Archaeological Perspectives on the Southern Appalachians : A Multiscalar Approach [1 ed.] 9781621901167, 9781621901020

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ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS

ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS A Multiscalar Approach

Edited by Ramie A. Gougeon and Maureen S. Meyers

University of Tennessee Press / Knoxville

Copyright © 2015 by The University of Tennessee Press / Knoxville. All Rights Reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. First Edition. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Archaeological perspectives on the Southern Appalachians : a multiscalar approach / edited by Ramie A. Gougeon and Maureen S. Meyers. — First edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-62190-116-7 1. Indians of North America—Appalachian Region, Southern—Antiquities. 2. Indians of North America—Appalachian Region, Southern—Social life and customs. 3. Mississippian culture—Appalachian Region, Southern. 4. Social archaeology—Appalachian Region, Southern. 5. Archaeology—Methodology. 6. Multiscale modeling. 7. Appalachian Region, Southern—Antiquities. I. Gougeon, Ramie A. II. Meyers, Maureen S. E78.A66A725 2014 974.004'97—dc23 2014024270

CONTENTS

Preface. King of Coosa, Ruler of Little Egypt: David Hally’s Life in Ruins Jim Langford and Marvin T. Smith Acknowledgements Introduction Maureen S. Meyers and Ramie A. Gougeon 1. The Changing Social Landscape of the Late Woodland to Mississippian Transition in Northern Georgia Julie G. Markin 2. Explaining Ceramic Stylistic Variability during the Late Mississippi Period in Northwest Georgia: A Design Type Analysis of Lamar Bold Incised Pottery John E. Worth 3. Protohistoric Ceramics of the Upper Coosa River Drainage Marvin T. Smith 4. The King Site: Refining a Pattern Language Model for the Late Mississippian Period in Northwest Georgia Ramie A. Gougeon 5. Native American Public Architecture in the Southern Appalachians Christopher B. Rodning 6. Closely Spaced Administrative Centers and the Organization of Mississippian Chiefdoms M. Jared Wood 7. Space and Time: The Culture Historical Setting for the Hollywood Phase of the Middle Savannah River Valley Keith Stephenson, Adam King, and Karen Y. Smith

xi xxiii xxv

1

33

59

85

105

141

171

8. Social Archaeology is Multiscalar Archaeology: Multiple Views of Savannah Period Settlement Pattern Change in Georgia John F. Chamblee and Mark Williams 9. The Role of the Southern Appalachian Mississippian Frontier in the Creation and Maintenance of Chiefly Power Maureen S. Meyers 10. The Many Dimensions of Hally Circles Patrick Livingood Afterword Robbie Ethridge Contributors Index

199

219 245

263 269 273

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures Fig. 1.1. Nearest and Next Nearest Neighbor Distances by Phase Fig. 1.2. Early Woodstock Site Clusters Fig. 1.3. Late Woodstock Site Clusters Fig. 1.4. Early Etowah Site Clusters Fig. 1.5. Late Etowah Site Clusters Fig. 1.6. Distribution of Napier and Early Woodstock Sites Fig. 1.7. Distribution of Swift Creek and Early Woodstock Sites Fig. 1.8. Late Woodstock and Early Etowah Site Distributions Fig. 2.1. Northwest Georgia’s Barnett Phase Fig. 2.2a and b. Lamar Bold Incised Vessel Forms Fig. 2.3a–d. Primary and Secondary Elements Fig. 2.4. Lamar Bold Incised Design Types Fig. 2.5a and b. Relative Frequencies of Lamar Bold Incised Carinated Bowl Design Types Fig. 2.6. Relationship of Sample Size to Number of Design Types Identified Fig. 3.1. Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Sites in North Georgia and Alabama Fig. 3.2. Incised motifs Fig. 4.1. Location and Plan of King Site Fig. 4.2. Conceptualization of Space at Structure 15 Fig. 5.1. Selected Sites in the Southern Appalachians Fig. 5.2. Schematic Plan Views of Townhouses and Structures Associated with Mounds Fig. 5.3. Schematic Cross Sections Illustrating Mound Stratigraphy Fig. 6.1. Lawton, Spring Lake, and Red Lake

12 16 16 17 17 20 20 24 39 41 42 44 49 49 64 78 91 98 109 110 116 142

Fig. 6.2. Lawton (20 cm Contour Intervals) Fig. 6.3. Spring Lake (20 cm Contour Intervals) Fig. 6.4. Red Lake (20 cm Contour Intervals) Fig. 6.5. Radiocarbon Date Plots Fig. 6.6. RCombine Radiocarbon Date Plots Fig. 6.7. Mississippian Administrative Centers, A.D. 1200 Fig. 6.8. Mississippian Administrative Centers, A.D. 1250–1350 Fig. 7.1. Middle Savannah River Region with Documented Mississippi Period Mound Sites Fig. 7.2. Location of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Plant Site in the Middle Savannah River Valley Fig. 7.3. Frequency Seriation for the Mound Centers and Sites of the SRS Region Fig. 7.4. Calibrated Radiocarbon Dates for Mound Centers and Sites in the SRS Region Fig. 7.5. Calibration Curve Showing Wiggles or Ambiguous Regions Fig. 7.6. Sequence Analysis of Averaged Radiocarbon Dates for Mound Centers and Sites in the SRS Area Fig. 7.7. Mound Centers and Associated Cemeteries in the Middle Savannah River Valley Fig. 8.1a. General Mississippian Mounds and Sites in Contrast with Early Mississippian Mounds and Sites Fig. 8.1b. General Mississippian Mounds and Sites in Contrast with Middle Mississippian Mounds and Sites Fig. 8.1c. General Mississippian Mounds and Sites in Contrast with Late Mississippian Mounds and Sites Fig. 8.2. Mound Site Locations from the Middle Mississippian Period, Physiographic Province and Major Soil Distributions Fig. 9.1. Location of Site 44LE10 (Carter Robinson) and Physiographic Regions within Southern Appalachia Fig. 9.2. Plan View of Excavations at Site 44LE10 Fig 9.3. Plan View of Structures at Site 44LE10 Fig. 9.4. Sites with Cannel Coal Artifacts and Sites with Mississippian Pottery Fig. 10.1. Map of All of the Mound Sites from All Periods Used in Hally’s Study Fig. 10.2. Histogram of Straight Line Distances and Travel Times between Mound Pairs

148 149 150 154 155 163 163 172

172 176 180 181 182 188 204 204 205 208 220 230 232 234 247 249

Tables Table P1. List of David Hally’s PhD, MA, and Honors Thesis Students Table 1.1. Ceramic Analysis for Early Woodstock Sites Table 1.2. Ceramic Analysis for Late Woodstock Sites Table 1.3. Ceramic Analysis for Early Etowah Sites Table 1.4. Ceramic Analysis for Late Etowah Sites Table 1.5. Nearest Neighbor Statistics by Phase Table 2.1. Lamar Bold Incised Design Types Identified for Little Egypt Site (9Mu102) Table 2.2. Lamar Bold Incised Design Types Identified for King Site (9Fl5) Table 3.1. Surface Treatment of Ceramics Table 3.2. Decorated Jar Rim Data Table 3.3. Cazuela Bowl Shoulder Decoration by Percentage Table 3.4. Percent of Sherds with Punctates and Incising Table 3.5. Most Popular Motifs from the Study Area Table 4.1. Southern Appalachian Pattern Language Table 5.1. Sites Discussed with Approximate Periods of Occupation Table 6.1. Radiocarbon Dates Table 6.2. Communal Labor Estimates Table 7.1. Ceramic Frequencies for Mound Centers and Sites in the SRS Region Table 7.2. Radiometric Dates for Mound Centers and Sites in the SRS Region Table 8.1. Mound and Site Totals for Early Savannah Period Georgia Table 8.2. Mounds and Dates for Early Savannah Period Georgia Table 9.1. Radiocarbon Dates from Carter Robinson Table 9.2. Tool Types Per Structure Table 9.3. Indicators of Craft Production in Structures

xx 8 9 13 14 14 47 48 70 73 74 75 79 89 125 153 159 176 178 203 206 231 237 238

PREFACE

KING OF COOSA, RULER OF LITTLE EGYPT David Hally's Life in Ruins Jim Langford and Marvin T. Smith

