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This comparative synthesis examines archaeological and ethnohistoric data pertaining to Native American coastal adaptations
along the southern coasts of the eastern United States. We consider the totality of experiences of people living along coasts,
examining such issues as technological innovation, environmental variability and change as it relat...
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... gastropods such as the lightning whelk (Busycon sinistrum) and to a lesser extent the horse conch (Pleuroploca gigantea). These artifacts include columella hammers and cutting tools, as well as shouldered adzes, celts, dippers, and spoons made from the outer whorls of the shells (Marquardt 1992b;Simpkins 1975;Torrence 1992Torrence , 1999) ( Fig. 3). Later tools of the Caloosahatchee period were made of whole shells. These implements are distinguished by the position of hafting holes and the extent to which the outer whorl and working edge was removed or worn down either as a part of manufacture or use life-stages ( Luer et al. 1986;Marquardt 1992b). A wide range of species also ...
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Citations
... The morphology, sedimentology, stratigraphy and associated archaeological content at all cultural sites located along the southwest Florida coastline reflect the interaction between the natural environment and human activity. Hence, there has been a significant archaeological effort devoted to understanding their evolution with regards to form and function (Walker, Stapor and Marquardt, 1995;Thompson et al., 2004Thompson et al., , 2015Thompson et al., , 2016Thompson and Worth, 2011;Pluckhahn, Thompson and Cherkinsky, 2015;Schwadron, 2017). Sites located within the Ten Thousand Islands area of southwest Florida occur predominantly within an estuarine embayment as islands exhibiting a distinct morphology and relatively high local relief relative to the surrounding natural islands. ...
Palaeoenvironmental analysis of Late Holocene stratigraphic sequences recovered from two southwest Florida archaeological sites reveal a synchronous evolution of events caused by natural processes (e.g. sea‐level rise) and human activity (e.g. construction of shell works). Basal mangrove peats indicate that a transition from a terrestrial to coastal landscape started ~4000 cal bp in conjunction with the Late Holocene sea‐level rise. Continued sea‐level rise ultimately submerged the area to create estuarine conditions. Commensurate with submergence was the construction of relatively large (0.5 to 1.0 km2) shell mounds from 1500 to 1050 cal bp. These activities started in the estuarine environment and over time produced emergent landscape features with significant local relief (>7 m). The overlap in radiocarbon ages of oysters collected from the estuarine interval and the overlying shell mounds suggests construction material was locally harvested. About 1120 cal bp and during the waning of an indigenous presence in the area, red mangrove forests re‐emerged along the margins of each site and within the adjacent estuary to create an expansive mangrove‐dominated landscape within which both shell works are now embedded. This palaeoenvironmental reconstruction contradicts the prevailing notion that the two sites were purposely constructed on the mainland and adjacent to tidally influenced rivulets.
... Understanding where the land and sea meet is, of course, critical for coastal archaeologists, and this must be done at a local level because global processes like sea-level rise can impact nearshore environments in vastly different ways (e.g., Thompson and Worth 2011). This is particularly true along the north coast with its low topographic relief and its expansive, shallow offshore shelf. ...
Although Maya scholars have referenced coastal settlements in the more general discourse on past landscapes, coastal landscapes have only rarely been the explicit focus of research programs. Coastal peoples, however, faced distinct challenges and opportunities not shared by their inland neighbors. These had material ramifications in terms of the specific decisions coastal inhabitants made over time while trying to take advantage of opportunities and manage risks. The north coast of the Yucatan Peninsula is a complex physiographic mosaic that is categorically distinct from the inland expanses of the Maya lowlands. No doubt, the physically delimiting aspects of the north coast’s diverse environment played a major role in shaping more localized concepts of landscape. Here, we employ an historical ecology framework to integrate the interdisciplinary studies conducted by the Proyecto Costa Escondida along the Yucatan’s north coast. Specifically, we focus on the ancient Maya port site of Vista Alegre and what our research has revealed about the dynamic interplay of social and natural processes that shaped life at this ancient Maya port over the past three millennia.
