Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Archaeology, land use, pollen and restoration in the Yazoo Basin (Mississippi, USA)

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Increasingly, modern ecologists are realizing that the history of ecological systems is crucially important for understanding the landscape and that human land use has a great impact on the trajectory of ecosystems. The Yazoo Basin of Mississippi (USA) is one area in which palaeoecological and archaeological research has been done, but at a time when interpretations of the results relied on paradigms that gave credence only to climate change as a causal factor in explaining vegetation histories of plant communities. This paper uses knowledge of ecological processes and patterns of plant colonization and succession to make testable expectations for vegetation composition and change related to human action. An existing pollen record from the area is then examined in light of these expectations and reveals evidence that humans were an integral part of the ecosystem in this area, influencing the trajectory of vegetation history over thousands of years.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abrams MD (2005) Prescribing fire in eastern oak forests: is time running out? North J Appl For 22:190–196

    Google Scholar 

  • Abrams MD, Nowacki GJ (2008) Native Americans as active and passive promoters of mast and fruit trees in the eastern USA. Holocene 18:1123–1137

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Albert BM (2007) Climate, fire, and land-use history in the oak-pine-hickory forests of northeast Texas during the past 3500 years. Castanea 72:82–91

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson PM (1976) The historical and palynological record of Rhode Island in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries: a methodological and theoretical consideration of ecological approaches in archaeology. MA thesis, Brown University

  • Anderson DG, Mainfort RC Jr (2002) An introduction to Woodland archaeology in the Southeast. In: Anderson DG, Mainfort RC Jr (eds) The Woodland Southeast. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp 1–9

    Google Scholar 

  • Asch DL, Asch NB (1985) Prehistoric plant cultivation in west-central Illinois. In: Ford RI (ed) Prehistoric food production in North America, Anthropological papers no. 75. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, pp 149–204

  • Barone JA (2005a) The historical distribution of prairies in the Jackson Prairie Belt and in western Mississippi. J Miss Acad Sci 50:144–148

    Google Scholar 

  • Barone JA (2005b) Historical presence and distribution of prairies in the Black Belt of Mississippi and Alabama. Castanea 70:170–183

    Google Scholar 

  • Bense JA (1994) Archaeology of the southeastern United States. Academic Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Bernabo JC (1977) Sensing climatically and culturally induced environmental changes using palynological data. Dissertation, Brown University

  • Birks HJB (1981) The use of pollen analysis in the reconstruction of past climates: a review. In: Wigley TML, Ingram MJ, Farmer G (eds) Climate and history. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 111–138

    Google Scholar 

  • Black BA, Ruffner CM, Abrams MD (2006) Native American influences on the forest composition of the Allegheny Plateau, northwest Pennsylvania. Can J For Res 36:1266–1275

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blackburn TC, Anderson K (1993) Introduction: managing the domesticated environment. In: Blackburn TC, Anderson K (eds) Before the wilderness: environmental management by native Californians. Ballena Press, Menlo Park, pp 15–24

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourne EG (1904) Narratives of the career of Hernando De Soto. 2 vols. A.S. Barnes, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown IW (2008) Culture contact along the I-69 corridor: protohistoric and historic use of the northern Yazoo Basin, Mississippi. In: Rafferty J, Peacock E (eds) Time’s river: archaeological syntheses from the Lower Mississippi River Valley. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp 357–394

    Google Scholar 

  • Buckner E (2000) Summary: fire in the evolution of the eastern landscape—a timeline. In: Yaussy D (ed) Proceedings: workshop on fire, people, and the central hardwoods landscape. USDA Forest Service general technical report NE-274. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station. Newton Square, p 12

  • Chapman J, Delcourt HR, Delcourt PA (1989) Strawberry fields, almost forever. Nat Hist 9:51–58

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark JS, Royall PD (1995) Transformation of a northern hardwood forest by aboriginal (Iroquois) fire: charcoal evidence from Crawford Lake, Ontario, Canada. Holocene 5:1–9

