Crossroads, p. 9
In Europe and the Near East where people went through a similar transition at the end of the Ice Age this period, the "Mesolithic," is sometimes called the "terrible Mesolithic" because there is evidence that populations declined and people were starving, stunted, and unhealthy. Whatever the cost, the achievement of the early Archaic people of the Southeast was remarkable because between 8000 and 5000 B.C. they managed to work out the basic diet that would sustain the Indians of eastern North America for the next 7,000 years, a diet built around nuts, fish, venison, raccoon, opossum, and turkey, supplemented by other small game, shellfish, fruits, and berries.
(Round
or rectangular "hammer stones" or "nutting stones,"
generally a little smaller than a softball, with finger tip sized conical
depressions on one or both sides, were one of the most important items in
the Indian tool kit from the Archaic era on. The conical depressions made
them easy to hold and use as hammers. They were probably used mainly for
cracking nuts. This can be done quickly and efficiently by placing a nut
in the depression on one stone, then tapping it with another.)
Nuts (hickory nuts, black walnuts, hazel nuts, chestnuts, chinquapins, pecans, and beechnuts) were the most important foods in this diet. When the forest-dwelling people of the early Archaic era learned to eat nuts, they opened up for themselves an almost unlimited supply of highly nutritious food that was dependable, simple to harvest, and easy to store and prepare.
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