Watson and Kennedy cite ethnohistoric documentation regarding Native American women’s primary involvement in horticulture and plant collecting in the Eastern Woodlands during the Mississippian period (A.D.900-1500) as evidence supporting the idea that women were involved in plant domestication in the Eastern Woodlands. In light of this evidence as well as data from other cultures showing that women generally have primary responsibility for plant-food production in small-scale societies, Watson and Kennedy find it surprising that women are absent from archaeologists’ explanations for the origins of horticulture in the region. They attribute this absence to the faulty assumption that women are not cultural innovators. They challenge Smith's explanation of indigenous plant domestication for the way it removes intention and innovation from the scenario such that the plants “virtually domesticate themselves.” They also challenge Prentice’s theory that male shamans were responsible for domesticating gourds because Prentice’s scenario removes women from the one realm traditionally granted them, plant-food production, as soon as innovation or intervention enters the picture. In addition, they challenge the idea that after maize was introduced to northern latitudes it slowly and independently adapted to the new growing conditions. Instead, they argue that the rapid spread of maize after A.D.900 suggests that women farmers had been actively nurturing the species, for example, by crossing varieties to create, enhance, or suppress traits.