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clark JS, Royall PD (1996) Presettlement analogs for Quaternary fire regimes in eastern North America. J Ecol 84:365–382

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dardeau EA, Fischenich JC (1995) Environmental mitigation and the Upper Yazoo projects. Environ Geol 25:55–64

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis OK, Kolva DA, Mehringer PJ Jr (1977) Pollen analysis of Wildcat Lake, Whitman County, Washington: the last 1000 years. Northwest Sci 51:13–30

    Google Scholar 

  • Day GM (1953) The Indian as an ecological factor in the northeastern forest. Ecology 34:329–346

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Delcourt HR, Delcourt PA (1985) Quaternary palynology and vegetational history of the southeastern United States. In: Bryant VM Jr, Holloway RG (eds) Pollen records of late-Quaternary North American sediments. American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists Foundation, Dallas, pp 1–37

    Google Scholar 

  • Delcourt HR, Delcourt PA (1988) Quaternary landscape ecology: relevant scales in space and time. Landsc Ecol 2:23–44

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Delcourt PA, Delcourt HR (1998) The influence of prehistoric human-set fires on oak-chestnut forests in the southern Appalachians. Castanea 63:335–337

    Google Scholar 

  • Delcourt PA, Delcourt HR (2004) Prehistoric Native Americans and ecological change: human ecosystems in eastern North America since the Pleistocene. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Delcourt HR, Delcourt PA, Webb T III (1983) Dynamic plant ecology: the spectrum of vegetational change in space and time. Quat Sci Rev 1:153–175

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Delcourt PA, Delcourt HR, Ison CR, Sharp WE, Gremillion KJ (1998) Prehistoric human use of fire, the eastern agricultural complex, and Appalachian oak-chestnut forests: paleoecology of Cliff Palace Pond, Kentucky. Am Antiquity 63:263–278

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Delcourt PA, Delcourt HR, Saucier RT (1999) Late Quaternary vegetation dynamics in the Central Mississippi Valley. In: Mainfort RC Jr, Jeter MD (eds) Arkansas archaeology: essays in honor of Dan and Phyllis Morse. University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, pp 15–30

    Google Scholar 

  • Denevan WM (1992) The pristine myth: the landscape of the Americas in 1492. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 82:369–385

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Devall M (2000) What the Delta looked like before European settlers came. Delta Wildl 2000:8–9

    Google Scholar 

  • Dorney CH, Dorney JR (1989) An unusual oak savanna in northeastern Wisconsin: the effect of Indian-caused fire. Am Midl Nat 122:103–113

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Faegri K, Iversen J (1989) Textbook of pollen analysis. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Faegri K, Peter EK, Knut K (2000) Textbook of pollen analysis, IV edn. The Blackburn Press, Caldwell

    Google Scholar 

  • Faulkner SP (2007) Ecological succession in Mississippi: patterns & processes. Electronic document, http://www.marshdoc.com/ecological_succession/ecosuccession.html. Accessed 18 August 2009

  • Foster DR (1992) Land-use history (1730–1990) and vegetation dynamics in central New England, USA. J Ecol 80:753–771

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foster DR (2000) From bobolinks to bears: Interjecting geographical history into ecological studies, environmental interpretation, and conservation planning. J Biogeogr 27:27–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fritz GJ (2008) Paleoethnobotanical information and issues relevant to the I-69 overview process, northwest Mississippi. In: Rafferty J, Peacock E (eds) Time’s river: archaeological syntheses from the Lower Mississippi River Valley. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp 299–343

    Google Scholar 

  • Fritz GJ, Kidder TR (1993) Recent investigations into prehistoric agriculture in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Southeast Archaeol 12:1–14

    Google Scholar 

  • Galloway P (1994) Prehistoric population of Mississippi: a first approximation. Miss Archaeol 29:44–71

    Google Scholar 

  • Gardiner ES, Oliver JM (2005) Restoration of bottomland hardwood forests in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, U.S.A. In: Stanturf JA, Madsen P (eds) Restoration of boreal and temperate forests. CRC Press, Boca Raton, pp 235–251

