Intensive Agriculture in Extreme Environments

The development of agricultural systems has been critical for the growth of human populations and complex societies. Such systems have been thought to emerge only under conditions of rigid centralized hierarchies, large populations, and favorable environmental settings. This project investigates the development of intensive agriculture in the absence of the usual social and environmental drivers. The investigators examine the impetus, technologies, and labor strategies behind intensive agricultural production in a northern environment. This research adds to a growing body of literature that reshapes conceptions of past societies and landscapes and encourages a search for agricultural intensification in new, unlikely spaces worldwide. The project fosters public science in the research process. This project establishes alternative conditions for intensive agriculture by investigating the settlement history, chronology, ancient technologies, agricultural products, and environment at an extensive agricultural site in the upper Midwest. The research team investigates the location and size of the settlement whose farmers built this landscape through ground penetrating radar surveys, shovel testing, and excavation. The site’s chronology and bed construction techniques are determined through biotechnological and other methods, including radiocarbon dating, stable isotope, and phytolith analyses. Macrobotanical analyses establish what crops were cultivated, all of which were grown near their northernmost extent. Pollen analysis determines the scale of land management and the timing of forest rebound. Together, these findings illuminate the scale and intensity of past agriculture and landscape modification and challenge foundational ideas of agricultural development. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.