... He and his closest kin held strictly guarded religious knowledge. Captives from Spanish shipwrecks were made to work and sometimes sacrificed (Hann, 1991;Marquardt, 1988;Thompson and Worth, 2011;Worth, 2014). ...
... Tribute items included foods, mats, animal hides, and feathers, as well as gold, silver, and captives from Spanish shipwrecks (Worth, 2014:14). The Calusa polity was administered by a central authority who was a hereditary leader (Marquardt, 2014;Thompson and Worth, 2011). The royal family, the nobility, warriors, and perhaps various specialists were supported by commoners (Marquardt, 1987:171, 175). ...
At European contact, the Calusa of southwestern Florida were the most complex society in Florida. For staple sustenance they relied not on agriculture, but on aquatic resources harvested mainly from shallow inshore bays. We summarize recently discovered physical evidence on Mound Key of mound-building, monumental architecture, large-scale food processing, watercourt construction and use, and the sixteenth-century Spanish fort and mission of San Antón de Carlos. We fold these findings into regional paleoenvironmental, archaeological, and historical knowledge, refining our understanding of Calusa history by examining it at smaller time increments. Following a diminished fishery during a significant drop in bay water levels near the end of the cool Vandal Minimum episode, the Medieval Warm Period reversed the situation and increased the productivity of the shallow waters, which provided food surpluses and new opportunities. After ca. AD 950, long-established cooperative heterarchical relations among coastal and inland polities gave way to coercive hierarchical relations. During the succeeding Little Ice Age, they intensified food production by engineering and maintaining “watercourts” that functioned as fish traps and short-term fish storage areas. Periods of overall prosperity were dampened by times of uncertainty, characterized by short-term, lowered water levels with reduced fisheries and renewed cooperative, heterarchical relations.
... The Calusa were a large non-farming polity that exacted control over the southern third of peninsular Florida at the time of European contact in the sixteenth century (Marquardt 1988(Marquardt , 2014Thompson, Marquardt et al. 2018;Widmer 1988). Complex polities arose across southern Florida by approximately AD 800 and eventually coalesced into a large political entity with central authority and hereditary leadership as documented by the Spanish in the sixteenth century (Marquardt 2014;Thompson and Worth 2011;Thompson, Marquardt et al. 2018). The timing of this political consolidation remains uncertain, but was likely built upon the emergence of collective action and communal buy-in at multiple social and spatial scales across Calusa communities (Thompson, Marquardt et al. 2018). ...
... While the exact trajectory of Calusa political complexity in southwest Florida is unclear, small polities emerged by the latter half of the first millennia AD, likely heterarchically organized within the region (Thompson and Worth 2011;Thompson, Marquardt et al. 2018;Thompson, Roberts Thompson, and Worth 2018). Environmental conditions undoubtedly played a key role in both sociopolitical and socioeconomic structuring and restructuring of Calusa communities requiring them to partake in cooperative spheres of interaction given the known environmental fluctuations (Walker 2013). ...
The Pineland Site Complex, 8LL1902, is a large archaeological complex of middens, mounds, and other topographic features located in coastal, southwestern Florida. It was occupied from approximately AD 50 and was a major Calusa town at European contact. We combine extant research from this well-preserved site complex with new chronological and zooarchaeological analyses to provide new insight into the relationship between fisher-gatherer-hunter subsistence economies and small-scale but impactful climatic change. We identify and record the localized environmental changes co-occurrent with the global climatic episode known as the Little Ice Age (AD 1200–1850). By combining Bayesian statistical analyses of radiocarbon dates with zooarchaeological analyses of a waterlogged, shoreline midden we generate a high-resolution, localized view of socioecological interactions at the Pineland Site ca. AD 1200–1500. Such micro-scale temporal perspectives are necessary to achieve high resolution, localized histories of human-climate dynamics.
