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Archaeologists uncover massive 1,000-year-old Native American fields in Northern Michigan that defy limits of farming (phys.org)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5171302

With its cold climate, short growing season, and dense forests, Michigan's Upper Peninsula is known as a challenging place for farming. But a new Dartmouth-led study provides evidence of intensive farming by ancestral Native Americans at the Sixty Islands archaeological site along the Menominee River, making it the most complete ancient agricultural site in the eastern half of the United States.

The site features a raised ridge field system that dates to around the 10th century to 1600, and much of it is still intact today.

The raised fields are comprised of clustered ridged garden beds that range from 4 to 12 inches in height and were used to grow corn, beans, squash, and other plants by ancestors of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.

The findings are published in Science.

"The scale of this agricultural system by ancestral Menominee communities is 10 times larger than what was previously estimated," says lead author Madeleine McLeester, an assistant professor of anthropology at Dartmouth. "That forces us to reconsider a number of preconceived ideas we have about agriculture not only in the region, but globally."

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[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

Don't forget introduced diseases which absolutely decimated native populations, with up to 90% of the population dying in some places.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

They didn't forget.

this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025

136 points (99.3% liked)

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Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.

The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...

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