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Life among the tides recent archaeology on the georgia bight
Abstract
Although this volume covers a broad range of temporal and methodological topics, the chapters are unified by a geographic focus on the archaeology of the Georgia Bight. The various research projects span multiple time periods (including Archaic, Woodland, Mississippian, and contact periods) and many incorporate specialized analyses (such as petrographic point counting, shallow geophysics, and so forth). The 26 contributors conducting this cutting-edge work represent the full spectrum of the archaeological community, including museum, academic, student, and contract archaeologists. Despite the diversity in professional and theoretical backgrounds, temporal periods examined, and methodological approaches pursued, the volume is unified by four distinct, yet interrelated, themes. Contributions in Part I discuss a range of analytical approaches for understanding time, exchange, and site layout. Chapters in Part II model coastal landscapes from both environmental and social perspectives. The third section addresses site-specific studies of late prehistoric architecture and village layout throughout the Georgia Bight. Part IV presents new and ongoing research into the Spanish mission period of this area. These papers were initially presented and discussed at the Sixth Caldwell Conference, cosponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and the St. Catherines Island Foundation, held on St. Catherines Island, Georgia, May 20-22, 2011.
Archaeofaunal remains from the central Georgia Bight (USA) are used in a case study for assessing coastal fisheries between 2760 BCE and 1500 CE, particularly from the perspective of sustainability. The longevity of this fishery is evaluated in terms of taxonomic attributions, richness, ubiquity, diversity, and mean trophic level (TL) of fish individuals (MNI) in assemblages from 22 coastal archaeological sites. The average pre-1500 TL (TL = 3.1) is below that of fish populations in a mid-twentieth-century ecological study (TL = 3.3). Although broad features of the regional fishery were sustained for millennia, practices at specific locations were influenced by environmental and cultural phenomena.
Fish remains from archaeological sites provide insights into the impact of long-term use on a local fishery prior to the 20th century. The zooarchaeological record from CE 1565–1900 shows that fishing at towns, forts, and missions was an important economic activity in the central Georgia Bight (USA). Cartilaginous and bony fishes constitute a third of the vertebrate taxa and half of the vertebrate individuals (MNI) in 19 coastal assemblages. Most of these fish are from inshore, estuarine locales. The average mean trophic level of this fishery is moderately high (TL = 3.4). This TL persisted from 1565 into the 19th century, occasionally approaching or exceeding levels above 3.5. The fishery began to show signs of overuse during the 19th century, a trend continuing into the 20th century. This study demonstrates the importance of archaeological data toward identifying long-term trajectories in regional fisheries.
Across the world’s seas and oceans, archaeological research focused
on islands has generally privileged those that are larger in size.
Explanations for this phenomenon range from the (mis)perception by
scholars that prehistoric peoples were more attracted to the presumed
greater number and diversity of resources typically available on larger
islands, to the ephemeral aspect of archaeological evidence on smaller
land areas. These are coupled with logistical and infrastructure issues
that often limit access to labor, equipment, and transportation to
conduct field activities (e.g., remote atolls in the Pacific). A growing
body of research demonstrates, however, that ancient peoples regularly
and readily occupied and/or accessed many smaller islands for both
terrestrial andmarine resources. In some cases,within an archipelago,
evidence shows an earlier occupation on smaller islands versus larger
ones, or an attraction to the former given unique or seasonal resource
availability and/or defensive capabilities. We describe cases from
several areas of the world that highlight the importance of relatively
small islands (∼1–500 km2) for understanding human adaptations
in what many have considered to be among the most marginal of
environments.
Across the world’s seas and oceans, archaeological research focused on islands has generally privileged those that are larger in size. Explanations for this phenomenon range from the (mis)perception by scholars that prehistoric peoples were more attracted to the presumed greater number and diversity of resources typically available on larger islands, to the ephemeral aspect of archaeological evidence on smaller land areas. These are coupled with logistical and infrastructure issues that often limit access to labor, equipment, and transportation to conduct field activities (e.g., remote atolls in the Pacific). A growing body of research demonstrates, however, that ancient peoples regularly and readily occupied and/or accessed many smaller islands for both terrestrial and marine resources. In some cases, within an archipelago, evidence shows an earlier occupation on smaller islands versus larger ones, or an attraction to the former given unique or seasonal resource availability and/or defensive capabilities. We describe cases from several areas of the world that highlight the importance of relatively small islands (∼1–500 km2) for understanding human adaptations in what many have considered to be among the most marginal of environments.