In the summer of 1968, David Hally fell asleep in a booth of Gigi’s Restaurant in Athens, Georgia—his head braced against the wall, his sunburned hand gripping half a piece of pizza. His wife, Carolyn, reached across the table and poked him with a fork, embarrassed that the other Friday night patrons would see the young archaeologist and think he was drunk, eyes closed and mouth open. They paid the bill in a hurry and drove home in silence, each reflecting on the journey that brought them to this small college town and to this moment of exhaustion. Dave was running his first field school that summer in the shadow of the Cohutta Range of Georgia mountains and just below the emerging foot of Carter's Dam, alongside the Coosawattee River—moving green and slow in its last unencumbered days. Dave’s work was salvage archaeology with a simple mission—outrun the bulldozers, the dynamiters and the dump trucks. He worked fast in the brutal sun. He shoveled, he troweled, he instructed, he consulted, he investigated. Jumping from unit to unit, one moment scientist, then teacher, then decision maker, then giver of orders and inspector. At the end of each week, he would drive almost three hours across the mountains to Athens to join Carolyn for a recovery weekend, then drive three hours back across the mountains on Sundays. His focus was on a site called Potts Tract, a late Mississippian village suburb just beside Talking Rock Creek—only an eight minute stroll from the mound complex at the Little Egypt site located at the junction of the creek and the Coosawattee River. Dave wanted to work at Little

xii PREFACE

Egypt that summer of 1968, but he could not secure the contract or permissions from the Army Corps of Engineers. So Potts Tract was where he first planted a shovel in Georgia soil and began to get the feel of the fertile riverside expanses of the Georgia Ridge and Valley province, and within a short span of eight summers he gained a reputation as a center of gravity for meaningful archaeology in this region once home to one of the most powerful and politically sophisticated societies in North America. But that first summer he spent his time chugging across the mountains in the ratty old blue and white Landcruiser—reflecting on how he got to this remote part of the southeast and wondering whether, at twenty-eight years old, he had made good choices thus far in his young career. Born and raised in York, Pennsylvania, near the impressive bottoms of the Susquehanna River, Dave gained his earliest American Indian cultural interests at Camp Minqua making articles of Indian lore and speculating about the origins and uses of Archaic Period flint blades and projectile points—all plentiful in the valleys near the big river. Dave and Barry Kent, high school swim team members and camp counselors together at Camp Minqua, spent time collecting projectile points and tools from islands in the Susquehanna River. While at camp, they were thrilled by the nearby Indian Steps Museum. Years later, Barry would become State Archaeologist of Pennsylvania. While still in high school also later in college, Dave and Barry began working with professional archaeologists—most notably then Pennsylvania State Archaeologist, Dr. John Witthoft—on the Sheeprock Shelter site, a Clovis-era rock shelter site situated in a scenic area above the Susquehanna. The site yielded unusually well-preserved materials such as fabrics, hafted tools, and elm bark baskets. Hally and Kent enjoyed surface collecting. One of their collection sites, Bear Island, was later excavated by Fred Kinsey in 1958 and christened the Kent-Hally site. According to Barry Kent, Dave believed it should have been the Hally-Kent site. This was probably the first professional excavation of an Archaic site from the Susquehanna Valley and the results of the excavations were published in the Pennsylvania Archaeologist. In later years, both Dave and Barry donated their collections to the Pennsylvania State Museum in Harrisburg. In these early Pennsylvania days, he first saw palisaded villages and the remnants of Iroquian long houses. More importantly, he felt the

JIM LANGFORD AND MARVIN T. SMITH xiii

magic of equating the past with the present through the tactile experience of uncovering and analyzing physical materials. He began to understand that soils and rocks and ceramics spoke their evidence and testimonies in languages that could be learned. But the allure of soils and cultures met some early challenges. Dave graduated from William Penn High School in 1957 and went on to Dartmouth where he first majored in rowing crew and swimming. While Dave’s father asked his son to take business and economics courses at Dartmouth, Dave thought that geology or forestry might be good avenues to guarantee a lifetime of career access to scientific studies and the outdoors. He laughingly confesses today that he began to have dreams of extracting endlessly long Eden points from neatly troweled profiles. Other more whimsical pursuits also tugged at the young man. In the summer of 1959, Dave and Barry took off on a grand adventure to tour archaeological sites in Mexico. While many of the stories of that trip are sealed forever as “top secret,” we do know that Dave spent a few weeks in Mexico in the company of a bullfight instructor, Joselito Torres. Dave and his friends took turns pushing a disfigured bicycle around a dusty corral—a bull’s horns strapped to the handle bars and a large pincushion slab of agave on this mechanical animal’s shoulders. They practiced their “tandas” and proper aiming and placement of the “banderillas.” Senor Torres gave Dave great hope that he might one day be a new generation Sidney Franklin—the celebrated Brooklyn-born bullfighter of the middle 20th century. But the serious scientist in Dave gained traction, particularly while contemplating his future on a train ride back to Dartmouth from Pennsylvania. Soon thereafter, he earned the notoriety of being one of the first two students to major in anthropology at Dartmouth after this field of study was split from its previous intertwining with other liberal art foci. One of his undergraduate projects gave him the chance to direct excavations at the early eighteenth-century Graeme Park site, the home of an early Pennsylvania Governor. This site was the property of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and the excavation allowed Dave to maintain his connections to Witthoft and Kinsey. In 1961, Dave graduated from Dartmouth and started working on his Masters and PhD at Harvard under Steve Williams. He toyed with the idea of conducting research in Nova Scotia under the direction of Porter Schiara on Dorset Eskimo sites, and he spent the spring of 1962 working in Guatemala at the Altar de Sacrificios site with Gordon

