Join Gwynn Henderson in learning about Kentucky’s indigenous gardeners and farmers!

Beginning around 3000 BC, Kentucky’s ancient Native hunter-gatherers began domesticating wild native plants for their nutritious fruits and seeds. In time, they became gardeners. By around A.D. 1000, these gardening peoples had turned to farming, focusing their energies on their ancestors’ squash, but adding the foreign crops of corn and beans. This presentation will describe the long history of Kentucky’s Indigenous gardening and farming practices, drawing on archaeological research conducted in Kentucky, informed by ethnographic and ethnohistoric sources.

About Gwynn Henderson:

Henderson is the Education Director at the Kentucky Archaeological Survey, a program of Western Kentucky University’s Department of Society, Culture, Crime & Justice Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Kentucky and has carried out field research in Kentucky, the Ohio Valley, Tennessee, and Mexico. Her archaeological research and publications focus on the ancient Native farming cultures of the middle Ohio Valley.

As a public archaeologist, Henderson works with others to develop lessons, booklets, video programs, and workshops that make information about Kentucky’s rich archaeological heritage accessible to a wide audience. A writer of children’s nonfiction, her articles have been published in several children’s magazines, and her book for adult literacy students, Kentuckians Before Boone, has been used in Kentucky classrooms.