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Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#21

Post by mapotofu »

politelemon wrote: post #10
mapotofu wrote: post #9

> During their excavations, the scientists also found several artifacts, including charcoal and fragments of broken ceramics. These discoveries suggest that the area’s Indigenous farmers may have dumped their household waste and the remnants of fires onto their fields, using them as compost. Samples taken from the mounds suggest the farmers enriched the dirt with soil from nearby wetlands. Exciting - that sounds a lo…

I wouldn't have imagined broken pottery could serve as compost, how is that made possible? It's clay but it retains some properties even after baking?

If you added the pottery fragments to the compost pile they would be “baked” again, albeit in a very different environment, and the finished product would have structural diversity closer to soil. Normally that would be rocks, but if your goal is to grow food clay rocks might be better for many reasons.

Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#22

Post by mapotofu »

ashoeafoot wrote: post #15
mapotofu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, they had far advanced knowledge of working and remediating soil to grow food. Peat mosses, charcoal, household compost, are all valid soil additives that we now have scientific knowledge to explain how those benefit soil, but they were practicing it in soil that is otherwise unproductive. Given that no one else farmed it in that time it seems that knowledge was lost, but lines up with regenerative agriculture pra…

There are several indicators in the south american jungles of civilisation going through booms and busts. If they would have been significant ahead, they would have colonized europe or china.

That natives did not colonize Europe or China does not mean they were not highly skilled with plants. What kind of argument are you making?

Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#24

Post by brookst »

politelemon wrote: post #10
mapotofu wrote: post #9

> During their excavations, the scientists also found several artifacts, including charcoal and fragments of broken ceramics. These discoveries suggest that the area’s Indigenous farmers may have dumped their household waste and the remnants of fires onto their fields, using them as compost. Samples taken from the mounds suggest the farmers enriched the dirt with soil from nearby wetlands. Exciting - that sounds a lo…

I wouldn't have imagined broken pottery could serve as compost, how is that made possible? It's clay but it retains some properties even after baking?

Pottery of the time was low-fired and did not generally reach vitrification, and it was not glazed with a silica-based glaze that would seal it.

So over time this pottery would absorb water. And especially low-fired bits could totally break down.

Source: amateur ceramicist, and I have first-hand experience with cone 6 clay (vitrifies at 1200c) bisc-fired to cone 04 (1060c) and crumbling to bits when left in water too long.

Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#25

Post by thaumasiotes »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #7
thaumasiotes wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or could there have been warmer micro climates? Microclimates? The whole world was warmer. Remember when the Vikings settled Greenland? That was 1000 years ago.

According to graphs I’m seeing, it looks like it was warmer for a period, but then cooler until now. They would have been farming here during a cool period. It’s entirely possible that they established the farm thousands of years ago when it was warm (and warm means about the same temperatures as today), then kept farming throughout the ‘little ice age’ despite crops yielding less. Perhaps that’s what triggered such…

What graphs are you seeing? This is what the article says:

> Radiocarbon dating suggests the ridges [farming furrows or similar] were initially constructed roughly 1,000 years ago. They were maintained and used for 600 years after that.

Wikipedia says this:

> Erik Thorvaldsson (c. 950 – c. 1003), known as Erik the Red, was a Norse explorer [...]

> Around the year of 982, Erik was exiled from Iceland for three years, during which time he explored Greenland, eventually culminating in his founding of the first successful European settlement on the island. Erik would later die there around 1003 CE

["Erik the Red"]

And this:

> The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of regional cooling, particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region.

> The period has been conventionally defined as extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries

> The NASA Earth Observatory notes three particularly cold intervals. One began about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850

["Little Ice Age"]

And this:

> The Medieval Warm Period (MWP), also known as the Medieval Climate Optimum or the Medieval Climatic Anomaly, was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region that lasted from about 950 CE to about 1250 CE.

["Medieval Warm Period"]

The article would appear to suggest that the farm was established near the beginning of the Medieval Warm Period and abandoned near the beginning of the Little Ice Age... which seems incredibly unsurprising.

> They would have been farming here during a cool period.

I see no indication of that.

Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#27

Post by fhk »

edmundsauto wrote: post #19
politelemon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't have imagined broken pottery could serve as compost, how is that made possible? It's clay but it retains some properties even after baking?

I have thought about this and figured it was more mechanical (ie drainage) than chemical (nutrients).

Yes very established in Hydro and Aquaponics

Clay pellets / balls

Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#28

Post by pfdietz »

sologoub wrote: post #16
politelemon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't have imagined broken pottery could serve as compost, how is that made possible? It's clay but it retains some properties even after baking?

If you try to make a planting bed in any settlement that’s more than say 100 years old on a site that was continuously lived on, you are guaranteed to come across at least some shards of glass, pots, plates, etc. Even if the spot was never explicitly a trash mound. Things break, people usually try to pick them up and put in trash, but (especially in grass) miss pieces. When kids break stuff you often don’t want them…

I was also going to say, earthworms will slowly bury objects (Darwin wrote on this), but that region didn't have earthworms at the time.

Re: Fields where Native Americans farmed a thousand years ago discovered in Michigan

#29

Post by pfdietz »

sublinear wrote: post #17
politelemon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't have imagined broken pottery could serve as compost, how is that made possible? It's clay but it retains some properties even after baking?

Just a wild guess here, but isn't all kinds of stuff usually added to soil to help regulate moisture and pH levels?

Clay also acts to retain positive ions, since the surfaces of clay particles have negative charges.
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