xiv PREFACE

Willey and Richard Adams, later president of the Society for American Archaeology. Dave first began working on Mississippian sites in the Tensas region of Northeast Louisiana as he assisted Steve Williams in 1962 refining the cultural and ceramic chronologies laid out by Philips, Ford and Griffin in 1949 in the Central Mississippi Valley Survey. The young graduate student found himself cutting through house floors, looking for sherds that might fill in gaps in the chronological knowledge base of the region. He was disappointed and chagrined that other information in these houses—food remains, lithic debris, house construction evidence—was being ignored for the sake of developing a timeline. He began thinking about how he might turn his study focus to look at the ways that people lived in these houses and villages. Under the direction of Williams in 1963, Dave and fellow graduate student John Belmont began survey work in the Tensas region, collecting sherds and digging test units at key sites. Dave and John split up their research of the Tensas region so that Dave would focus his work on the later cultures in the area—Plaquemine and the following periods—while John would focus on Coles Creek and its antecedents. They were the first and only archaeologists to put test pits into the largest mound on the Fitzhugh site. A few years later, this well-known mound was bulldozed as the landowner sold the entire mound for fill. That summer of 1963 yielded other memorable anecdotes for the young researchers. A crop duster in Louisiana dive-bombed the pair and twice soaked them with insecticide while they were collecting sherds in a field. A Louisiana sharecropper refused their multiple requests to investigate a site in his field, so they decided to discuss it with him one more time while the man was attending the wake and funeral of his mother at a local church. When they could not find a convenient way to talk to the man at the church, they went back to the field and made a mad dash to grab a few bags of sherds before the man could return. As Dave began to formulate his dissertation focus, he and John Belmont decided to go on a “road trip” to look at Mississippian ceramic collections that might assist in filling in the gaps of their knowledge of these cultures. Their extended tour included stops in Andover, New York, Philadelphia, Macon, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Tulsa, Memphis, and Paris (Texas, not the other one). The worst moment of their trip occurred in the attic of a building at LSU during a hot June day. The pair was rummaging through boxes of

JIM LANGFORD AND MARVIN T. SMITH xv

sherds and finding it difficult to share their only camera—a Polaroid—as they took pictures of various samples. Tempers flared in the 120-degree heat and they almost engaged in fisticuffs. They vowed to break off their friendship and never speak again. After dinner and a few beers, they “buried the celt” and decided on a better method for examining and photographing artifacts. Their research went more smoothly after that rough spot, and their friendship strengthened. John and Dave remain friends today, and Dave is the godparent to one of John’s sons. John is also proud to point out that he introduced Dave in 1965 to a young woman who lived on the top floor of John’s building in Cambridge. After spending so much time in the South, Dave was intrigued that one of these women had definitive southern roots and a genuine southern accent. Shortly thereafter, Dave married this young woman, Carolyn Reaves of Memphis, Tennessee. Today, Dr. Carolyn Hally is a practicing psychologist in Athens. The years 1964-67 were busy times in Boston as Dave finished his field research and began working on his 700-page dissertation, “PostColes Creek Cultural Manifestations in the Upper Tensas Basin of Louisiana.” Dave and Carolyn moved to Athens in 1967 as the University of Georgia hired three anthropology professors, including Dave, to begin teaching that fall. So the summer of 1968 was Dave’s long-awaited moment—running his own field school in his new job as a professor of anthropology and archaeology at the University of Georgia. Yet here he was—sunburned, shovel worn, road weary—almost face down in his Friday night pizza at Gigi’s. A near embarrassment to his young spouse. We can only wonder about the dreams of this young professor at that moment. Were these dreams of Eden points again, or bullfighting in a packed arena? Or perhaps a nightmare featuring the long-haired, pockmarked, pipe-smoking A. R. Kelley—cackling at young Dave from his camp stool in the cool shade of his field tent at the Little Egypt site? We don’t know the depth of Dave’s tribulations that summer. We do know that his work at Potts Tract gave him a first look at late Lamar archaeology in Georgia, and it was only the first year of the work that would mark the next 40 years of his career. That fall of 1968 was also an important family moment for Dave and Carolyn as their first child, Andrew, was born in October. The next year, the summer of 1969, began a four-year string of field schools at the Little Egypt site within a few hundred yards of Potts

xvi PREFACE

Tract. The strategy at Little Egypt was simple, albeit aggressive: excavate a large enough sample of structures to yield meaningful patterns of information from the artifacts and other evidence on the floors of these houses. Dave hoped to excavate 25 house floors and remove samples of soils and floor debris from these structures by gridding out two-foot squares and taking a 25 percent sample from each square. Using the recently developed Struever methodology of botanical flotation sampling, Dave hoped to obtain detailed information about the everyday lives of the people of Little Egypt. During the four years at Little Egypt in the period 1969-72, Dave was able to fully investigate three houses at Little Egypt. Additionally, he gained valuable information about the construction of the ceremonial mounds at the site and the nature of its rise as the capitol of the large and powerful province of Coosa. His work showed that the site rose in political importance after about A.D. 1475 as the largest of the site’s three mounds was enlarged four times. The late Greg Paulk, a member of the Little Egypt Field School of 1971, created a coloring book for the enjoyment of Dave and the crew. Too bad that we cannot reprint it here as a fine example of useless and tasteless humor from that summer. The 1972 crew was perhaps not as creative as the crew of 1971, but it was a highly energetic group. In his personal life, the Hally family expanded again in 1970 with the birth of daughter Leslye in 1970. Somehow, Dave managed to balance the field schools, the teaching and publishing obligations, the long drives and the joys of working with Carolyn in raising two children. The investigations at Little Egypt provided key information to Charles Hudson and his fellow researchers, Marvin Smith and Chester DePratter, in their quest to determine the routes of Spanish expeditions under the direction of Hernando DeSoto, Tristan De Luna and Juan Pardo in the mid-16th century. In the early 1980s, the Hudson group determined that Little Egypt was the capitol village of the paramount chiefdom of Coosa where DeSoto spent more than a month in 1540 and remnants of the Tristan DeLuna expedition spent more than six months in 1560. The work at the foot of Carter’s Dam also led to investigations by Dave and other researchers at several other sites along the Coosawattee and Conasauga Rivers that provided key pieces of evidence about the nature of the confederation of polities that made up the powerful province of Coosa.

JIM LANGFORD AND MARVIN T. SMITH xvii

Following quickly on the heels of Dave’s five field schools at Potts Tract and Little Egypt, other researchers began to look more closely at late Mississippian sites in northwest Georgia. Beginning in 1971, Pat Garrow took teams of Shorter College students out on field trips to investigate a previously obscure site on the Coosa River west of Rome. He and his students found evidence of a well-preserved 16th century village, soon afterward named the King site. Pat’s work during the period 1971-73 uncovered several intact houses, a council house, a palisade and many human burials of various statuses. Pat invited Dave in 1973 to come to the King site and participate in the investigations. Dave accepted the challenge and soon began excavating the village’s occupation structures as he brought a University of Georgia field school to the site in 1974. Grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Geographic arrived earlier that year to supplement Pat’s personal funding of the work to date. By the end of 1974, the combined teams had excavated more than 60 percent of the site. In the early 1980’s, Dave assisted in the Wallace Reservoir survey and with the investigations at Beaverdam Creek in the Russell Reservoir. But he returned to northwest Georgia in 1988 under contract with the Coosawattee Foundation to research the Leake site located a few miles downriver from Etowah Mounds near Cartersville. With funding from the Coosawattee Foundation and local citizens, Dave conducted field schools at Leake in the summers of 1988, 1989, and 1990. These early investigations at Leake showed two significant occupation periods—a Swift Creek component associated with three mounds, and a 16th century component that appears to be a village of the Etowah polity headquartered by the Etowah Mounds site occupation and visited by the DeSoto expedition in 1540. A highlight of these field schools was the creation of two awards presented on a recurring basis to students who had distinguished themselves during the course of each summer. The “Hernando Award” was a dwarf suit of armor unveiled at the end of the 1988 field school after hinting to Dave for weeks that a mysterious Spanish artifact had been found by me and weekend volunteers. A carefully crafted rumor began to circulate that this mystery artifact was secretly sent away to the Smithsonian for conservation work and then returned in time for the “end of the season” barbecue. Tensions were climbing as Dave was curious and perhaps even hurt that such an important artifact had been sent away for analysis without

