POLLEN-BASED LANDSCAPE RECONSTRUCTION OF NATIVE AMERICAN (LATE MISSISSIPPIAN) AND EURO-AMERICAN AGRICULTURE AT HOVEY LAKE, INDIANA

The local landscape impacts of maize-dominated agriculture by prehistoric Native Americans and historic Euro-Americans in southwestern Indiana are reconstructed by the analysis of pollen from an 11 m-long sediment core extracted from Hovey Lake, an oxbow of the Ohio River. Prior archaeological data indicate the shoreline of this lake was occupied between approximately 700 and 350 cal yr BP by Mississippian people practicing maize agriculture. Pollen data derived from the analysis of sediments from Hovey Lake provide a broader context to evaluate the relative land-use impacts of these two episodes of human land-use with respect to natural forest succession. Specifically, pollen of maize and other crop plants may confirm local farming by Native Americans as well as by later Euro-Americans. Deciduous trees pollen percentages decline upcore, particularly those of Quercus (oak), Carya (hickory), Platanus (sycamore), and Fraxinus (ash). Correspondingly, there is an increase in non-arboreal pollen types, such as Ambrosia (ragweed) and Poaceae (grass), which is also a good indicator of agriculture in the past. The pollen signals for Euro-American agriculture are similar to those of earlier Native American land use, with a few notable distinctions. There is a very large Ambrosia pollen spike (4-6X greater than prehistoric levels) for the uppermost 3 m of sediment, which reflects larger-scale land clearance in the 19^th century. Also, there is a significant percentage increase in Compositae, a family of flowering plants that includes sunflower (probably grown as a crop species). Therefore, the results of this study indicate that humans have modified the landscape in the Hovey Lake area for much of the last 1200 years.