Farmers with a Taste for Fish: New Insights into Iroquoian Foodways at the Dawson Site

Abstract

Iroquoian groups inhabiting the St. Lawrence Valley in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries AD practiced agriculture and supplemented their diet with fish and a variety of wild plants and terrestrial animals. Important gaps remain in our knowledge of Iroquoian foodways, including how pottery was integrated to culinary practices and the relative importance of maize in clay-pot cooking. Lipid analyses carried out on 32 potsherds from the Dawson site (Montreal, Canada) demonstrate that pottery from this village site was used to prepare a range of foodstuffs—primarily freshwater fish and maize, but possibly also other animals and plants. The importance of aquatic resources is demonstrated by the presence of a range of molecular compounds identified as biomarkers for aquatic products, whereas the presence of maize could only be detected through isotopic analysis. Bayesian modeling suggests that maize is present in all samples and is the dominant product in at least 40% of the potsherds analyzed. This combination of analytical techniques, applied for the first time to Iroquoian pottery, provides a glimpse into Iroquoian foodways and suggests that sagamité was part of the culinary traditions at the Dawson site.