GIDAA IZHI'AAG INA JI-GAAGIIGIDOWAAD INGIW AKIKOOG? CAN YOU MAKE THE POTS TALK?

Wild rice (manoomin; Zizania palustris) is central to the identity of the Ojibwe people. The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Reservation is an area chosen for the presence of several rice lakes. Since wild rice requires a particular set of environmental conditions for growth, the history of the wild rice lakes is being studied (in the manoomin project, a collaboration between Fond du Lac and the University of Minnesota) with the goal of understanding and preserving the productivity of the wild rice stands. Cores from the lakes are yielding phytoliths (silicified plant cells) which reveal the presence and abundance of wild rice. Other papers from this project report on plant macrofossils, diatoms, and pollen recovered from the cores. Phytoliths can also be recovered from another context: food residues baked onto the interior of pottery, incorporating human activity in the history of the rice lakes. In 1996 a forestry road archaeological survey conducted by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources near Mid Portage (Jaskari) Lake and Perch Lake, two wild rice lakes, yielded pottery with food residues. The pottery recovered was undecorated parts of vessels, dating to the prehistory of the area. To see what people of the time period of the pottery were eating, we examined phytoliths recovered from food residues. Food residue from the pottery was dissolved in nitric acid to remove the organic portion, leaving phytoliths intact for identification. Phytoliths are mounted on slides, to recover images, and then images are identified and analyzed. We looked for phytoliths defined by Yost (2011) as wild rice markers, and identified phytoliths as from corn based on morphology and size. We hypothesized that we would find wild rice phytoliths, confirming wild rice as the primary food source at this particular location. The original hypothesis, however, was not fully supported. Phytoliths representing corn were recovered in great numbers, as well as a smaller number from wild rice. Principal components analysis of the corn phytoliths demonstrated that the assemblage of corn phytoliths from the pot was typical of northern corns. This means that corn was important even in the heart of wild rice country. These pots were indeed able to tell us what they were used for, and give us new insight on the history of corn in the Americas.