden plants, including pumpkins
and beans.
Other finds can include objects used
to get or prepare food. Native peoples
used stones to weigh down fishnets
made from woven plant fibers. They
carved fishhooks from bone and made
garden hoes from stone. They ground
J corn and other plants into flour with
milling stones.
American Indians left behind many
kinds of evidence of their eating habits.
Using these traces, archaeologists gain
a better understanding of North
Carolina's Native peoples' meals and
how they got them.
To I earn aoout same
traditional feeds that
American Indians in
the western pc-t af
the state have
ea*en, including
rec pes for earn
panes, wi'd cnicns
(rerrps) and eggs,
■Tied hammy, lecther
breeches, been
bread, and grape
dumplings, access
the Web site of the
Eastern 3cnd af
Cherokee Ind'ans at
www.cherokee-
nc.com/redpes_main.
‘Dr. Patricia M. Samford serves as the site manager at Historic Bath State Historic Site.
She is the coauthor of Intrigue of the Past: North Carolina's First Peoples.
THJH, Spring 2007
9