Cellars are usually easy to detect, but wall foundations can be difficult to find. A scatter of rubble in the soil may reveal the former location of a building; buried buildings are most commonly detected this way. It appears that chemical changes to the soil near buildings may also allow the locations of those buildings to be estimated; perhaps these buildings may be located even if no artifacts or features remain. Auxiliary features, such as buried roads, paths, wells, or privies, may suggest that a building was once nearby. An appraisal of several dozen geophysical surveys suggests that they have had a 50% chance of locating buildings.
Archaeologists have long known that important changes took place in aboriginal ceramic assemblages of the northern Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina coast after the arrival of Europeans. New pottery designs emerged and aboriginal demographics became fluid. Catastrophic population loss occurred in some places, new groups formed in others, and movements of people occurred nearly everywhere. Although culturally and linguistically diverse, the native inhabitants of this region shared the unwelcome encounter with Spanish people and colonial institutions, beginning in the early decades of the 16th century and continuing into the 18th century. Spanish missions and military outposts were established at native communities throughout the area, and these sites have been studied by both archaeologists and historians for decades. As a consequence, the lower southeastern Atlantic coast offers one of the most intensively studied episodes of multicultural colonial engagement in America. The Second Caldwell Conference was organized to bring researchers working in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida together to address and more precisely define aboriginal ceramic change throughout the region as a baseline for approaching a more broadly based anthropological perspective on the consequences of encounter. The scope of inquiry was restricted to late prehistoric and early historic (A.D. 1400-1700) aboriginal ceramic wares from Santa Elena (South Carolina) to St. Augustine (Florida). The primary objective was to more precisely establish the technology, form, and design of the archaeological ceramic evidence. Without devolving into semantic and/or taxonomic wrangles, we examined how well (or poorly) archaeological labels used throughout the region to identify pottery serve as reliable proxies for the physical examples of those ceramic traditions. We also attempted to define the time-space distribution of the various ceramic traditions and pottery types throughout the south Atlantic coast. Specifically, we asked: (1) Did the indigenous ceramic complexes change fundamentally with the arrival of the Spaniards? (2) Or did indigenous ceramic traditions essentially persist, and merely shifted geographically? The eight contributions of this volume examine, on a case-by-case basis, the most important aboriginal ceramic assemblages from Santa Elena southward to St. Augustine, across the region, contextualizing each assemblage with the relevant physical stratigraphy, radiocarbon dates, associations with Euro-American wares, and documentary evidence. We also attempt to situate the physical ceramic evidence from the northern Florida-Georgia-South Carolina coastline with the contemporary archaeological assemblages in the immediate interior. The volume concludes with an epilogue that summarizes the results and general contributions of the conference, relative to archaeological practice in the lower Atlantic coastal Southeast, and also to the larger cultural and methodological issues raised by these papers.
Barrier islands and marsh lagoons along the mesotidal coast of southern S. Carolina, Georgia, and N. Florida have reoccupied the positions of former Pleistocene shores and lagoons. During the late Holocene recession, barriers were welded onto the Silver Bluff (Pleistocene) barriers and the sea reoccupied relict embayments. In areas where rivers contribute sediment to the coast, the Holocene barriers are oblique to the relict shoreline. Initial shore orientations and lagoonal drainage patterns were determined by Pleistocene topographic conditions. Adjustments after Holocene welding are partially illustrated by beach ridges and truncations between sets of beach ridges. -from Author barrier islands South Carolina Georgia Florida
A geographic information system (GIS) was used to create a high-resolution predictive model of prehistoric archaeological site location in a poorly drained upland prairie region of central Illinois. The model is based on a logistic regression analysis of sample data using qualitative and quantitative measures of the natural environment as independent variables. Cross-validation testing indicates that the model’s predictions are about 73% accurate and represent a gain of up to 51% over a random or chance classification. Sites are most probable along the margins of wooded stream valleys and on the crests of well-drained knolls in the upland prairies. In contrast, site probabilities are low across extensive tracts of flat to gently undulating prairies. The modeled distribution of settlement appears to reflect complex prehistoric strategies of resource use, but it also could have been affected by geomorphic processes of landscape evolution. The model’s predictive capabilities may be a useful tool for modem land managers and development planners in the area.
