Experimental Recreation of a Pumpkin (Cucurbita spp.) Leather Mat

The ethnohistoric record from the American Great Plains indicates that dried pumpkin (Cucurbita spp.) strips were often woven into mats as a form of food storage. This form of food storage was likely employed over large geographical areas and deep in time, but archaeological methods for identifying their production and use have been wanting. This experiment used ethnohistoric records to re-create pumpkin mats using bone and stone tools, with special attention to the types of residue and by-products created. We found that while formal bone tools could be used with pumpkin, simple flake stone tools were more efficient. Two pumpkin mats were produced, one in which the rind had been charred and removed prior to processing and one with a raw rind; the raw rind mat succumbed to mould while the charred pumpkin mat was temperature stable for more than two years. Residues were documented on the tools, but the gourd did not contain starch granules, and only the rind (which was removed in this experiment) contains the diagnostic phytoliths. The chaîne opératoire of pumpkin mat manufacture in this experiment explains why microfossil evidence (starch, phytoliths) of the practice has not been recovered in the Great Plains. Without a chemical biomarker, proteomic or ancient DNA approach, the recognition of pumpkin leather mats may remain elusive, which greatly limits archaeological understandings of this important foodway that is closely associated with women’s work.