Kelcie Adams: Truly Local: First Farmers

A Paleoenvironmental History of Ancient Agriculture in Eastern North America: Lessons for the Future. Dr. Tim Messner, Kellas 105, Friday 10:00 am - 11:00am

Truly Local by Kelcie Adams

Most students I know are not all that interested in ancient agriculture. However, I will do my best to convince you otherwise, to persuade you to attend Dr. Messner’s presentation “A Paleoenvironmental History of Ancient Agriculture in Eastern North America: Potential Lessons for the Future.” He will be presenting on Friday April 12th at 10am. I am going to be daring and say that not only archaeology and anthropology majors will find this speech interesting and easy to understand.

I want to convince the entire student body that this will be worth their time. After meeting with him and asking a few questions, I believe Dr. Messner has the credentials needed for his audience to soundly accept what he is saying. Dr. Timothy Messner has published a book titled Acorns and Bitter Roots that goes in-depth into the human-environmental relationship throughout history and how we have impacted nature intentionally and unintentionally and how we can still see evidence of this relationship today (Messner). Along with his book, he has also written and co-written several scholarly articles. He knows what he is talking about and is very passionate about what he studies.

Upon beginning my research into the field of ancient agriculture, it was a challenge to sort through all the scholarly articles written by professors and scholars for other professors and scholars. Much of the time, language was used that I couldn’t comprehend. Even in the title of Messner’s speech, the word “paleoenvironmental” isn’t one that most of Potsdam’s student body would know or use regularly. However, I want to assure the students that are turned off by their lack of understanding that it can be understood. Dr. Messner assured me that anyone, with or without previous knowledge in the field of archeology, would be able to appreciate and take something away from this speech. For example, the word “paleoenvironment” may seem daunting and confusing, but according to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of paleoenvironment is “an environment of past geological age.” With this context, Messner’s speech will focus on the history of the past environment regarding ancient agriculture in eastern North America. Another man, heavily referenced and sourced in this essay, is Bruce D. Smith. Smith is also referenced by Messner. He also writes and studies about the beginning of agriculture. His book, appropriately titled The Emergence of Agriculture, as well as other articles of his, were great help in my research and understanding of the topic.

While researching I found it interesting how domestication first began. I believe we all have the ability to relate to witnessing a beginning of an idea we never previously thought possible. Domestication was a crucial part in our developments as humans, but to understand it better, we must first define it. Smith describes domestication as the “human creation of a new form of plant or animal—one that is identifiably different from its wild ancestors.” By controlling our food sources, we were able to create more sustainable living conditions and grow larger populations. It’s harder for us, in this technological day and age, to truly appreciate the significance of doing something completely radical such as breeding plants instead of simply harvesting them. There are “at least seven different regions of the world” that eventually “independently domesticated selected species of plants and animals” (Smith). The significance being that “this process of domesticating plants and animals appears to have taken place separately and independently in a number of different areas at about the same point in time” (Gebauer). Perhaps it was just one type of plant or two, but without these discoveries that occurred thousands of years ago, our world as we know it would be vastly different.

In his presentation, Dr. Messner will not simply be giving a lecture on the history of ancient agriculture and domestication – although it will be touched on. In this broad topic of ancient agriculture, he will instead be focusing and analyzing what we consider to be “local foods” and presenting an alternative perspective. Because, as humans, “we have the ability to exert a great deal of influence on the physical environment,” we have permanently altered the “ecological balance” in eastern North America (Watson). Dr. Messner will bring to our attention that what we may consider to be “local food” isn’t truly local at all from an archeological point of view. As we developed better technologies and encountered “demographic stress”, such as Europeans coming to colonize or simply population changes, we shifted from collecting our food source to producing it (Meyers). As time went on, the line of which plants and animals were indigenous to eastern North America was blurred. When I spoke to him, Dr. Messner stated that we take for granted all the food we have that we consider to be local, despite it not being indigenous to the region. He will explain to us why this is relevant and how our discoveries impact our future.

If you’ve ever been interested in where your food comes from, Dr. Messner’s archeological viewpoint will be interesting to hear. He wasn’t willing to spoil too much of what he was going to speak on when we talked, but this presentation will be worth the time of anyone interested. Ancient agriculture in eastern North America has shaped how and what we eat today and will continue to impact us in the future.

Works Cited
Gebauer, Anne B, and T D. Price. Transitions to Agriculture in Prehistory. Madison, Wis: Prehistory Press, 1992. Print.
Messner, Timothy C. Acorns and Bitter Roots: Starch Grain Research in the Prehistoric Eastern Woodlands. Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 2011. Print.
Meyers, J. Thomas. “The Origins of Agriculture: An Evaluation of Hypotheses.” Prehistoric Agriculture. Stuart Struever. Garden City: The Natural History Press, 1971. 101-121. Print.
Smith, Bruce D. The Emergence of Agriculture. New York: Scientific American Library, 1998.
Watson, Richard A., and Patty Jo Watson. “The Domesticator of Plants and Animals.” Prehistoric Agriculture. Stuart Struever. Garden City: The Natural History Press, 1971.
3-11. Print.





The assignment required us to find resources that relate to our topic and then explain to our audience why it was relevent.
Therefore, I chose to do these two things: (1) make the information easy for the audience to understand and (2) be conscious about my audience’s pre-existing interest in the topic.
Those were GOOD CHOICES for reaching my readers & fulfilling the assignment because I understand that not everyone is generally interested in ancient agriculture.
From writing this essay, I learned that it’s not easy to explain why my audience should care.