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Dr. John P. Hart

Curator Emeritus
john.hart@nysed.gov
518-474-3895

My research has focused primarily on the histories of maize, bean, and squash in New York and the greater Northeast and the interactions of human populations with these crops. Through collaborations with numerous colleagues both at the Museum and other institutions, this research resulted in new understandings of these histories and interactions. A primary focus has been on charred cooking residues adhering to the interior surfaces of pottery sherds in the collections of the Museum. These residues contain microfossil evidence (phytoliths, starch, lipids) of the plants cooked in the pots. In addition the residues can be directly radiocarbon dated through accelerator mass spectrometry. These methods and techniques have provided new evidence that is radically altering our understandings of the histories of agriculture in New York State. Theory building to develop understandings of these new histories is another focus. This research has broad implications for Native American history in New York and the greater Northeast.

Most recently I have been working with colleagues on Social Network Analyses (SNA) of northern Iroquoian sites dating from A.D. 1350 to 1650. SNA is a formal graphing method, which in archaeology is used to identify relationships between sites based on similarities of artifact assemblages. This research is helping to build new understandings of interactions between village populations and how these interactions changed through time during the last centuries before and then after European involvements.

Publications

2020

J. Hart, R. Feranec 2020, Using Maize δ15N values to assess soil fertility in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century AD Iroquoian agricultural fields, PLOS ONE 15, e0230952. 10.1371/journal.pone.0230952
R. Feranec, Brandon McDonald, Troi Perkins, Robert Dunn, Jennifer McDonald, Holly Cole, Roland Kays 2020, High variability within pet foods prevents the identification of native species in pet cats’ diets using isotopic evaluation, PeerJ 8, e8337. 10.7717/peerj.8337
R. Feranec, L. DeSantis, T. Tung, T. Dillehay 2020, Early specialized maritime and maize economies on the north coast of Peru, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2009121117. 10.1073/pnas.2009121117

2019

R. Feranec, Kena Fox-Dobbs, John Harris, Thure Cerling, Jonathan Crites, Aisling Farrell, Gary Takeuchi, Larisa DeSantis 2019, Causes and Consequences of Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinctions as Revealed from Rancho La Brea Mammals, Current Biology 29, 2488-2495. 10.1016/j.cub.2019.06.059
J. Hart, R. Feranec 2019, Fish and maize: Bayesian mixing models of fourteenth- through seventeenth-century AD ancestral Wendat diets, Ontario, Canada, Scientific Reports 9, 16658. 10.1038/s41598-019-53076-7
R. Feranec, S. Fiedel, T. Marino, D. Driver 2019, A New AMS Radiocarbon Date for the Ivory Pond Mastodon, Eastern Paleontologist 3, 1-15.
J. Hart, R. Feranec 2019, The Dog That Wasn’t: An Historical Pig Burial on the Sixteenth-Century AD Klock Site, Fulton County, New York, Archaeology of Eastern North America 47, 1-6.
J. Hart, R. Feranec, T. Abel, J. Vavrasek 2019, Freshwater reservoir offsets on radiocarbon-dated dog bone from the headwaters of the St. Lawrence River, USA, PeerJ 7, e7174. 10.7717/peerj.7174
R. Feranec, S. Ledogar, J. Karsten, G. Madden, R. Schmidt, M. Sokohatskyi 2019, New AMS Dates for Verteba Cave and Stable Isotope Evidence of Human Diet in the Holocene Forest-Steppe, Ukraine, Radiocarbon 61, 141-158. 10.1017/RDC.2018.52
R. Feranec, H. McDonald, N. Miller 2019, First record of the extinct ground sloth, Megalonyx jeffersonii, (Xenarthra, Megalonychidae) from New York and contributions to its paleoecology, Quaternary International 530-531, 42-46. 10.1016/j.quaint.2018.11.021