Relative sea-level rise and/or a local sediment deficit have caused the retreat of these barrier islands during the Holocene. The results are a narrowing of the back-barrier region, a decrease in the tidal prism with a probable constriction of inlets, and an increase in the infilling of marshes and tidal flats associated with calmer water conditions. The sedimentary pattern depicts a fining-upward "regressive' stratigraphy behind the receding barriers. -from Authors
Skelly and Loy, Inc. of Monroevillc, Pennsylvania has used a geographic informati on system (GIS) to formulate models for site potential or archaeological resource sensitivity withi n four areas of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The models Llse easily available coded and digitized l ocational data for a variety of natural and cultural factors. The GIS models allow for the predictive evaluation of relative impacts of grounddisturbing activities in a flexible and cost-effective manner.
A diachronic examination of the emic meanings of "creole" in Louisiana reveals a dynamic and complex social identity that is not easily dissected into the etic (or Anglo-American emic) categories of race, class, or ethnicity. In fact, outsider misconceptions about Louisiana creoles have been incorporated into recent anthropological definitions of creolization. This study explores the vernacular understandings of creole through three generational shifts in Louisiana spanning the early-18th through mid-19th centuries. A comparison of these vernacular definitions with the results of archaeological excavations at two creole sites in New Orleans helps define three types of creolization: transplantation, ethnic acculturation, and hybridization. These are transitions that occurred in the self-fashioning of Louisianans as expressed through their houses, gardens, clothes, food, and household goods. Adopting a native perspective exposes the roles that worldview and individual agency play in shaping processes of cultural change.
A model of borderland culture is provided and the concept of creolization is placed within a borderland framework. Manipulation of social identities and affiliations is a daily occurrence in border areas and "creolization" can be seen as one possible outcome of such manipulation. Presentation includes: a definition for borderland and how it differs from a frontier, a discussion of why creolization should be treated as a part of culture contact studies, and examples of negotiated culture on the border with emphasis on the Minorcans of Spanish Florida. The final argument is that creole cultures are one variant of the many kinds of fluid, syncretic cultures that typically appear in border areas.
One of the earliest references to the aboriginal shell rings of South Carolina and Georgia was a short letter by William McKinley in the Smithsonian Institution Annual Report of 1872. McKinley described three shell rings on Sapelo Island, Georgia and suggested that the "moundcircles were doubtless for councils or games." He promised that his associates would "in the course of this year, get the negroes to open the mounds" (McKinley 1873:424). © 2009 by The University of Alabama Press. All Rights Reserved.
Commercial small-footprint lidar remote sensing has become an established tool for the creation of digital terrain models [DTMS]. Unfortunately, even after the application of lidar vegetation point removal algorithms, vertical DTM error is not uniform and varies according to land cover. This paper presents the results of the application of an adaptive lidar vegetation removal process to a raw lidar dataset of a small area in North Carolina. This process utilized an existing lidar vegetation point removal algorithm in which the parameters were adaptively adjusted bused on a vegetation map. The vegetation map was derived through the exclusive use of the lidar dataset, making the process independent of ancillary data. The vertical error and surface form of the resulting DTM were then compared to DTMs created using traditional techniques. The results indicate that the adaptive method produces a superior DTM.
WITHIN THE LAST DECADE there have been several advances in our understanding of the specifics of Moundville's developmental history. For example, critical segments of the regional chronology have been refined. Differences between early and late Moundville I phase communities have come into sharper focus. We have incipient chronologies of mounds and sheet midden deposits based on diagnostic sherds. The palisade has been firmly dated. We synthesize these and other refinements according to the following scheme: intensification of local production (AD 900-1050); initial centralization (AD 1050-1200); regional consolidation (AD 1200-1300); the paramountcy entrenched (AD 1300-1450); and collapse and reorganization (AD 1450-1650).