    Google Scholar 

  • Gerhardt F, Foster DR (2002) Physiographical and historical effects on forest vegetation in central New England, USA. J Biogeogr 29:1421–1437

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gray J (1965) Extraction techniques. In: Kummel BG, Raup DM (eds) Handbook of paleontological techniques. Freeman, San Francisco, pp 530–587

    Google Scholar 

  • Gremillion KJ (2004) Seed processing and the origins of food production in eastern North America. Am Antiquity 69:215–233

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grimm EC (2004) TGView 2.0.2. Illinois State Museum, Springfield

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamel PB, Buckner ER (1998) How far could a squirrel travel in the treetops? A prehistory of the southern forest. In: Transactions of the 63rd North American wildlife and natural resources conference, Orlando, FL, 20–25 March 1998. Wildlife Management Institute, Washington, DC, pp 309–315

  • Hammet JE (1992) Ethnohistory of aboriginal landscapes in the southern United States. South Indian Stud 41:1–50

    Google Scholar 

  • Hastorf CA (1999) Recent research in paleoethnobotany. J Archaeol Res 7:55–103

    Google Scholar 

  • Head L (2007) Cultural ecology: the problematic human and the terms of engagement. Prog Hum Geog 31:837–846

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Head L, Atchison J (2009) Cultural ecology: emerging human–plant geographies. Prog Hum Geog 33:236–245

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hicks RR Jr (2000) Humans and fire: a history of the Central Hardwoods. In: Yaussy D (ed) Proceedings: workshop on fire, people, and the central hardwoods landscape. USDA Forest Service general technical report NE-274. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station, Newton Square, pp 3–18

  • Hodges JD (1997) Development and ecology of bottomland hardwood sites. For Ecol Manag 90:117–125

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holloway RG, Valastro S (1983) Palynological investigations along the Yazoo River. In: Thorne RM, Curry HK (eds) Cultural resource survey of Items 3 & 4, Upper Yazoo River Project Mississippi, paleoenvironmental model of the Lower Yazoo Basin. Archeology paper CAR #3, University of Mississippi, pp 159–257

  • Horn HS (1975) Forest succession. Sci Am 232:90–98

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Humphrey MN, Lin JP, Kleiss BA, Evans DE (2004) Monitoring wetland functional recovery of bottomland hardwood sites in the Yazoo Basin, MS, ERDC/TN EL-04-01. U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Vicksburg

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacobson GL Jr, Bradshaw RHW (1981) The selection of sites for paleovegetational studies. Quat Res 16:80–96

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kay CE (2000) Native burning in western North America: implications for hardwood forest management. In: Yaussy D (ed) Proceedings: workshop on fire, people, and the central hardwoods landscape. USDA Forest Service general technical report NE-274. U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station, Newton Square, pp 19–27

    Google Scholar 

  • Kay CE (2007) Are lightning fires unnatural? A comparison of aboriginal and lightning ignition rates in the United States. In: Masters RE, Galley KEM (eds) Proceedings of the 23rd tall timbers fire ecology conference: fire in grassland and shrubland ecosystems. Tall Timbers Research Station, Tallahassee, pp 16–28

    Google Scholar 

  • Kidder TR (1998) The rat that ate Louisiana: aspects of historical ecology in the Mississippi River Delta. In: Balée W (ed) Advances in historical ecology. Columbia University Press, New York, pp 141–168

    Google Scholar 

  • Kidder TR (2002) Woodland period archaeology of the Lower Mississippi Valley. In: Anderson DG, Mainfort RC Jr (eds) The Woodland Southeast. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp 66–90

    Google Scholar 

  • Kidder TR (2004) Prehistory of the Lower Mississippi Valley after 800 B.C. In: Fogelson RD (ed) Handbook of North American Indians, vol 14: Southeast. Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, pp 545–559

    Google Scholar 

  • Kidder TR (2006) Climate change and the Archaic to Woodland transition (3000–2500 cal B.P.) in the Mississippi River Basin. Am Antiquity 71:195–231

