Published in People, Plants and Landscapes (1997), edited by Kris Gremillion, pp. 195-216. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. 

The landscape of North American archaeology has been dominated by regional perspectives, chronologies, and cultural and environmental reconstructions. Lack of interregional comparisons has hampered our understanding of pan-North American developments and events. By comparing land-use strategies across regional boundaries, several broad patterns emerge. They encompass basic structural dynamics of the land-scape, important economic plant families, and key interregional events marked temporally by the expansion of two exotic cultigens, corn (Zea mays ssp. mays) and beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). Of course there are various regionally and locally important plant resources not included in this survey, but my purpose is to focus attention upon broad patterns of plant use common to eastern and western North American landscapes.