Water travel would have been a major component of the lifeways of native peoples in deltaic environments such as the wet landscape surrounding the Mississippian town at Bottle Creek. For this reason archaeologists have taken an interest in reports of an aboriginal canal at Bottle Creek. In this chapter I review ethnohistoric and archaeological evidence from the lower Southeast to consider what role water travel might have played in Mississippian settlement of Mound Island. I then describe the alleged canal at Bottle Creek (Figure 11.1). I draw here from my survey of the canal channel and its surroundings and aerial photos of Mound Island (Figure 11.2). These lines of evidence suggest that the presumed Mississippian canal is most likely a relict channel of the intermittent stream currently known as Dominic Creek. This conclusion does not mean that the material culture of boats and native practices of water travel did not play a significant role in the lifeways of Mississippian people in southwestern Alabama. Archaeological models of subsistence and settlement patterns in this kind of environment in the Southeast certainly highlight the significance of horticulture and foraging in estuarine and riverine settings (Brose 1984; Brown 1984; Campbell 1959; Curren 1976; Knight 1977; Larson 1980; Lewis 1988). People may have lived at scattered farmsteads or even in villages similar to earlyeighteenth-century native settlements along the bluffs of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, but they probably also maintained seasonal foraging/fishing encampments in the delta and surrounding regions (Davis 1984b:224-229; Knight 1984:209-215). Given the watery environment present in and around the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, dugout canoes like those known from archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence would have offered an essential means of travel (Fuller 1992; McWilliams 1981:42-46, 1988:8-9; McGahey 1974; Stowe 1974). © 2003 by The University of Alabama Press. All rights reserved.
Rather than reduce colonial encounters to a universal creolization process, creolization is examined as conflict between various colonial powers and indigenous groups with distinct social and resource organizations. The concept of ethnogenesis focuses analysis of creolization by probing colonial power relations and approaching material culture as the active negotiation of colonization and colonial inequality. The subject of analysis is indigenous objects that depict European colonizers; such material culture should provide a sensitive insight into indigenous perceptions of colonization and illuminate the relations between various colonizers and indigenous peoples throughout the world. This examination of material culture from the Haida of the Pacific Northwest demonstrates how one indigenous group developed distinctive strategies to negotiate colonial power relations.
Archaeologists working in the Caribbean have identified evidence of African continuities in the craft and architectural traditions of enslaved peoples. Less attention has been paid to the role of the abundant, European-produced goods that are also found in the homes of enslaved families. The material culture from one enslaved Bahamian family is explored here, looking at how European-produced goods were selected by enslaved Africans and imbued with meanings in the creation of a Creole culture. The family discussed lived on Clifton plantation, on the island of New Providence, and consisted of an African-born couple and their two island-born children. The enslaved population, due to the paternalistic attitudes of the plantation owner, enjoyed an unusual degree of access to island markets. Using analyses of ceramics and pipes recovered from the household, it is argued that African-based aesthetics directed the selection and composition of the artifacts recovered from the dwelling.
Four deceptively simple questions have guided our long-term research into the aboriginal lifeways of St. Catherines Island: 1. How and why did the human landscape (settlement patterns and land use) change through time? 2. To what extent were subsistence and settlement patterns shaped by human population increase, intensification, and competition for resources? 3. What factors can account for the emergence of social inequality in Georgia's Sea Islands? 4. Can systematically collected archaeological evidence resolve the conflicting ethnohistoric interpretations of the aboriginal Georgia coast (the so-called "Guale problem")? Over a span of four decades, the American Museum of Natural History has addressed these four fundamental questions using a broad array of field and analytical techniques. We conducted a 20 percent probabilistic transect survey of St. Catherines Island, walking and probing for buried sites across a series of 31 east-west transects, each 100 m wide. During this initial survey we located 122 archaeological sites, which we tested with more than 400 one-meter by one-meter units. Because the transect sampling was heavily biased toward sites with marine shell, we also conducted a systematic shovel testing program. We also augmented these systematic surveys with a direct shoreline reconnaissance (mostly following the late Holocene surfaces), recording roughly 84 additional shoreline sites on St. Catherines Island. By plotting the distribution of these known-age sites across the Holocene beach ridges, we have developed a detailed sequence documenting the progradation and erosion of beach ridge complexes adjacent to tidal estuaries and oceanward shorelines on the island. To evaluate the results of the 1000+ test explorations