xviii PREFACE

his knowledge. The cheap roadside tin-man was then unveiled with great ceremony and roaring laughter. The next year, the short-man artifact was outfitted with an engraved “plaque” describing its name and the name of the deserving awardwinning student. Appropriately, a local Cartersville sports engraver misspelled the name of the Spanish explorer, and the award became thereafter known as the “Hernado Award.” In the spirit of paired ceremonial towns, paired mounds and paired leaders of villages, the Chief Blackhawk Award was created to award that field crew member who had done the most to diminish the integrity of data, the site itself, and the entire field of the science and art of archaeology. Another cheap roadside artifact of recent Mexican manufacture, this plaster bust of the Iroquian Chief Blackhawk is conserved today in its special argon gas case in the basement of the Langford family home. He only makes appearances on special occasions. Complementing his work at Leake, Dave planned and supervised two Department of Interior survey grants to the Coosawattee Foundation in 1989 and 1992 for investigations of the Etowah River Valley within a five kilometer radius of Etowah Mounds. Managed on a daily basis by Bobby Sutherlin, these surveys provided a comprehensive examination of all types of archaeological sites in the vicinity of Etowah Mounds. Dave used the survey data to gain detailed knowledge about the growth and evolution of Mississippian sites in the area. From 1992 through 2008, Dave spent most of his time researching and writing about the King site. Funded by National Geographic and the Coosawattee Foundation, Dave returned to King with field schools in 1993 and 1994, and these two field crews finished excavating the remaining portions of the site not already excavated or lost over the years to erosion. The publishing of his book, King, not only marks the culmination of Dave’s research on this unique 16th century village, but also stands as a testimony to the application of his knowledge gained during 50 years of research of Mississippian sites and cultures. At its essence, the book details the founding and growth of a Mississippian village and the nature and daily life of its people. Some say that King is the best Mississippian Period research book of the past several decades. Certainly the depth of research in this book stands as a timeless lesson in analytical concentration: tremendous knowledge can be gained from the meticulous and thoughtful examination of raw data.

JIM LANGFORD AND MARVIN T. SMITH xix

In elevating his research beyond the King site and in considering the larger context of the nature of political systems, Dave thinks about the locations of mounds as markers or surrogates for chiefdoms. As Dave and Charles Hudson have looked through the lenses of 16th century Spanish diaries over the past several years, they have followed the structural discussions of Elman Service and Margaret Clayton to reconstruct the nature and locations of paramount chiefdoms in the southeast. Now Dave is looking at the rise, evolution and fall of chiefdoms—both at the larger and smaller scales—to gain even greater knowledge about these complex societies of the pre-European southeast. As Dave’s thought processes move to the broader contexts of chiefdoms, his analytical framework remains grounded in a simple habit that marks his entire career: use the documented data sets as the precursors of the theoretical framework. This research methodology contrasts with new trends in the archaeology world that propose an opposite approach: take a theoretical position and try to apply it to a data set. In reflecting on the archaeology of northwest Georgia over the past half of a century, we are proud to call our former professor a friend and a mentor. Thanks to Dave, our archaeology data set for northwest Georgia has expanded by many orders of magnitude since the 1960’s, and with guidance from him, we will continue to grow our knowledge base substantially. Moreover, many future generations of archaeologists will know and be grateful for his hard work and vision. The world of bullfighting may have lost a future super star, but the world of archaeology gained an exceptional researcher and educator, and a man who will always be remembered as one who fully earned his esteemed title of “Professor.”

Special Note Regarding the Students of Dave Hally During his career at the University of Georgia, Dave Hally directed 18 MA students, six PhD students, and six undergraduate honors theses (Table P1). Of his 18 MA students, six went on to obtain the Ph.D. degree, usually from other universities. Hally’s graduate students now teach and conduct research at major universities across the South, including the University of Kentucky, University of Mississippi, University of South Carolina (2), University of South Florida, Georgia Southern University, and University of West Florida (2). Many of Dave’s other

xx PREFACE

graduate students found careers in Cultural Resource Management, where they continue to make important contributions to knowledge. Dave also inspired many undergraduate students. For example, at least four undergraduate students from the Little Egypt field schools went on to obtain Ph.D. degrees from other institutions. Table P1. List of David Hally’s PhD, MA, and honors thesis students NAME

DEGREE

TITLE

PhD

Exchange, Trade, and the Development of Urbanism in Somalia

Emily Beahm

Hussein Ahmed

YEAR

PRESENT-DAY LOCATION (IF AVAILABLE)

1996

Unknown

PhD

Mississippian Polities in the Middle Cumberland Region of Tennessee

2013

Archaeological Assistant, University of Arkansas, Winthrop Rockefeller Institute Research Station

Ramie A. Gougeon

PhD

Household Research at the Late Mississippian Little Egypt Site (9MU102)

2002

Assistant Professor, University of West Florida

Julie Markin

PhD

Woodstock: The Rise of Political Complexity in North America

2007

Assistant Professor, Washington College

Jared Wood

PhD

Mississippian Chiefdom Organization: A Case Study from the Savannah River Valley

2009

Assistant Professor, Georgia Southern University

PhD

A Stable Isotope Examination of Food Residues on Contemporary and Archaeological Pottery from Southern Somalia

1992

Assistant Professor, University of Georgia

MA

A Classification and Analysis of Lithic Debitage from 9MU102: An Investigation into the Tool Manufacturing Activities at the Little Egypt Archaeology Site

1985

Archaeology mystery writer

Sandra Whitney

Beverly Connor

DePratter, Chester B.*

MA

The Settlement of “Shellmound” Archaic on the Georgia Coast

1976

Research Associate Professor and Head, Research Division, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina

Gwyneth Duncan

MA

A Morphological Analysis of the Tugalo Phase Vessel Assemblage

1985

unknown

Jill Gellar

MA

Nutritional Aspects of Southeastern Aboriginal Food Habits

1985

unknown

JIM LANGFORD AND MARVIN T. SMITH xxi

Table P1. List of David Hally’s PhD, MA, and honors thesis students (cont'd) DEGREE

TITLE

YEAR

PRESENT-DAY LOCATION (IF AVAILABLE)

Elizabeth Haywood

MA

In the Core of the Coosa Province: Archaeology of the Thompson Site, 9GO4, Gordon County, Georgia

2009

Owner, Alpha-Zed Consulting

Richard Jefferies*

MA

The Tunacunnhee Site: Evidence of Hopewellian Interaction in Northwest Georgia

1975

Professor, University of Kentucky

NAME

Adam King**

MA

Excavations at Mound B Etowah 1954-1958

1991

Research Associate Professor, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina

Gina Matthiesen

MA

Economic Specialization and Individual Variation in a Mississippian Chiefdom

1994

Lawyer, Pierce and Associates, Chicago, IL

Maureen Meyers**

MA

Natural Factors affecting the Settlement of Mississippian Chiefdoms in Northwestern Georgia

1995

Assistant Professor, University of Mississippi

Gordon Midgette

MA

Fort Morris at Sunbury: Survey and First Excavations

1976

Deceased

Lisa O’Steen

MA

Early Archaic Settlement Patterns in the Wallace Reservoir: An Inner Piedmont Perspective

1983

Archaeological consultant, Athens, GA

Marilyn Pennington

MA

A Comparison of Non-Flaked Stone Artifacts from Two Early Historic Sites in Northwest Georgia