... Made up of the remnants of ceremonial gatherings and daily residential life, shell rings are among the most visible archaeological site types in the coastal Southeast U.S. where large earthen mounds are relatively rare (Thompson and Worth 2010;Turck and Thompson 2016). This is in part because when amassed in large numbers, mollusk shells deteriorate slowly and create an environment where other organic materials, particularly bone, remain intact for long periods of time . ...
... 2951-2770 cal B.P.). As noted earlier, the original ring residents lived when sea levels stabilized at a high point near modern levels (DePratter and Howard 1981; Gayes et al. 1992;Scott et al. 1995;Thompson and Worth 2010). A thousand years later, sea levels had dropped precipitously, leaving the ring several dozen kilometers or more from the ocean's edge (Colquhoun and Brooks 1986;Thompson and Turck 2009). ...
Native Americans created numerous shell rings – large circular or arcing middens surrounding open plazas – across the coastal Southeast U.S. during the Late Archaic (ca. 4800–3200 cal B.P.). While archaeologists have long studied how Late Archaic peoples formed and used shell rings, their later histories are less well known despite these constructions being long-lasting and visible for millennia after their formation. We describe how later southeastern coastal occupants engaged with one such ring, the Sea Pines Shell Ring, by cremating human and non-human bodies more than a thousand years after its initial construction. This ritual reuse echoes similar practices engaged more than a thousand years earlier at another nearby ring and suggests that these sites were viewed as powerful places both during their initial construction and for hundreds of years afterwards. Relying on Native American philosophers, we suggest that shell rings, like other powerful places, are best understood as revelatory locales where time could be collapsed and communication with powerful entities, including ancestral peoples, established.
... Archaeological data indicate that the 5000-year cultural and human history of the Georgia coast is characterized by (1) near-continuous and accelerating population growth; (2) significant shifts in political organization and settlement organization; and (3) changing subsistence economies. By as early as 4500 BP, Indigenous Americans were living on the Georgia coast at large, year-round sites generally located near estuarine environments (Reitz 1988; Thompson andTurck 2009, 2010;Thompson and Worth 2011). Significant increases in population, and an associated expansion of settlement into new and previously occupied locations, occurred during the Irene phase (ca. ...
... Significant increases in population, and an associated expansion of settlement into new and previously occupied locations, occurred during the Irene phase (ca. 600-400 BP), as populations began migrating to the Georgia coast, likely from the Savannah River Valley (Anderson 1994;Anderson, Stahle, and Cleaveland 1995;Pearson 2014;Ritchison 2018Ritchison , 2020Thomas 2008; Thompson and Turck 2009; Thompson and Worth 2011). This immigration of people from the Savannah River Valley also coincides with the shift from coastal foraging to a mixed economy focused on both marine resources and maize cultivation. ...
... Fluctuations in sea levels over the past 6,000 years had dramatic impacts on these areas and the location and availability of various coastal resources (Thompson and Worth 2011;Thompson andTurck 2009, 2010;Turck and Thompson 2016). Archaeological data suggests that by 4500 BP there was widespread human occupation along the Georgia coast, including on Ossabaw Island. ...
This report presents findings from recent systematic surveys and excavations at the site of Finley’s Pond (9CH204) to evaluate craft production (e.g., shell beads) and settlement expansion on Ossabaw Island, Georgia, within the context of larger social, political, and economic changes that occurred along the Georgia coast over the last millennia. Shovel tests and excavation units were conducted at Finley’s Pond as part of the University of Georgia’s 2016 Field School. The spatial distribution and density of Woodland and Late Mississippian period Irene ceramics at Finley’s Pond suggests settlement expansion and an increase in population size during the Mississippian period. The presence of beads in various forms of production, as well as raw materials and tools, such as whelk shells, abraders, and a microdrill, support the interpretation that Finley’s Pond was a location of craft production, specifically shell beads. These data suggest that the economic pursuits of Indigenous communities on the Georgia Coast was far more varied than archaeologists once thought. Our report underscores the need for further research into how non-subsistence based economic pursuits articulated with the timing of settlement expansion and the shift from foraging to farming along the Georgia Coast.