and excavations on St. Catherines Island, we have processed 251 radiocarbon determinations, including two dozen dates on "modern" mollusks (known-age specimens collected prior to atomic bomb contamination) to compute a "reservoir" correction factor specific to the estuaries around St. Catherines Island (of Δ5 = -134 ± 26). The results have been compiled into a dataset of 239 radiocarbon determinations for samples from St. Catherines Island. One hundred and ten of these dates (from 31 distinct mortuary and midden sites) could be directly associated with datable ceramic assemblages, which were classified according to Chester DePratter's (1979, 1991) Northern Georgia Coast chronology. By comparing the results of typological classification with the radiocarbon evidence currently available from St. Catherines Island, we propose a slightly modified ceramic chronology for St. Catherines Island. We analyzed the seasonal growth increments in modern hard clams (Mercenaria mercenaria) for a 9-year interval (beginning in 1975). Mercenaria suitable for seasonal analysis were recovered from nearly 85 percent (110 of 130) of the sites identified and sampled in the Island wide survey. We analyzed about 2000 individual hard clam shells recovered from these shell middens and, of these, 1771 individual specimens (or fragments) provided usable growth increment estimates, enabling us to address seasonal patterns during the 5000 years of human history. This study is reinforced by an oxygen isotope study of modern and ancient clams from St. Catherines Island. This transect survey produced an extensive and diverse set of vertebrate faunal remains collected systematically from archaeological sites tested across the entire island. Elizabeth Reitz and her colleagues analyzed this vertebrate faunal assemblage, which contains at least 586 individuals represented by 14,970 vertebrate specimens weighing 21,615 g. These materials provide a solid basis for refining hypotheses not only for St. Catherines Island, but for most coastal locations. With the exception of the first and last occupations (the St. Simons and Altamaha periods), the samples suggest a stable pattern of resource use through time, with little variation through time or across space (although the small sample sizes for each time period and circumscribed geographical setting might constrain this interpretation). She also notes the presence of numerous seasonal indicators in the vertebrate zooarchaeological samples recovered from archaeological sites on St. Catherines Island - including unshed deer antlers, juvenile deer dentition, and shark and sea catfish remains. But we also recognized the importance of examining diverse sources of seasonal information in our attempt to flesh out overall patterns of site utilization. We also include analysis of the vertebrate zooarchaeological assemblages from Meeting House Field and Fallen Tree, two additional sites intensively investigated by the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Georgia. The intensive program of mortuary archaeology has recovered the remains of more than 725 individuals from 18 archaeological sites on St. Catherines Island. More than 90 percent of these remains were analyzed by Clark Spencer Larsen and his colleagues, using a variety of microscopic, biomechanical, and stable isotopic techniques. In this monograph, we address the archaeology of St. Catherines Island using the broad-based theoretical approach known as optimal foraging theory, which is grounded in the more general paradigm of human behavioral ecology (that studies human behavior by applying the principles of natural selection within an ecological context). The broad rubric of "optimal foraging theory" encompasses a broad range of specific models, each of which employs a unique set of simplifying assumptions and constraints, and each can be used to derive testable hypotheses about foraging behavior under certain environmental circumstances. Each model is a formal, mathematical construct and they share the key assumption that during "economic" pursuits, the forager will operate to maximize the overall rate of energetic return. Specifically, we have employed three basic models to address the archaeology of St. Catherines Island. The diet-breadth (or prey choice) model addresses the issue of which foods should an efficient forager harvest from all those available on St. Catherines Island. Diet-breadth models predict that foragers will optimize the time spent capturing prey, and employ the simplifying assumptions that all resources are randomly distributed (without patches) and that "capture/handling" and "search" times represent the sum total of all time spent foraging. We also apply the patch choice model, which, combined with the central limit theorem, predicts that foraging effort will correlate directly with efficiency rank order, meaning that foragers should spend more time working the higher-ranked patches and less time in patches with lower energetic potential. Finally, we likewise employ the centralplace foraging model to investigate the time/energy spent processing resources at temporary camps before transport to a residential base. We find central place foraging theory to be useful for addressing the role and location of the residential base as a locus for provisioning offspring and mates or potential mates. This monograph also reports the results of optimal foraging experiments conducted over a 2-year period on St. Catherines Island, specifically addressing procurement and return rates for key marine and terrestrial resources that would have been available to aboriginal foragers on St. Catherines Island.
