Materiality of forager food insecurity in the archaeological record: A case study from the central Canadian Boreal Forest, ∼1100–1300 CE

• Examines the connection between food insecurity and forager material culture. • Abrupt warming 800 years ago coincided with stylistic changes in pottery in the central Boreal Forest. • Pottery was used as a container to cook aquatic foods and as a feasting object. • Stylistic changes record the disruption of cooperative aquatic food harvesting. • Highlights the value of archaeology in northern food security studies. Food insecurity is a highly disruptive force at the individual and group levels, particularly when scarce resources are culturally important. Due to the close connection between food and material culture, periods of cultural food insecurity in the past may be associated with changes in the materiality (the physical and relational manifestations of the preparation, presentation, and consumption) of these foods. In the central Canadian Boreal Forest, pottery was traditionally used to cook aquatic foods as evidenced by wild rice (manoomin, Zizania spp.) microbotanical remains in carbonized food residues on cooking pots. This paper explores the connection between periods of aquatic ecosystem instability driven by climate change and the disruption of material and social traditions linked to wild rice consumption and cooperative harvesting. This connection provides an alternative explanation for sudden stylistic transformations that occurred in pottery throughout this region approximately 800 years ago.