... Sea level changes during the Middle Archaic and early portions of the Late Archaic were rapid enough that people would have noted losing several meters of coastline every year and over a person's lifetime the coastline would have shifted dramatically. The speed of sea level rise impacted local biota and except in some riverine areas, would have negatively impacted the formation of estuaries and marshlands (Bishop et al., 2011;Custer, 1994;Howard & DePratter, 1980;Thompson & Worth, 2010). Rather than the rich marshes of today, the southeast coastline was largely made up of sand flats and beachlines prior to stabilization, with waters constantly encroaching and overtopping trees, scrub brush, and other inland ecozones. ...
Archaeology is in a period of change, a point of inflection in which the discipline strives to reject its colonial roots. Embracing the “ontological turn,” archaeologists are applying diverse worldviews within their interpretations, yet these worldviews continue to reintroduce colonial ideals as they emerge out of Western philosophical schools. Using Native American philosophy, a recent addition to the academy, several key themes are identified and applied to the study of Late Archaic shell rings found along the Southeast United States coastlines. Through these themes, these sites are interpreted as places where Native Americans established communication with non-human forces and eventually socialized the newly formed coastline. The use of Native American philosophy is provided as a counter-balance to the use of Western philosophy as a means of further decolonizing archaeology
... The broad spectrum of activities, actions and strategies encompassed under management systems may be organised around four main pillars: (i) harvesting methods (see for instance clam harvesting with digging sticks, en masse fish harvesting by means of weirs, traps and nets, the extension of harvest times through the construction of holding ponds into intertidal fish traps, the establishment of harvesting rules to prevent overharvesting, etc.) [196]; (ii) enhancement strategies (such as transplanting eggs, size selection, habitat conditioning and extension: boulder clearance, construction of rock walls in the lowest intertidal zone to create clam gardens, etc.) [126,207]; (iii) tenure systems (ownership of fish harvesting locations and/or rights to catch fish from certain areas) [208]; and (iv) world view and social realm (discouragement of overharvesting, pursuit of ecosystem equilibrium, initiation ceremonies) [128]. In the ethnographic and archaeological records, paradigmatic examples of aquatic management techniques are documented-among others-for the Chulmun people in Korea [123], several coastal societies from the Atacama Desert [209] and indigenous peoples from both the NW Coast of North America [210] and the Southern Coasts of Eastern North America [211]. ...
The transition to agriculture is regarded as a major turning point in human history. In the present contribution we propose to look at it through the lens of ethnographic data by means of a machine learning approach. More specifically, we analyse both the subsistence economies and the socioecological context of 1290 societies documented in the Ethnographic Atlas with a threefold purpose: (i) to better understand the variability and success of human economic choices; (ii) to assess the role of environmental settings in the configuration of the different subsistence economies; and (iii) to examine the relevance of fishing in the development of viable alternatives to cultivation. All data were extracted from the publicly available cross-cultural database D-PLACE. Our results suggest that not all subsistence combinations are viable, existing just a subset of successful economic choices that appear recurrently in specific ecological systems. The subsistence economies identified are classified as either primary or mixed economies in accordance with an information-entropy-based quantitative criterion that determines their degree of diversification. Remarkably, according to our results, mixed economies are not a marginal choice, as they constitute 25% of the cases in our data sample. In addition, fishing seems to be a key element in the configuration of mixed economies, as it is present across all of them.
... It is clear that the coastal zone in what is now the south-eastern United States was occupied by at least 4500 cal BP during the onset of Late Holocene conditions, and perhaps even as early as 6000 cal BP during the Middle Holocene; but evidence for earlier settlement is now submerged (Russo 1994;Thompson and Worth 2011;Turck 2012;Williams 2000). This region had relatively high population densities when compared to other regions of North America as early as the terminal Pleistocene, probably because it was a climate refugium in comparison to other regions across the continent (Anderson and Faught 1998;Russell et al., 2009;Garrison et al., 2012). ...