1977

Deceased

Thomas Pluckhahn*

MA

The Evolution of Settlement and Land Use in Jackson and Madison Counties, Georgia

1994

Associate Professor, University of South Florida

Bobby Southerlin

MA

Mississippian Settlement Patterns in the Etowah River Valley near Cartersville, Bartow County, Georgia

1993

Owner, Archaeological Consultants of Carolinas, Inc., Clayton, NC

William Wood

MA

An Analysis of Two Early Woodland Households from the Cane Island Site, 9MP209

1979

Principal Archaeologist, Southern Research Historic Preservation Consultants, Inc., Waverly Hall, GA

John Worth**

MA

Mississippian Occupation on the Middle Flint River

1988

Associate Professor, University of West Florida

MA

A Quantitative Analysis of Variability in Selected Aurignacian and Perigordian Lithic Assemblages

1980

Retired, Delaware Department of Transportation archaeology; landscaper in Kennett Square PA

Ellis Coleman (co-supervisor)

xxii PREFACE

Table P1. List of David Hally’s PhD, MA, and honors thesis students (cont'd) NAME

DEGREE

TITLE

YEAR

PRESENT-DAY LOCATION (IF AVAILABLE)

1978

PI, Marron and Associates, Alburquerque, NM

Gary Funkhouser (co-supervisor)

MA

John Chamblee**

Honors Thesis

Settlement Pattern Change at the Fishing Creek Tract, Greene County, Georgia

1996

Database Administrator Principal, Carl Vinson Institute of Government, Universtiy of Georgia

Dave Naisangi**

Honors Thesis

Writing Mothers, Daughters, and Self: Feminist Ethnography and the Indian Diasporic Experience

1998

Associate Professor, University of Toronto

Christopher Geller

Honors Thesis

Three Techniques to find the Volumes of Vessels from Sherds

1982

Unknown

James Kendall

Honors Thesis

Qualitative Analysis and Abundance Measures in Zooarchaeology

1998

Superintendent of Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, New Hampshire

Hyla Lacefield

Honors Thesis

Little Brother of War

1993

Professor, Canada College

Robert Patton**

Honors Thesis

An Investigation of Domestic Architecture at the Leake Site (9Br2), Bartow County, Georgia

1990

Social Studies Teacher, Wayne County, Georgia

Paleodemography of the King Site

*obtained PhD from University of Georgia with a different advisor **obtained PhD from another university Table compiled by Maureen Meyers with much assistance from LaBau Bryan, Ramie Gougeon, Mary Ellen Hodges, Dick Jefferies, Tom Klatka, Sammy Smith, and Mark Wittkoffski.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume began in 2010 at the 67th annual meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, held in Lexington, Kentucky. An all day symposium entitled “Archaeologist, Mentor, Friend” was organized to celebrate the long career of Dr. David J. Hally, who retired that spring from the University of Georgia after forty-one years of service and scholarship. Participants included Tasha Benyshek, John Chamblee, Thomas Foster, Patrick Garrow, Ramie Gougeon, Hannah Guidry, Joel Jones, Adam King, James Langford, Patrick Livingood, Jon Marcoux, Julie Markin, Maureen Meyers, Meggie Miller, Marvin Smith, Ben Steere, Paul Webb, Jared Wood, and John Worth. Memories and pictures from field schools were freely shared by Norma Harris, Timmy Hill, Charles Hudson, Scot Keith, and Gina Matthiesen, among others. As the volume began to come together, additional contributors were sought from the ranks of Dr. Hally’s former students and colleagues. We began by sending an organizing introductory chapter to the authors for the purpose of compiling perspectives on southern Appalachian archaeology, Dr. Hally’s geographical and cultural stomping ground, through the analytical scales and units he employed throughout his long and fruitful career. This work is a hybrid of festschrift and new scholarship, both honoring past achievements and insights while looking forward to ongoing and future archaeological research made possible by Dr. Hally’s foundational studies. Jim Langford and Marvin Smith penned a preface for the volume from Jim’s original introduction to the symposium, and Robbie Ethridge graciously agreed to author a concluding chapter that highlights the impact of Hally’s contributions and suggests areas for future research. Our editor at the University of Tennessee Press, Thomas Wells, has helped steer us through the publishing process so patiently that we are left with the false impression that it must always be this seamless,

xxiv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

smooth, and enjoyable. Thomas and his support team run a tight ship, and we are indebted to his dedication to our project. As always, our families and friends make time for us to conduct our research, excavate and analyze materials, and otherwise ponder the past. Amanda Edge and Oliver are thanked for giving up more than their share of evenings and weekends so Ramie could meet his obligations and deadlines. Maureen thanks Billy and Gillian Meyers for acknowledging the necessity of this volume and making it possible for it to be completed in many ways. Will Meyers is acknowledged for his frequent interruptions, which allowed some ideas to be pondered a bit more. At various times, Robbie Ethridge, Thomas Pluckhahn, and Adam King served as valuable sounding-boards on edited volumes in general and the crafting of this one in particular. Robbie especially helped at all stages of the volume, and all three colleagues are thanked for their help and collegiality. Sammy Smith and LaBau Bryan greatly assisted in tracking down information on the work and whereabouts of Hally’s former students, listed in a table in the preface, for which we are very grateful. Finally, we thank Dave Hally. He served as our official advisor at the start of our careers, for Meyers’ masters’ degree (1995) and Gougeon’s doctoral degree (2002), and he has graciously offered counsel in an unofficial capacity ever since. As the title of the original symposium states, he has been for us a foremost archaeologist, mentor, and friend. We hope this volume does his career and scholarship justice.

INTRODUCTION Maureen S. Meyers and Ramie A. Gougeon

Societies are comprised of a multitude of nested and complexly intertwined levels of interactions and exchanges. Therefore, the study of prehistoric and historic societies archaeologically requires a methodology that captures phenomena, relationships, and patterns that occur at these various scales. This methodology is unlikely to originate in one all-encompassing theoretical perspective. Likewise, a method found to be useful at one scale may not work in another. We propose that Southeastern archaeologists have been developing innovative solutions for interpreting societies at a variety of scales in an unspoken, synergistic way for decades. The recent publication of a key work, David Hally’s King (2008), brings the benefits of incorporating a number of these methodological approaches to light. In honor of Dr. Hally’s career and accomplishments, as well as to illustrate the value inherent in examining archaeological datasets at different scales of analysis, we have assembled authors who have interpreted prehistoric and historic Native American societies using these particularly Southern Appalachian homegrown perspectived methodologies. In the last 40 years, Southern Appalachian Southeastern archaeology has capitalized on the robust interpretations of societies made possible through varied scales of analysis. This trend ran parallel to and was influenced by Mesoamerican archaeology (e.g., Blanton 1978; Blanton et al. 1982; Kowalewski et al. 1989). Much of this work in the Southeast, at all levels, is grounded in methods first used by David Hally in his archaeological research of late prehistoric northwestern Georgia. Hally’s work is inductive and grounded in archaeological data, and this

