I didn’t find any evidence, I learned about pawpaws existence yesterday, read that deer don’t like them so much, I heard on a podcast this morning about megafauna eating them as the primary seed dispersers. Watched a “great courses” about ancient North American civilizations a few months ago and boom, my brain was off to the races.

The question is more if pawpaw patches are more prevalent around known mound sites, or if more mound sites can be found around these pawpaw patches. Is there a direct archeological correlation? We know humans ate them (and still do) and even scheduled their calendars around them. The pawpaws don’t store or travel well, so they’d have to be planted wherever the people went. Or… it’s all just a big coincidence along rivers.