Maize productivity in the Eastern Woodlands and great plains of North America

Archaeologists and ethnohistorians have long been interested in quantifying potential maize productivity for late prehistoric and early historic Nativ e Americans of the Eastern Woodlands. Maize yields obtained by Native Ameri cans using traditional farming techniques in the nineteenth century are com pared to yields obtained by nineteenth-century Native Americans using plows , and nineteenth- and twentieth-century farmers in Illinois and Missouri. T he result sa notion of average resource productivity for maize that is more reasonable and modest than previous estimates. In this study, the mean yie ld of maize for nineteenth-century Native American groups who did not use p lows was 18.9 bu/acre (stdev=4.1) (1,185.4 kg/ha [stdev=254.1]). Yields on the order of 10 bu/acre (627.2 kg/ha) probably are closer to the average pr ehistoric yields that were available for subsistence purposes. The mean siz e of gardens cultivated by nineteenth-century Native American families with out plows was .59 acre (stdev=.45) (.24 ha [stdev=.18]). These newly compil ed data are used to generate a model of nuclear family household economy an d minimal and maximal garden sizes given different levels of maize producti vity and consumption. Population estimates made on the basis of previous as sessments of high rates of resource productivity will need to be reevaluate d.