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I'm speaking with Gail Wagner,
who is a professor
in a very unusual field.
Gail, I'm going to let you
explain your specialty, because it's so broad
and all encompassing.
>> Okay, Amanda.
I'm a paleoethnobotanist.
That means I'm an archaeologist
with a specialty in botany
and I look at the relationships
between plants and peoples in the past.
Now, I also am an ethnobotanist.
So, I also studied modern day people
and their relationships with plants.
>> Well, today we're going to focus on the past
and I thought that American Indians ate
squash, corn and beans, and I guess at some point
they did, but that was not what,
early people in our part of the world,
used as their diet.
That's correct. I think everybody learned
about the three sisters: corn, beans and squash,
but archaeologists, like me, know that prior to that
for thousands of years,
as far back as 2300 BC,
they were depending upon other domesticated,
cultivated crops, ones that they domesticated
from native weeds around them,
and we're standing next to several of them,
sunflower was domesticated
by the Northern American Indians
by 2,800 BC, and along with it,
they domesticated another oily seeded crop,
a similar seed called Sump weed,
and that's a great story, because that's a story
that was totally lost to history.
Nobody knew that anybody ate Sump weed,
until archaeologists found the domesticated seed.
They also domesticated starchy seeds,
and we're standing next to May grass,
and Chenopod
and these both have seeds that are starchy
and they were the main source of carbohydrates,
for thousands of years, prior to Mays.
So, when Mays came in,
it came from Mexico to the southwest,
to the eastern United States as did beans,
and as did squash,
the squash that we currently eat
and when Mays came in it was added to this suite
of native domesticates.
It only gradually, not until A.D. 900
did it become a major article in the diet.
>> Gail, besides the evidence
of these being parts of diets from the
work you've done collect through the flotation devices
and all that kind of stuff, I believe that we have
other examples that reinforce that, that have
been found in some drier places or winter. >> - Yes!
Fortunately, dry rock shelters and dry caves
preserve these and we've seen how they've been
stored, and so May grass,
evidently, the stock's pull up,
and you could take the stalks and tie them
into a bundle and they're found
like that in rock shelters.
And,... this we have lost
in South Carolina or North America.
We've lost the domesticated variety of this, I believe.
>> Yes. Several of these ancient domesticates are now
extinct as domesticates.
So, the North American Chenopod domesticate
is extinct. All we have left is the weed.
But, tell me what's happening
in South America.
>> Well, in South America they also
domesticated it, also in Mexico,
and that still continues,
and today you can go to the health food store
and buy quinoa.
and that is the seed of this,
and this would have had similar
looking seeds back then.
That's just amazing. [laughing]
And not even the health food store, everywhere now.
Yes. You can now buy it everywhere.
And you know this
because there was a group of American Indians here
that built mounds.
Why don't we know more about them?
What happened to the Mississippians?
Well, when the Europeans came
and here in South Carolina,
the earliest Europeans were the French,
along the coast, by 1520, the Spanish,
and then later the British,
and one of the first things they noticed,
well the Spanish saw mounds in use.
So they were making earthened flattop mounds
that had temples on top.
They were sacred places,
and - What happened to those people?
Well, the all of those Europeans
brought diseases that they had no way to survive,
plus the British were selling them as slaves
to work the tobacco fields up in Jamestown.
>> So, our Mississippians who
were responsible for building the mound
that you're studying, near Wateree,
they disbursed, and so I guess the Catawba
and Cherokees are some of those dispersed people.
We believe that they became
the Catawba, the Cherokee, the Muskogee.
So a number of groups are descended
from these Mississippians.
>> But as you said, these were cultivated.
These people have settlements and towns and they grew -
>> They were farmers. They were farmers,
and they also collected wild game or hunted wild game
and fished and collected wild fruit and nuts.
So, they had a very, probably a more varied diet
than we do today.
>> We know some of this
because you and other archaeologists have
received a grant to go and study and collect soil
from around these areas, around these mounds
and by an incredible process.
Explain this flotation, and how when it's all over,
you under your microscope are finding
some of this remarkable material.
>> Yes, so what kind of material
does a paleoethnobotanist look at?
Some look at pollen. Some look at phytoliths,
which are little silica skeletons left by plants.
I look at seeds and nuts and wood,
and they're preserved only when they've been charred
at most open sites. There are a few, you know they
could be preserved in a dry rocks soak,
and I take a bag of dirt from an archaeological context,
like a pit or a heart,
and I put it through a process called floatation,
and in that I have a large container,
a 50 gallon drum full of water,
an insert with a very fine mesh screen,
half the size of windows screen on the bottom,
and then it's got a sleeve, and you dump in your dirt,
The dirt goes through the screen in the bottom,
collects in the bottom of the barrel.
Heavy things like hickory nut shells,
pieces of ceramic pottery stones,
collect in the screen, and the light stuff
like the seeds, float out and get captured
in a fine mesh cloth.
And then amazingly, you,
although it wouldn't look like a seed
if you just put it in my hand the charred seeds
and the charred bits of wood and the charred bits of
different things are identifiable.
You said there's enough of the little tale tell signs
that make them, them, but you can pick them out.
>> Yes, So I do it based on comparative anatomy.
So, I have what's called a comparative collection,
a modern day collection of seeds, fruits, nuts, wood,
and I burn it, and then I look.
So, some things expand.
Some things pop, like popcorn, and
some things shrink, and so then I'm able
to look at the size, the shape,
the seed coat pattern
and I can tell you what it was.
One of them had a jigsaw like pattern.
Yes. The tobacco, one of my favorite seeds.
It looks like
a jigsaw puzzle pattern on the seed coat.
>> But this flotation, I think y'all collected -
how many bags?
>> This year we, in 2020 we collected,
131 bags of dirt.
Now, one of my sites that I worked at we
collected 3,500 bags. >> And
I think you've had some good partners on this.
Just quickly tell me who was working with you. >> Yes.
Well, Chris Judge from the Naive American Study
Center has been instrumental in us
getting our five year grant from Duke Energy,
and then my Co-director is Adam King, from the
South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and
Anthropology. >> Besides foods to eat,
they needed clothing and it
wasn't all deer skin, they needed bags. They needed
baskets. What other plant fibers were essential, and
how do you go from having a plant to having
a piece of rope or a bag. >> Well, making fibers would
have been a daily constant occupation from
little girls age four on up. They would have been
making fiber all the time.
And you could get fiber
from three parts of the plant.
Seeds, like cotton,
which is not native to North America,
but that's a seed hair.
You can get it from the leaves,
like yucca, or rattlesnake masters,
>> Or for sandals, they like that.
>> Yes, they found sandals in a dry cave
in Kentucky made out of rattlesnake master fiber,
or from the stem, which is called bast fiber,
and that for example milkweed
later in the summer, we'll have a bass fiber
and today I can show you Indian hemp,
which later in the summer, when it hardens up also
has a bass fiber,
and although trying to make fiber is
going to be, is difficult for me,
with practice, these people, these young -
just all day long,
because you needed it for everything.
You needed it for everything.
Net bags for tying a house together for everything.
They had no Walmart, you know.
You had to make everything yourself.
Isn't it remarkable that
because of the Mississippians
and their mounds and knowledge that people
like you have, we know that their life was
so rich and varied and we've really see that,
although we want to sometimes use the word
primitive people, but it was not.
That's really and completely incorrect.
>> They were never primitive.
>> It was a remarkably organized and diverse
and rich society, and I want to thank you
for scratching the surface, and giving us a peek into
this fascinating topic.
>> You're very welcome.
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