Shell middens, sometimes in the form of mounds of great size, are a ubiquitous indicator of coastal settlement and exploitation of marine resources across the world. However, shell middens are relatively rare before the mid-Holocene because most palaeoshorelines before that time are now submerged by sea-level rise since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Previously reported examples of underwater shell middens are almost unknown and of uncertain status, and it has generally been assumed that such deposits would not survive the destructive impact of sea-level rise or would be indistinguishable from natural shell deposits. Recently, two examples of underwater shell deposits have been independently discovered and verified as anthropogenic midden deposits – a Mesolithic shell midden on the island of Hjarnø in the Straits of Denmark, and a Middle to Late Archaic shell midden in the Econfina Channel of the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, USA. We report the comparative geoarchaeological analysis of these deposits, using a sedimentological approach to unravel their formation history and post-depositional transformation. Despite the differences in coastal geomorphology and geology, cultural context, molluscan taxonomy and preservation conditions between these sites, the results demonstrate similar sedimentological profiles that are distinctive of anthropogenic deposits, demonstrate their origin as subaerial deposits at the shore edge before inundation by sea-level rise, and show that these properties can be identified in sediment samples recovered from coring. These findings support arguments that such sites likely exist in greater numbers than previously assumed, that they can be identified from minimally invasive techniques without the need for extensive underwater excavation, and that they should be sought to fill critical gaps in the temporal and geographical record concerning Late Quaternary human use of coastal zones and marine resources.
... Classic examples are the Ertebølle 'kitchen middens' of Denmark and the shell mounds of Portugal, northern France and Scotland, the sambaquis of Brazil, the Anadara mounds of northern Australia, the 'mega-middens' of South Africa, and the mounds of J omon Japan, San Francisco Bay, the Gulf of Florida, Senegal and the Farasan Islands. Most of the largest concentrations of mounds are dominated by bivalves such as oysters, clams, mussels and cockles, occasionally by gastropods as in the Farasan Islands (Bailey and Parkington 1988;Bailey et al., 2013;Bailey and Hardy 2021;Balbo et al., 2011;Erlandson and Fitzpatrick 2006;Erlandson and Jones 2002;Fitzpatrick et al., 2015;Gutierrez-Zugasti et al., 2016;Hall and McNiven 1999;Jerardino 2012;Milner et al., 2007;Roksandic et al., 2014;Thompson and Worth 2011). ...
Anthropogenic shell accumulations (shell middens), often of great size, occur in their tens of thousands around the world’s coastlines. They mostly date from the Mid-Holocene onwards and are frequently taken as symptomatic of a Postglacial ‘revolution’ involving world-wide population growth and intensification in exploitation of marine resources. However, the comparative rarity of earlier deposits may have as much to do with Postglacial sea-level rise and the loss of evidence from earlier palaeoshorelines as with genuine socio-economic trends. Here we investigate the underwater Mesolithic (Ertebølle) shell midden of Hjarnø Vesterhoved in Denmark, one of the first underwater shell middens to be systematically verified as an anthropogenic shell deposit in a region world-famous for its many hundreds of Ertebølle shell mounds on the present shoreline. We show how a combination of geophysical survey, coring, excavation, stratigraphic interpretation and macroscopic analysis of midden contents can be used to identify underwater deposits, to unravel their taphonomic and post-depositional history in relation to surrounding sediments, and to distinguish between cultural and natural agencies of shell accumulation and deformation. We demonstrate the presence of an intact underwater shell-midden deposit dated at 5400–5100 cal BC, one of the earliest in Denmark. We demonstrate the usefulness of such material in giving new information about early coastal subsistence economies and greater precision to the measurement of palaeo-sea levels. We discuss the implications of our results for an improved understanding of the Mesolithic record in Denmark and of biases in the archaeological record of Late Pleistocene and Early-to-Mid Holocene coastal contexts. We emphasise the importance of researching more fully the geomorphological and taphonomic processes that affect the accumulation, destruction, burial, preservation and visibility of underwater archaeological deposits, the need to extend underwater investigations more widely and to more deeply submerged palaeoshorelines, and the combination of methods required to advance such investigations.
