Eastern Agricultural Complex

The Eastern Agricultural Complex was an independent center of plant domestication in the Eastern Woodlands of what is now the eastern United States, where indigenous peoples domesticated a distinct group of native plants, including sunflower, sumpweed (marsh elder), a native squash, chenopodium (goosefoot), erect knotweed and maygrass, over a span from roughly 4,000 to 1,800 years ago. This represents one of only a small number of places in the world where agriculture arose independently, alongside the Fertile Crescent, China, Mesoamerica, the Andes, West Africa and New Guinea. Cultivation of the complex declined after roughly 900 CE as maize, introduced from Mesoamerica, spread through the region and became the dominant staple crop of subsequent Eastern Woodlands farming societies such as the Mississippian culture.