xxvi INTRODUCTION

informs his method of producing interpretations of the archaeological record. His explanations and reconstructions, built piece by piece from the data, are remarkable for their clarity and jargon-free presentations. As expounded upon in the preface to this volume, Hally employed micro- and macro-scale analyses of carefully captured, extensive datasets to reconstruct individuals’ uses of ceramic vessels, track changes in household structures, membership, and status through time and to develop regional-scale interpretations of socio-political systems. The full weight of these multiscalar approaches are found in the seminal King volume in which Hally (2008) reconstructs a social archaeology of a Mississippian town. As Charles Hudson (2010) noted, “if archaeology shares the social anthropological ideal of depicting other cultures in the round, as fully as possible, then I have to say that King comes as close to achieving that ideal for the ancient Southeast as anything I have ever seen or heard of. It is no exaggeration to say that [Hally has] set a new standard in [his] field—a truly social archaeology.” Although Hally did not invent nor actively champion these shifts in perspectives and understandings, he was instrumental in promoting them by quietly, steadily, and repeatedly demonstrating the utility of the methodologies behind them. Likewise, while many studies of the broader Mississippian Southeast are informed in part by Hally’s methods and interpretations, they are not limited to him or his students nor are they restricted to the Mississippian period. For instance, studies such as Rodning’s (2004) and Marcoux’s (2010) examinations of Cherokee households and their role in the emerging market economy of the eighteenth century, respectively, show the utility of approaching studies of historic Indian communities from different scales, even if not within the same work. Williams and Shapiro’s work in central Georgia reflects a multiscalar approach to demonstrate that populations across a large region shifted between towns and the larger polity of which they were a part; this work added considerably to our understanding of the Oconee chiefdom of the sixteenth century (Smith and Kowalewski 1980; Williams and Shapiro 1990, 1996). King’s (2003) examination of the Etowah site demonstrates how a close reconstruction of site chronology through household data can elucidate the rise and fall of a chiefdom, and further, the effects of that rise and fall within the larger region. Outside of the Southern Appalachian region, Livingood (2010) moved seamlessly between analyses of artifacts, sites, and regions to explain interpolity interactions in late prehistoric southern Mississippi. Payne and Scarry (1998) and Scarry (1990, 1996) similarly reconstructed the

MAUREEN S. MEYERS AND RAMIE A. GOUGEON xxvii

life of the Apalachee chiefdom in north Florida by also placing it within a larger regional context. Wilson (2008) has used a multiscalar approach to better understand the social history of households at Moundville. We could go on. In sum, in the last 40 years the utility of archaeological methodologies developed to address a variety of sociocultural phenomena at a variety of scales of analysis has exponentially increased our knowledge of southeastern Native American cultures at a pace perhaps only hoped for at the end of the 1960s. Where once archaeologists defined Mississippian chiefdoms, for instance, as redistributive economies that grew corn, prized Southern Cult icons, and built mounds, we now have a much richer and more complex understanding of the societies that created and experienced these sociopolitical entities. Our more enhanced understanding encompasses a recognition of the wider range of statuses present in middle-range societies (e.g., Blitz 1999), of variability in diet across the region (e.g., Jefferies et al. 1996), and of the nonexistence of a Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (Knight 2006) and a richer understanding of the meaning behind the iconography exhibited across the Southeast through time (King 2007). There is an acknowledgement of the incredible variability in how societies expressed these pan-South traditions or interacted with the Mississippian world (e.g., King and Meyers 2002), leading to better and more nuanced conceptualizations of what “Mississippian” is. Multiscalar and variably-perspectived approaches to archaeological data have made these advances possible.

Perspective and the Archaeology of Societies Southeastern archaeologists explore different scales of space and time using the development of such varied perspectives to understand the larger and smaller constructions of a society. Today, this methodology is typical of and expected in Southeastern Mississippian studies, but 40 years ago it was only beginning to emerge. The evolution of this methodology followed a seemingly logical trajectory from the advent of processual archaeology (e.g., Binford and Binford 1968; see also Meltzer 2011). An explicit goal of processual approaches included collection of multiple sources of data towards the ultimate goal of reconstructing culture. The application of this theoretical approach in Southeastern Mississippian studies and elsewhere resulted in increased attention to small details: collection of zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical remains using finer screening and flotation methods (Struever 1965; Hally 1981),

xxviii INTRODUCTION

use-wear studies of vessels and sherds (Bray 1982; Chernela 1969; Hally 1983b), and piece-plotting of materials across house floors (Hally 1980). Others offered explanatory models for the development of Mississippian lifeways and sociopolitical patterns by examining entire sites or regions (Smith 1978a, 2007a) These variably scaled approaches were particularly well suited to understanding Southeastern chiefdoms, which operated at different scales as well: scales of households, towns, polities, chiefdoms (however defined), and although still debated, paramount chiefdoms (Anderson 1994; Hally 1993, 1994). Bruce Smith articulated this point two decades ago when he compared attempts to understand the Mississippian emergence to the opening of a series of nested black boxes (Smith 1990:3, 2007b). David Hally was not the first or the only person to use variably scaled approaches to explore prehistoric Southeastern societies. At the level of material studies, for example, Steponaitis’ (1983) work on Moundville ceramics was a hallmark approach to examining the minutiae of sherds and vessels to reconstruct the occupations of Moundville, as well as the influences and interactions of Moundville on and with the surrounding region. Indeed, numerous Moundville researchers have used material approaches to examine different facets of Moundville and contemporaneous prehistoric Alabama polities. Peebles and Kus (1977), in their groundbreaking work, identified archaeological indicators of status. Powell (1988) examined human remains to conclude that status played a role in the health of an individual. Welch (1991) examined the location of extralocal goods to argue that a prestige goods economy was present there. More recently, Regnier (2006) used an innovative study of burial urns as the entry point for exploring changes in sociopolitical identities and affiliations during the tumultuous Protohistoric period in central Alabama. Further afield, Kelly, Brown, and Kelly (2008) examined settlement and burial data at Cahokia to understand the rise and fall of this great center; Emerson et al. (2008) continued this focus on Cahokia, arguing that its influence reached far and greatly impacted the surrounding areas. Each of these aforementioned studies, as well as many others too numerous to include, was initially based in processual ideas about data collection and analysis. Many authors have since continued to use processual approaches to data collection while incorporating “non-processual,” alternative theories in their interpretations of archaeological societies (e.g., Cobb 2000; Pauketat and Emerson 1997; Pluckhahn 2003). For the remainder of our introduction, we will discuss different scales of analysis and interpretation as reflected in Hally’s career and review

MAUREEN S. MEYERS AND RAMIE A. GOUGEON xxix

the importance of each stage of his work in seeing the larger societal picture. Following this, we explore the areas where Hally’s students and colleagues have taken these approaches in new directions, melding the best that newer theoretical paradigms have to offer with traditional, empirical archaeological research.

