This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. This award supports a collaboration between an anthropologist and a soil and crop scientist to investigate several lost crops - plants that were cultivated by Indigenous people in Eastern North America (ENA) for several thousand years, but which fell out of use hundreds of years ago. When the indigenous foods of ENA are invoked, most people imagine maize, beans, and squash - the bountiful harvest spilling out of the archetypal Thanksgiving cornucopia. These crops, also known as the Three Sisters, were historically grown together by Indigenous people across ENA by the time European colonization began. But maize, beans, and many squash varieties (including pumpkins and closely related varieties) were not domesticated in ENA, nor were they a part of its earliest agricultural system. These plants were obtained through trade from Mexico then adapted by eastern farmers to local conditions by around AD 1000 (later for beans). For thousands of years before, beginning in the Late Archaic period around 3800 years ago, ancient farmers in ENA cultivated a group of native seed crops. These pre-maize crops are referred to as the Eastern Agricultural Complex (EAC). They are a botanically diverse group that includes familiar crops that are still widely grown, such as sunflower and acorn squash, as well as lost crops that are native North American relatives of barley, quinoa, and canary grass, among others. Most of the EAC crops fell out of cultivation before the arrival of European chroniclers and are not recalled in the oral traditions of Indigenous descendent communities, leaving many questions about how they were cultivated. The objective of this research is to study the living progenitors of these crops in the wild and under cultivation in order to better understand the deep history of North America and the dynamics of human-plant co-evolution in general. In addition to these research goals, this project expands the Lost Crops Garden Network, a collaboration among several anthropologists using experimental gardens as tools for experiential learning and research. Several of the EAC crops are now endangered by increased herbicide use and invasive weeds. This project documents the locations of remaining populations of lost crops, an important first step towards conserving a group of plants that have the potential to be re-domesticated and commercialized. One of the key activities funded by this award is the creation of a seed bank, which will facilitate further experimental studies by providing correctly sourced and viable seed to other researchers. These plants were important crops for millennia. With further study and improvement, they have the potential to enhance the food and economic security of contemporary farmers.
This project 1) establishes the current range and habitat of EAC crop progenitors and assesses their conservation needs; 2) creates an institutionalized seed bank for EAC crop seeds; 3) studies the effects of different cultivation techniques and environmental factors on plant phenotypes and yield; 4) investigates the role of developmental plasticity and epigenetics in plant domestication; and 5) establishes an accurate range of yield estimates for each crop. This research creates interpretative links between morphologies and/or ancient DNA attributes of archaeobotanical specimens and the agricultural practices that created and maintained them. By doing so, it also 1) helps bridge the gap between historically and ethnographically recorded maize-based agriculture, and the unknown EAC agricultural system that preceded and gave rise to it; and 2) contributes to the study of social change in the eventful last 500 years prior to European colonization, an era which saw the rise of maize agriculture, structural inequality, and regional political confederacies. Globally, this project contributes to an emerging body of research on the role of developmental plasticity and epigenetics in domestication, in particular, and in evolutionary biology in general. Growth experiments will measure the effects of the agroecosystem on plants' development and reproduction, allowing the construction of more accurate optimal foraging models that take into account the immediate effects of cultivation and environmental engineering. This project also explores the epigenetic effects of DNA methylation on crop morphology. Comparative methylome sequencing of control and experimental plants can be used to identify epigenetic signals underpinning phenotypic effects. DNA methylation survives in ancient tissues, so the ancient DNA of archaeobotanical specimens can be used to assess the influence of epigenetics in the domestication process. This research requires an interdisciplinary effort, while also providing training that will enable its recipient to make an experimental approach to the study of ancient agriculture central to her future research and teaching.
