Long before domesticated maize and beans reached the Southeast, Indians of Arkansas were already tending native plants. The archeological record in Arkansas shows that by 3000 years ago, people's use of some native plants had begun their transformation from wild resources into fully domesticated crops. Archeologists sometimes refer to these extinct domesticated and cultivated plants as the Eastern North American Crop Complex. Plum Bayou people relied on crops passed down from their ancestors, much as foods are prepared and eaten across generations. By studying changes in the shapes and sizes of plant parts such as sump weed, paleoethnobotanists can identify plants that were transformed from resources into crop plants. Although domesticated versions of these southeastern crops are now extinct, their wild progenitors can still be found.