Ceramics At any level of archaeological research, understanding is based on interpretation of data derived from artifacts. At the “low” scales of households and communities, this is frequently accomplished through ceramic analyses. Ceramic artifacts have long been recognized as a particularly useful entry point for archaeological research because of their durability and tendency to be preserved in a wide variety of contexts, their ubiquity, and their applicability to a wide variety of analytical and interpretive approaches (e.g. Ford 1999; Willey 1998). An additional benefit perhaps long assumed but rarely rigorously examined is that ceramics may exhibit indicators of ethnicity (Boyd and Richerson 1987; Braun 1990, 1995; Carr 1995; DeBoer 1990; Wiessner 1989). Ceramic styles and designs can be used to suggest relationships between households (Gougeon 2000) and may also be used to demonstrate changes in households over time. Ceramic materials can be indicators of household status, based on the types of ceramics present, their paste, decoration, size, and even form. For example, certain types of ceramics can indicate that food consumption took precedence over food production; absence of the latter forms at the expense of the former frequently being cited as an indication of provisioning, a presumed high status marker (Blitz 1993; Welch and Scarry 1995). Ceramics can also indicate, based on the quantity or volumes of vessels (Clarke 2001; Hayden 2001) present, the number of people using them. Areas used for feasting tend to have larger vessels of repetitive types; that is, everyone used the same type of bowl during the feasting event (Hayden 2001). Areas used by one household yield evidence of fewer ceramic vessels but more variety in that multiple types of vessels were apparently needed to both prepare and consume food (Hally 1983a, 1984, 1986). By using ceramic and related artifactual data to interpret the daily life of the members of a household, we may be able to see changes in the household over time. This can consist of a typical life cycle for that society—the beginning of a household through marriage, its evolution through the birth and raising of children, and the eventual expansion or

xxx INTRODUCTION

splintering and even death of the household through the out-marriage and death of its members. In the case of Southeastern Mississippian societies, the house site may have been reused for generations (Hally and Kelly 1998; Polhemus 1987, 1990, 1998; Sullivan 1987). Here, careful examinations of stylistic changes in ceramics may prove to be an additional tool for identifying household changes beyond the current attempts to map the subtle shifts in the location and orientation of the house itself from the palimpsest of postholes and hearths. Villages with long occupations, or samples derived from multiple iterations of village growth and fission-expansion cycles (Blitz 1999), may allow us to see changes in behavioral patterns such as gender roles over time. Perhaps the location of preparing food shifted to an area previously only associated with consumption of food, thereby marking the coming-of-age and new responsibilities and activities of a young woman or the introduction of an of-age woman to a household. Or perhaps the household’s status was elevated, as indicated by the presence of many types of the same bowl, suggesting feasting was hosted by the members of this household. Studying ceramics and other artifact remains of a household is, sometimes quite literally, the ground floor of interpreting community organization. For example, by cross-mending sherds and plotting where the cross-mended pieces were found on the house floor, Hally (1983b) was able to show that the central floor had been periodically swept. His identification of small broken bowl fragments as scoops for food was important because it identified the very actions of individuals. In some ways, this scale of analysis is an extension of ceramic analysis of a household, but it is more encompassing of the totality of household life. While this micro-scale also involves food and other material remains (e.g. Hally 1981), it gets at the actions of individual household members, thereby eliminating the analytical and interpretive issues associated with viewing a household as a “black box” (Wilk 1990).

Households There has been a renewed interest in conducting household archaeology, and its more recent trajectory in Southeastern archaeology has been well documented by Pluckhahn (2010), a key source for this brief overview. Households are defined generally as a group of people who perform multiple, overlapping sets of activities, including those involved with production, consumption, and distribution of material goods, enculturation and sociocultural reproduction, as well as activities related to co-

MAUREEN S. MEYERS AND RAMIE A. GOUGEON xxxi

residency and transmission of rights and access to resources (Pluckhahn 2010:4; Ashmore and Wilk 1988:4; Wilk and Netting 1984:5). Archaeologically, households have generally come to be equated with remains of domestic structures, with household activities reflected in the variety and distribution of artifacts across house floors and activity areas. Hally’s fieldwork at the Potts’ Tract (1970), Little Egypt (1978, 1980), and King sites (1983a, b, 1984, 1985, 1986) was at the vanguard of Southeastern household archaeology in the 1970s (see also Jackson and Hanenberger 1990; Smith 1978b), and the late 1980s and early 1990s saw a fluorescence of household archaeological research by others (Mehrer 1988; Sullivan 1986; Stout 1989, Braun 1991; Peregrine 1992; Polhemus 1990; Riggs 1989; Smith 1990, 1992), and especially Rogers and Smith (1995). These studies were largely processualist and functional in their theoretical approaches. As Pluckhahn (2010:8) states, “among prehistoric archaeologists, the household was often viewed as a building block for larger social formations and a useful starting point for understanding changes taking place at larger social, spatial, and temporal scales.” This approach has been criticized for viewing households as unchanging and/ or autonomous units or for minimizing variation across households by ignoring or obscuring differences in the ages, genders, and kinship relationships of household members (Cobb 2000; McGuire 1992; Pauketat 1997, 2000, 2007; Tringham 1991; see also Deagan 1983). Cobb (2000) suggests that the building block approach is not helpful in and of itself but can be a useful methodological framework for getting at questions that household-scale data may be able to answer. Household archaeological research at its most basic is comparative as it is difficult to understand one household by itself. Analysis of households typically includes data derived from ceramics, zooarchaeological remains, lithic artifacts, or the floor itself and compares them to similar datasets from other households, preferably at the same site, or at least to other contemporaneous households within the same region. Through detailed analyses of material culture gathered from intact house floors, in addition to reconstructions of superstructures and construction techniques, analyses of building materials, and careful studies of uses of space, archaeologists can track differences in the development, demographics, or even the shifting statuses of households through time and space (Lacquement 2007). Such precise methodology was something new in the Southeast in the 1970s but is now expected (for example, see the ongoing work at the Berry site [31Bk22]; Beck et al. 2006). A number of Hally’s students undertook analyses of activity areas based

xxxii INTRODUCTION

on the data collected from house floors at sites he excavated, including Schneider (1972), Smith (1975), and Gougeon (2002) using the Little Egypt dataset (Hally 1978, 1980), and Patton (1990) using the Leake dataset. Kelly (1988) undertook an analysis of architecture using the King site data. Today, the widespread adoption of these research themes has moved household archaeology beyond explorations of architecture (for example, Nash 1968). Pluckhahn (2010) identifies six themes in household archaeology to date: production and consumption, status differentiation, agency and power, gender, ritual and symbolism, and identity and ethnicity. However, as theoretical perspectives have changed through time, Pluckhahn (2010:38) suggests that these themes are now, at times, too narrowly focused, and that continued focus on them “come[s] at the cost of reduced attention to the position of households in social and cultural change.” That is, archaeologists must be better at connecting individual households to larger processes to create a more complete understanding of past societies. We suggest that one way to do this is to examine the household at increasingly larger scales, the level of the community and region.

Community and Regional Survey Southeastern archaeology has benefited from a number of relatively recent theoretical paradigms and methodological approaches that consider past human behaviors at regional scales. For instance, explorations of “interaction spheres” (Nassaney and Sassaman 1995), including peerpolities (McKivergan 1995), yield considerable insight into the ranges and types of interactions that may have been possible and important in prehistory but yet might lack particularly strong material evidence. Similarly, Immanuel Wallerstein’s (1974) “world system” concept has also been applied to Southeastern sites in recent decades (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1991; Peregrine 1992; King and Freer 1995). We might also include the influence that Charles Hudson has had on a number of Southeastern archaeologists and ethnohistorians who take a particularly Annalesian approach to understanding the late prehistoric and early historic Southeast (Ethridge 2003, Gougeon 1999; see also Cobb). Southeastern archaeologists’ exploration of communities and regions is arguably tied to the development of settlement pattern studies in Mesoamerican archaeology around the middle of the twentieth century. The origins of settlement pattern studies can be found in cultural ecological

