Feeding Cahokia: Early Agriculture in the North American Heartland. By Gayle J. Fritz. 2019. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. 228 pp.

Reviewsriverine settings where some early members of the EAC could have thrived and predator competition for fleshy fruit and nut crops could have been lessened.The importance of Late Archaic and Early Woodland paleofecal samples from Salts Cave and Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, as well as the significance of the "flotation revolution" in advancing our knowledge of subsistence in general, are also highlighted.Chapters 4-5 focus primarily on plant-food production practices during the Middle Woodland and Late Woodland periods, respectively.Throughout these two periods, there is substantial evidence for the growing importance of EAC crop production in relation to socioreligious interaction, and the importance of women as the primary manual laborers contributing to the development of more political complexity.The emphasis in the next six chapters centers on the American Bottom, an extensive and agriculturally rich area along the Mississippi River south of its confluence with the Missouri River.Fritz notes that the Late Woodland period was generally one of substantial population growth and the intensification of food production practices involving the EAC with maize only added to that suite of crops after AD 900.Data for plant remains from archaeological sites and for pollen cores dating after ca.AD 600 indicate a relative lack of mobility given diverse farming and foraging strategies and the widespread clearance of bottomland and nearby upland forests.Prior to the "Big Bang" signifying the swift rise of the Cahokian Polity ca.AD 1050, Fritz delves into the increase in panregional trade or interaction as well as the record for increasing settlement complexity and size.