All of the domesticated species present at Fredricks are native to Mesoamerica. Of these, namely corn (Zea mays L.), common bean (Phaseolus sp.), and "squash" (Cucurbita sp.), corn is by far the most well represented. Corn remains comprise 18.2% of plant food remains by weight, and corn kernels make up the largest percentage of identified seeds (Table 33). Corn ranks first in ubiquity, and ranks second only to hickory based on three-season totals. Corncob, like hickory shell, may have been used as fuel and hence frequently preserved. However, corn kernels alone account for 61.6% of total identified seeds. Clearly corn was a staple and probably (considering comments by European observers, including Lawson) was the most important plant food used by Fredricks site inhabitants and their neighbors.
Corn percentage by weight does vary somewhat between features and feature types. Of mixed-fill pits, Feature 29 has the highest corn percentage (42.1%); other features of this type have corn percentages ranging from 2.6% to 15.9%. The three burials had for the most part somewhat higher percentages (Table 28) than most of these pit features. The same is true of 1983 and 1984 samples, except for Feature 9, which was particularly rich in plant remains in general and corn in particular. Whether this fact might indicate a different depositional context for plant remains associated with burial fill than for other feature fill cannot be determined, but further quantitative studies might be useful in determining the nature of deposition of upper burial fill in certain of the Fredricks site burial pits. It is suspected that organically rich zones in the upper zones of some of these burials may have been the result of intentional ritual deposition (Ward 1985).
Common bean and cucurbit remains are poorly represented by weight. However, bean has moderately high ubiquity (26.3%), ranking sixth. Beans are likely to have been boiled rather than roasted, which contributes to a rather low likelihood of preservation. Therefore common bean may have been a more important food than its weight percentage indicates. Cucurbit rind is poorly represented at Fredricks, but the inclusion of seeds brings the ubiquity value of cucurbit up to 10.5%. Cucurbit rind is fragile and subject to fragmentation, and although little is known about the processing of edible cucurbits by Piedmont groups, it seems safe to assume that they were neither parched nor smoked, procedures that facilitate preservation through carbonization. Perhaps both cucurbit and bean are underrepresented because of processing techniques.
In this connection it is interesting to note that Lawson (Lefler 1967:82-83) considers the many varieties of "Pulse" too "tedious to name," and he enumerates several types of cucurbit grown in the Piedmont, including some Old World varieties. His inclusion of "Gourds; Melons; Cucumbers; Squashes; Pulse of all sorts . . ." (Lefler 1967:182) in his catalogue of the "Indians Food" suggests that both cucurbits and common bean were more important crops than the archaeological evidence indicates.