Besides Native Americans consuming nuts for food, oak and hickory mast also served to attract a wide array of animals such as squirrels, raccoons, white-tailed deer and wild turkey. American Indians here, in turn, hunted all of these animals for food and used the hide, sinew, antler and bones of deer to fashion tools, ornaments, containers, cords and clothing. Deer bones did in fact appear in some of the excavation units at Hutto Pond.
Beyond the nut-bearing trees common to the region, wild grapes, hackberries, blackberries, blueberries, persimmons, maypops and many other fruit-bearing plants grew abundantly within the ecosystems found near Hutto Pond. The greens of pokeweed (after having been prepared to rid it of toxins) also likely made up part of their larder in early spring.
Perhaps beginning with the Woodland period, people in the area started cultivating beans, squash and gourds. By the time the Suwannee Valley culture people had appeared on the scene at about A.D 750, these people had begun practicing intensive maize agriculture in the rich Orangeburg and Bonneville loamy soils found in this immediate vicinity. This form of intensive agriculture eventually led to sweeping changes among the native peoples living in North America. It allowed populations to expand and for people to develop much more complex and sophisticated political and religious institutions.
We can only hope that archaeologists will return to this culture area in the future and conduct more studies there. They should incorporate an interdisciplinary approach that includes having palynologists, zooarchaeologists and ethnobotanists as well as other specialists to garner a better understanding of the settlement patterning and subsistence in the North Florida Culture Area.