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As is the case with most native populations that lacked systems of writing for most or all of their history, much of what is known about Native Americans comes from the records of the Europeans who first encountered them in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Some of these accounts are accurate, while some include parts that are accurate and other parts that reflect their Caucasian biases towards native peoples. One aspect of native life which the European colonists often remarked upon, when they left written records, was their system of agriculture. Agriculture is one of the primary means by which pre-industrial human societies impacted their environments; through plant and animal domestication, disruption of prehistoric soil matrices, and the resulting population increases that some degree of agricultural sophistication makes possible within partially nomadic or fully settled groups of people. Given the topographical and climatological variances found within its borders, Virginia allowed for the development of several unique agricultural systems that worked in concert with traditional hunting and gathering systems. Post-European contact, these modes of subsistence were greatly altered as European technology was introduced to the native Virginians and their grip on their ancestral lands slowly receded towards the mountains. ==Background== History of Virginia The proposed and accepted dates for the beginning of native habitation in Virginia vary widely; traditionally the assumed date was somewhere between 12,000-10,000 B.C. The recent archaeological excavations at Cactus Hill, however, have challenged those dates with hard evidence of far earlier habitation within the state. The Cactus Hill site is located along the Nottoway River in southeast Virginia and is now one of the oldest known sites with evidence of human habitation in the country. Clovis-type tools found at the site have been radiocarbon dated to between 11,500-10,000 B.C., and the remains of hearth fires have been dated to around 15,000 B.C. Work continues at the site, but these findings appear to have set back the generally accepted start of human habitation in Virginia by about 5,000 years. The periods between when native peoples first settled in Virginia (at least 15,000 B.C.) and about 2500 B.C. are called the Paleo and Archaic periods. Tribes in Virginia were hunter-gatherers during these periods and didn’t establish permanent settlements. Semi-permanent habitations first appeared during the Sedentary Forager Period (2,500 B.C. – 900 A.D.) and larger settlements had developed by the Middle-to-Late Woodland Period.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/jamesriver/colonization.HTM )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Native American Agriculture in Virginia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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