Interpretations of Southeastern Ceremonial Complex art are conditioned by varied assumptions. In this article we submit our own most fundamental claims governing an approach to this, corpus. As defined for our purposes, we contend that the imagery of Southeastern Ceremonial Complex art is uniformly that of otherworldly or mythic subject matter. Depictions of quotidian realities, such as portraiture or humans impersonating supernaturals, cannot be identified in this material, despite common claims to the contrary. Moreover, references are primarily to the celestial realm of a layered cosmos.
Severe marine erosion on Cabretta Island more than a decade ago exhumed large, semiconsolidated deposits of old tidal creek mud and salt marsh mud and sand formerly buried beneath modern beach-dune sands. These coherent exposures, as much as 1000 yr old, contain numerous relict creek and marsh features: characteristic sediments and physical biogenic sedimentary structures. Surf action upon these relict deposits resulted in erosional tiers, potholes and other irregularities. The collective result is a palimpsest substrate recording a complex, albeit small-scale, geologic history. Reburial of most exposures by a new beach-dune ridge shows that preservation of such palimpsest substrates is possible. -from Authors
This chapter discusses the analysis of late Mississippian settlements on Ossabaw Island, Georgia. Analysis of settlement patterns has become an increasingly important aspect of prehistoric archaeology. In general, this type of analysis offers an effective and expedient means of assessing a wide variety of prehistoric cultural phenomena. The chapter also discusses the Irene phase and Ossabaw Island in detail. Four different techniques are sequentially employed to analyze the Irene phase settlement system that existed on Ossabaw Island. Settlement-size distributional analysis will be employed initially to assess the general state of the settlement system. Cluster analysis will then be used to formulate a hierarchical model for the settlement system. Once this hierarchical model is formulated, frequency distributional analysis will be used to compare it with the theoretical expectations of geographical models of settlement systems. Finally, environmental analysis will be carried out to assess the relative importance of different environmental variables in determining the location of sites from different levels of the proposed settlement hierarchy.
Indian-dug canals in southern Florida were first described by antiquarians over one hundred years ago. These canals were designed to link natural bodies of water and were probably important in the control of travel and resource redistribution. One canal on the northwestern Gulf coast of Florida was described by S. T. Walker in the 1880s, but has escaped study by twentieth century archaeologists. This canal originally linked Choctawhatchee Bay with the Gulf of Mexico, providing an important travel corridor to the regional population. Extensive occupation of the area by Weeden Island and Fort Walton peoples suggests the canal may have been built and maintained by one of these late Woodland or Mississippian groups. Development in the area has destroyed the aboriginal canal, but evidence of its course is preserved in aerial photographs and Walker's description.
Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery, dating to the Middle and Late Woodland periods, is one of the most distinctive ceramic types in eastern North America. Stylistic analyses of Swift Creek pottery have focused mainly on the spatial distributions of individual paddle designs reconstructed from stamped impressions on pottery. These studies have proven useful for tracking instances of social interaction but offer little help in the identification of assemblage-level variation and broader social processes. Symmetry analysis offers one possible avenue for the comparison of Swift Creek assemblages. In this pilot study, I consider the symmetry of more than 200 reconstructed Swift Creek paddle designs. The results indicate a concern with mirror symmetry, rotational symmetry, or a combination of both. I next contrast the symmetry of sub-assemblages from the site of Kolomoki, a Woodland ceremonial center in southwestern Georgia. The analysis reveals consistency in the symmetry of assemblages from village deposits, while mound contexts are in many ways unique. I relate these trends to broader social trends, particularly the development of an active strategy of social incorporation.
Island biogeography was developed in the 1960s but derives from a long heritage of treating islands as distinct and special places when compared to continental situations. The ancestry of such views can be traced through western literature since the 16th century and, it is proposed here, has led to a bias against island peoples in Anglo-American thought. In this paper the bias is traced through popular literature, anthropology and on to its incorporation in contemporary island archaeology. In conclusion, it is proposed that island archaeologists - whether they work in the Mediterranean, the Pacific, the Caribbean or elsewhere - need to relinquish this inheritance and look to alternative ways of understanding in order to develop an even-handed and more appropriate interpretation of island societies in the past.