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kidder TR, Fritz GJ (1993) Subsistence and social change in the Lower Mississippi Valley: the Reno Brake and Osceola sites, Louisiana. J Field Archaeol 20:281–297

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • King FB (1985) Early cultivated cucurbits in eastern North America. In: Ford RI (ed) Prehistoric food production in North America. Anthropological papers no. 75. University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, Ann Arbor, pp 73–98

  • Lipo CP, Madsen ME (2007) Evolutionary and organizational change within complex social groups. J Evol Histor Sci 1:1–116

    Google Scholar 

  • Mann RB (2000) Fire in the Central Hardwoods: why are we concerned? In: Yaussy D (ed) Proceedings: workshop on fire, people, and the central hardwoods landscape. USDA Forest Service general technical report NE-274. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station, Newton Square, pp 1–2

    Google Scholar 

  • McAndrews JH (1976) Fossil history of man’s impact on the Canadian flora: an example from southern Ontario. Can Bot Assoc Bull 9:1–6

    Google Scholar 

  • McAndrews JH (1988) Human disturbance of North American forests and grasslands: the fossil pollen record. In: Huntley BJ, Webb T III (eds) Vegetation history. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp 673–697

    Google Scholar 

  • McLaughlin K (2003) Plant cultivation and forest clearance by prehistoric North Americans: pollen evidence from Fort Ancient, Ohio, USA. Holocene 13:557–566

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Keefe JE, Foster DR (1998) An ecological history of Massachusetts forests. In: Foster CHW (ed) Stepping back to look forward. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, pp 19–66

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Neill RV, DeAngelis DL, Waide JB, Allen TFH (1986) A hierarchical concept of ecosystems. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Patterson WA III, Sassaman KE (1988) Indian fires in the prehistory of New England. In: Nichols GP (ed) Holocene human ecology in northeastern North America. Plenum, New York, pp 107–135

    Google Scholar 

  • Peacock E (1998) Historical and applied perspectives in land use in eastern North America. Environ Hist 4:1–29

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peacock E (2008) Paleoenvironmental modeling in the central and lower Mississippi River Valley: past and future approaches. In: Rafferty J, Peacock E (eds) Time’s river: archaeological syntheses from the Lower Mississippi River Valley. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp 69–98

    Google Scholar 

  • Phillips P (1970) Archaeological survey in the Lower Yazoo Basin, Mississippi, 1949–1955. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, vol 60. Harvard University, Cambridge

  • Phillips P, Ford JA, Griffin JB (1951) Archaeological survey in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, 1940–1947. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, vol 25. Harvard University, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Platt SG, Brantley CG (1997) Canebrakes: an ecological and historical perspective. Castanea 62:8–21

    Google Scholar 

  • Pyne SJ (1982) Fire in America: a cultural history of wildland and rural fire. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Rafferty J (2008) Settlement patterns, occupations, and field methods. In: Rafferty J, Peacock E (eds) Time’s river: archaeological syntheses from the Lower Mississippi River Valley. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp 99–124

    Google Scholar 

  • Ramenofsky AF (1987) Vectors of death. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque

    Google Scholar 

  • Riley TJ, Edging R, Rossen J, Carter GF, Knapp G, O’Brien MJ, Scherwin KH (1990) Cultigens in prehistoric eastern North America: changing paradigms. Curr Anthropol 31:525–541

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Royall PD, Delcourt PA, Delcourt HR (1991) Late Quaternary paleoecology and paleoenvironments of the Central Mississippi Alluvial Valley. Geol Soc Am Bull 103:157–170

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saucier RT (1983) Geomorphological considerations related to cultural resources Upper Yazoo Project, Items 3 and 4. In: Thorne RM, Curry HK (eds) Cultural resource survey of Items 3 & 4, Upper Yazoo River Project Mississippi, paleoenvironmental model of the Lower Yazoo Basin. Archeology paper CAR #3, University of Mississippi, pp 273–291

