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The plants I'm speaking of do grow as wild plants today (one example I recall was a form of goosefoot), but the seeds found showed signs of being bred for larger seeds and greater yield. Those strains, I was told, died out when they were no longer cultivated and the weeds today presumably are descended from the same wild ancestors they were cultivated from. I was told that when corn arrived and the native weeds ceased to be cultivated, health deteriorated in ways that were easily noticeable to those examining skeletons from the different eras, implying that while corn was tastier and had better yield, the nutrition provided by the developed weeds was superior. Shades of McDonald's . . . even then.
The woman who was doing this research at the time was working near the Newark site, but I would have to brave the depths of the box stacks in my attic to find out just where. She lectured at the Newark site on a couple Saturdays when I lived in nearby Heath and I hung out at the mounds a lot, probably 1988.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road