CROPPING IN AN AGE OF CAPTIVE TAKING: EXPLORING EVIDENCE FOR UNCERTAINTY AND FOOD INSECURITY IN THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NORTH CAROLINA PIEDMONT

Engagement in sustained encounters with colonial actors had long-lasting demographic, social, and political consequences for Native American inhabitants of Southeastern North America during the colonial period (AD 1670–1783). Less clear is whether Native peoples who did not regularly trade with colonists also felt the destabilization experienced by more closely affiliated groups. This article explores Native lifeways in the seventeenth-century Eno River valley of the North Carolina Piedmont, a context for which archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence have produced divergent narratives. While extant archaeological findings suggest that daily life from 1650 to 1680 continued virtually unchanged from the preceding Late Woodland period, ethnohistoric accounts indicate that this area was victimized by Native slavers who abducted countless women and children. Seeking to reconcile these narratives, I conducted a diachronic analysis of botanical remains and architecture. Archaeobotanical data reveal that Jenrette site (AD 1650–1680) occupants adopted foodways that differed significantly from those of their Late Woodland predecessors, while architectural evidence indicates a brief village occupation. I argue that Eno River valley inhabitants introduced risk-averse subsistence practices that would have aided in coping with the threat and consequences of slave raiding and that these practices occurred within a social climate of fear and uncertainty that is documented ethnohistorically.