  • Saucier RT, Kolb CR (1967) Alluvial geology of the Yazoo Basin, Lower Mississippi Valley (technical report 3-480). U.S. Army Engineers Waterways Experiment Station, Vicksburg

  • Scharf EA (2002) Long term interactions of climate, vegetation, humans, and fire in eastern Washington. Dissertation, University of Washington

  • Scharf EA (2009) Prehistoric human–environment interactions: people, fire, climate, and vegetation on the Columbia Plateau, USA. BAR International Series 2006. Archaeopress, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Schoonmaker PK, Foster DR (1991) Some implications of paleoecology for contemporary ecology. Bot Rev 57:204–245

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shankman D (1993) Channel migration and vegetation patterns in the southeastern Coastal Plain. Conserv Biol 7:176–183

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith BD (1984) Chenopodium as a prehistoric domesticate in eastern North America: evidence from Russell Cave, Alabama. Science 226:165–167

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith BD (1989) Origins of agriculture in eastern North America. Science 246:1566–1571

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stanturf JA, Gardiner ES, Hamel PG, Devall MS, Leininger TD, Warren ME (2000) Restoring bottomland hardwood ecosystems in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley. J For 98:10–16

    Google Scholar 

  • Stanturf JA, Schoenholtz SH, Schweitzer CJ, Shepard JP (2001) Achieving restoration success: myths in bottomland hardwood forests. Restor Ecol 9:139–200

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stewart OC (1956) Fire as the first great force applied by man. In: Thomas WL (ed) Man’s role in the changing face of the earth. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 115–330

    Google Scholar 

  • Stewart OC (2002) Forgotten fires: Native Americans and the transient wilderness. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman

    Google Scholar 

  • Streuver S, Vickery KD (1973) The beginnings of cultivation in the midwest-riverine area of the United States. Am Anthropol 75:1197–1220

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thorne RM, Curry HK (eds) (1983) Cultural resource survey of Items 3 & 4, Upper Yazoo River Project Mississippi, paleoenvironmental model of the Lower Yazoo Basin. Archeology paper CAR #3, University of Mississippi

  • Twedt DJ (2004) Stand development on reforested bottomlands in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. Plant Ecol 172:251–263

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Watson PJ (1985) The impact of early horticulture in the upland drainages of the Midwest and Midsouth. In: Ford RI (ed) Prehistoric food production in North America. Anthropological papers no. 75. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, pp 99–147

  • Webb RS, Webb T III (1988) Rates of sediment accumulation in pollen cores from small lakes and mires of eastern North America. Quat Res 30:284–297

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whitehead DR (1972) Developmental and environmental history of the Dismal Swamp. Ecol Monogr 42:301–315

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whitehead DR, Sheehan MC (1985) Holocene vegetational changes in the Tombigbee River Valley, eastern Mississippi. Am Midl Nat 113:122–137

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams S, Brain JP (1983) Excavations at the Lake George Site, Yazoo County, Mississippi. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Winkler MJ (1982) Late-glacial and postglacial vegetation history of Cape Cod and the paleolimnology of Duck Pond, South Wellfleet, Massachusetts. MS Thesis, University of Wisconsin

Download references

Acknowledgements

This paper was made possible by the systematic reporting of pollen results by Richard Holloway and Sam Valastro, who collected and analyzed cores from the Yazoo Basin. The University of North Dakota provided the computing resources needed to complete this project, and the author benefitted greatly from the feedback and suggestions from anonymous reviewers of this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of North Dakota, Babcock Hall 104, Stop 8374, 236 Centennial Drive, Grand Forks, ND, 58202-8374, USA

    Elizabeth A. Scharf

Authors
  1. Elizabeth A. Scharf
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elizabeth A. Scharf.

Additional information

Communicated by L. Newsom.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Scharf, E.A. Archaeology, land use, pollen and restoration in the Yazoo Basin (Mississippi, USA). Veget Hist Archaeobot 19, 159–175 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-010-0241-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-010-0241-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation