page_title: Southern New England Algonquian cuisine
section_title: Hunting and gathering
hierarchical_section_title: Southern New England Algonquian cuisine / History / Hunting and gathering
caption_attribution_description: English: Wampanoag and Massachuset Tribal members with Boston public school students celebrate annual Ancient Fishweir Project.
context_page_description: Southern New England Algonquian cuisine comprises the shared foods and preparation methods of the indigenous Algonquian peoples of the southern half of New England, which consists of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, but also included portions of coastal New Hampshire and Long Island, now part of New York, as a cultural and culinary region. The peoples of the region historically shared related languages in the Southern New England Algonquian division of the Eastern branch of Algonquian languages as well as related cultures and spiritual practices.
  Regional variations were slight, mostly based on small differences in times of abundance or availability of certain ingredients due to location and the variations in microclimate. The New England climate, with its marked seasons and long winters meant that seasonality of ingredients and preservation of foods to survive the coldest times of year when little food was available were important aspects of the cuisine.
context_section_description: Before agriculture, hunting, fishing and foraging was the only methods of sustenance.  The earliest evidence of these activities in New England begin after 13000 BC when the Paleo-Indians followed the Pleistocene megafauna, such as the mastodon onto the newly exposed tundra in the wake of the receding Wisconsin Glacier.  Over-hunting and warming climate led to the extinction of the megafauna, and sites throughout New England show heavy reliance on following herds of caribou, although smaller numbers of moose, deer, hare, fox and marine mammals along the coast were also taken.  Foraged foods likely included tubers of marsh plants and the leaves and seeds of chenopods.
  The start of the Archaic Period ushered in a very volatile time as the climate rapidly warmed.  The tundra had transitioned into a shrubby, cold savannah, then an open forest and finally the mosaic of mixed deciduous and coniferous trees today.  Sea levels rapidly rose due to the melting glaciers inundating some areas whereas isostatic rebound exposed new lands and raised the elevations of other areas.  By 7000 BC, the migratory patterns of fish and birds and most of the species of flora and fauna associated with New England today had established in the region.  
  The population increased in the Archaic Period, due to migrations of people from the southwest and because of the greater carrying capacity of the land due to numerous trees producing oily nuts, which were a major food source, and improved hunting technology.  The Archaic Period peoples adopted the atlatl, which allowed hunters to throw spears from a greater distance and with greater force, and had developed a more diverse set of stone points and carved hooks tailored to the species that were targeted.  By the late part of the Archaic Period, most of the foods known to be gathered up until the period of English colonization were utilized at this time, particularly shellfish as evidenced from the large shell middens that occupy numerous coastal sites in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts.
  Even with the development of agriculture, which ushered in the Woodland Period round 1000 BC, the Southern New England Algonquian peoples continued to rely on long-held hunting, fishing, collecting and foraging activities to supplement their diets.  Food preparation was facilitated with the adoption of ceramic pottery around 500 AD.  The new pots were lighter in weight, easier to produce and heated faster than stone vessels.  The adoption of the bow and arrow around 700 AD greatly improved hunting prowess, as bow-and-arrow hunting was more stealthy than traditional spear and spear-throwing methods.  In areas such as the colder, rocky uplands and sandy shoals, where agriculture was greatly hampered, reliance on hunting and foraging assumed greater importance but even in the most fertile areas, these activities were elemental to survival when food stores were thin at the end of winter or when crops failed due to drought, pest or early frost.
caption: Massachusett and Wampanoag peoples gather with Boston students around a recreation of a fish-weir.  Built over rivers or inlets, weirs channeled the fish so they could be more easily caught.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot S40", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2005:05:10 23:03:12", "Image ExifOffset": "204", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "7/2", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2003:05:09 00:22:19", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2003:05:09 00:22:19", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "5", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "223/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "29/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "12742/4289", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "393/32", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3885", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2605", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "56800/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "56800/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}