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"[Before European contact] Cahokia [in present-day Missouri] and such other major centers as those now known as Coosa and Etowah in Georgia, Moundville in Alabama, and Natchez in Mississippi were home to highly stratified societies, organized as chiefdoms and characterized by a sharp divide between elites and commoners. . . . Surrounding networks of agricultural hamlets provided food to support the urban centers. . . . "From the Ohio River through most of present-day Canada and down the coast to the Chesapeake were speakers of Algonquian languages. . . . Nearly everywhere [here], villages composed of 500 to 2,000 people were the norm. . . . "[This] Indian country was decentralized and diverse, but not disconnected. . . . Routes of trade and communication, most of them millennia old and following the great river systems, crisscrossed the continent. The goods that moved along them were, for the most part, few and rare. . . . Some closely neighboring people might exchange crucial resources—corn, for instances, for meat or fish."Which of the following best describes the economic system that supported the Native American villages discussed in the second paragraph of the excerpt?

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