Fritz wins book award for ‘Feeding Cahokia’
The Society for Economic Botany awarded Gayle J. Fritz, professor emerita of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, its 2020 Mary W. Klinger Book Award for “Feeding Cahokia.” The book emphasizes the importance of native crops that were domesticated by America’s first farmers long before corn became a staple food in what is now the U.S. Midwest.
Women shaped cuisine, culture of ancient Cahokia
Long before corn was king, the women of Cahokia’s mysterious Mississippian mound-building culture were using their knowledge of domesticated and wild food crops to feed the thousands of Native Americans who flocked to what was then North America’s largest city, suggests a new book by a paleoethnobiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “Feeding Cahokia” sets the record straight on America’s first farmers while offering a roadmap for rediscovering the highly nutritious native foods they once cultivated, including a North American cousin of quinoa.
As the river rises: Cahokia’s emergence and decline linked to Mississippi River flooding
Sediment cores from two lakes in the Mississippi floodplain show that Cahokia, the largest prehistoric settlement in the Americas north of Mexico, emerged during a period when there were few severe floods on the river and that its decline and abandonment coincided with the return of large floods.
Washington University, St. Louis to host anthropology, human biology scientific meetings March 24-28
The importance of human milk in evolution and modern
health; biology and race in Ferguson; and the latest research on Cahokia
Mounds will be among the presentation topics as three major human
biology and anthropology professional groups converge in St. Louis for
their annual scientific meetings March 24-28.
Archaic Native Americans built massive Louisiana mound in less than 90 days, research confirms
A massive earthen mound constructed about 3,200 years ago by Native Americans in northeastern Louisiana was built in less than 90 days, and perhaps as quickly as 30 days, according to new research in the journal Geoarchaeology. The site was recently nominated for a place on the UNESCO list of Word Heritage sites.