northeast Minnesota wild rice location, the Big Rice site in the Superior National Forest, considered a classic Initial and Terminal Woodland period type site, illustrates the methods of archaeological investigations into the plant's use by humans through time. Archaeological techniques along with ethnographic records and tribal oral testimony, when taken together, suggest use of this particular lakeside site since 50 BC. On its own, accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating of wild rice seeds and charcoal samples from the Big Rice itself indicated indigenous use of this site dating to 2,050 years ago. Furthermore, all excavation levels that solely contained ceramics only used during the Initial Woodland period (known as Laurel pottery complex) also included wild rice seeds. This indicated the use of wild rice during the Initial Woodland period, according to the study. Excavators have documented more than 50,000 pottery shards from the site from the Initial and Terminal Woodland periods. Specifically, researchers analyzed ceramic rimsherds of Laurel pottery from the Initial Woodland period and Blackduck, Sandy Lake and Selkirk pottery styles from the Terminal Woodland period. Each pottery type had wild rice seeds associated with it in the soil layers of archaeological deposits. These soil layers were not contaminated with pottery from other eras. This suggests intensive exploitation of the site for wild rice processing through these time periods by different cultures. For example, archaeologists often associate Sandy Lake pottery with the Sioux people, who were later displaced by the Anishinaabe and possibly other Algonquian migrants. Archaeologists often associate Selkirk pottery with the Cree people, an Algonquian group. An examination of the pollen sequence at Big Rice indicates that wild rice existed in "harvestable quantities" 3,600 years ago during the Archaic period. This date is 1,600 years before the AMS radiocarbon date of human-processed charred wild rice seeds at the site during the Initial Woodland period, although there is no archaeological evidence of human use of the wild rice at the site that far back in time as of yet. Diseases References External links USDA Plants Profile for Zizania aquatica USDA Plants Profile for Zizania palustris Rice varieties Zizania Zizania Zizania Zizania Cereals Rice Stem vegetables Crops originating from Pre-Columbian North America Crops originating from the United States American cuisine Canadian cuisine Cuisine of Minnesota Symbols of Minnesota Zizania Zizania Zizania sv:Vildris