MAUREEN S. MEYERS AND RAMIE A. GOUGEON xxxiii

anthropology of the United States and environmental and landscape archaeology of Europe (Ashmore and Wilk 1988; Trigger 1989). Settlement pattern studies examine the distribution of a population in a given geographical region and the factors responsible for that distribution (Rouse 1972; Sanders 1970). In the mid- to late 1940s, archaeologists began to examine the distribution of sites across large areas (Willey and Sabloff 1993:172). One result of settlement pattern research was that the smaller site began to be recognized as an element in a larger, functional system (Ashmore and Wilk 1988). In the Southeast, household analyses are used to reconstruct diachronically the history of the larger community from its initial occupation to its abandonment. At each stage of occupation, the analyst additionally reconstructs a synchronic picture of the settlement, discovering which households were contemporaneous and how they did (and did not) interact and discerning indications of specializations and the different statuses of occupants and households. Hally (2008) well demonstrates how particular households at the King site changed in size and membership and how household clusters formed as daughter households (most likely literally the daughters of the original household founders) established their houses around shared central work areas. Hally’s (2008) analysis of the development of multiple household clusters within the King site community over time provides a rare glimpse of the life cycle of a village from its founding until its abandonment several generations later. Investigation of the patterning of structures within the broader context of the King site allowed for the identification of multistructure, extended family households, tracing their development through time, characterizing the status and roles of deceased family members, and identifying how community ideology was symbolically reflected in architectural components of the domestic habitation (Hally and Kelly 1998; Kelly 1988). This ability to reconstruct the evolution of a community through time via material remains and physical constructions is one way of tracing the social constructions practiced, negotiated, and lived by these prehistoric people. In doing so, and as more data is amassed from other sites, we can begin to compare the life of one community to another. It is then we start to glimpse the larger picture. Is the King site community typical of all Mississippian societies? Was their village most typical of a form built by Mississippian societies, a town sans mound? Or is it more typical of Southern Appalachian Mississippian towns in late prehistory? Attempting to answer these questions in the same methodical

xxxiv INTRODUCTION

way that Hally approached the King site gets to the crux of utilizing multiple perspectives when building social interpretations in archaeology: by focusing on the data and situating them at the proper scale, we can build our interpretations and therefore a more complete picture of how societies operate. Analysis at even the relatively large scale of the community or village ideally does not end there. By comparing contemporaneous communities within an appropriate regional scale, we can reconstruct how societies interacted and the repercussions of these interactions. These interactions might include trade and feasting but also less archaeologically discernible but socially important behaviors such as mate and information exchange. Regional analysis is supplemented by other information: smaller communities or outlying sites; evidence for warfare, perhaps from bioarchaeological evidence or in the form of a sudden palisade construction; changes in housing and ceramic styles; or changes in raw materials for trade goods. These types of reconstructions have roots in the culture-historical period, in that ideally we can recreate a Fordian seriation graph, not of ceramic or projectile point changes but rather of the evolution of communities in a region. In this way, because this information is based on smaller scales of analysis, we see the long-term consequences or culmination of processes and actions taken at the community, household, or individual levels. Multiscalar approaches move us beyond context-less site-specific reports at one end of the spectrum or overly vague culture-oriented summaries at scales beyond the limits of the data summarized to construct them at the other end. Instead, carefully conceived and executed multiscalar approaches to archaeological research can lead to robust and meaningful interpretations of societies, a basic goal of any anthropology worth doing.

This Volume’s Participants Our intent with this volume is to demonstrate how archaeologists have developed rich interpretations of Southeastern native societies at different scales of analysis. The end result of this examination is to show both the uses and the constraints of these approaches in reconstructing various lifeways across the Southeast. First, we present chapters that demonstrate different ways of examining material culture at different scales to develop interpretations of social phenomena. In light of Hally’s work, the chapters presented in the first section are based primarily on

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ceramic data. Next, other scholars reconstruct the life of the household at different sites, using ceramic, architectural, and other datasets. Finally, we present community and regional analyses of different areas of the Southeast. These chapters form a coherent whole. First, they use many of the methodologies of scale in the same way Hally’s work did, through the use of artifact, household, or settlement data—and usually use two or three types of data. Second, they expand on Hally’s initial work in these different areas. In Chapter 1, Markin examines the differences between Late Woodland Woodstock and Early Mississippian Etowah occupations using spatial site clustering analysis. She adds to Hally’s (1993, 1996) work on polity identification by examining changes in site clustering over time in north Georgia and uses the data to demonstrate how inequality could have arisen out of egalitarian societies. In Chapter 2, Worth creates a model for explaining ceramic stylistic variability in the Southeast by focusing on such variability at the Little Egypt and King sites. Here, he applies ceramic stylistic theory to a region where it is both necessary and overlooked, and identifies the role of agents in creating stylistic diversity and the meaning behind that diversity. Marvin Smith, in Chapter 3, also examines style and ethnicity through ceramic attributes in an analysis of Lamar ceramics on the Coosa River in Georgia and Alabama. Building methodologically and temporally on Hally’s (ex. 1990) work, he is able to identify attributes that signal both homogeneity and markers of ethnicity during the protohistoric period, something long needed in the region. Ramie Gougeon examines the designs of spaces in late prehistoric societies, from the largest to smallest scales, using the King site as an example. This chapter is an important addition to both Hally’s (2008) household analyses and his King site analysis, particularly its architecture. Gougeon uses the concept of pattern language to analyze how space was conceived by those living in this late prehistoric community, and in so doing complements Hally’s work while identifying other important insights. In Chapter 5, Chris Rodning examines a specific structure type, the Cherokee townhouse, at Coweeta Creek and compares it with similar structures in the Southern Appalachian region. Through a social archaeology theoretical framework, he uses extensive data to present a new perspective on townhouses as historic structures that are equal to prehistoric mounds in terms of both effort and monumentality, forcing a reconsideration of their meaning that is also tied to Cherokee cosmology.

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Jared Wood uses the results of excavations from three sites along the Savannah River to test three previously suggested competing models about the structuring of simple and complex chiefdoms. The case study presented in Chapter 6 brings several lines of evidence together, including ceramic typological descriptions, radiometric data, architectural analyses, labor estimates, and geographic spacing, which are contextualized at the scales of the village, chiefdom, and larger region. Wood suggests that Hally’s (1996) notions about chiefdom organization are the best fit for the region, though he notes that this fit is not conclusive support for the model. The authors of Chapter 7 provide an interesting contrast to Wood’s work in their consideration of the same interior Coastal Plain region addressed in Chapter 6. Keith Stephenson, Adam King, and Karen Smith begin with an innovative reexamination of the pottery seriation and radiometric data from 10 sites along the Savannah River. They propose a more refined chronology for these sites and, coupled with site distributions, environmental data, and evidence of specific subsistence and funerary patterns, develop an interpretation for the region through a political economy framework that is an alternative to the models presented in the preceding chapter. John Chamblee and Mark Williams provide in Chapter 8 a multiscalar examination of Savannah period (A.D. 1250-1450) settlement patterns across what is now Georgia. Drawing upon multiple spatial and temporal scales, Chamblee and Williams demonstrate that what Stephenson, King, and Smith suggest for the middle Savannah River valley is in evidence across the entirety of the region, namely that the “classic” chiefdom patterns observed in the Piedmont were short-lived in the interior Coastal Plain in the Middle Mississippian period. Their uses of ecological and sociopolitical ideas to contextualize and form their conclusions for why these chiefdoms developed and disappeared is worthy of considerable attention. In Chapter 9, Maureen Meyers takes us to the edge of the Mississippian Southeast with a study of trade, exchange, and households at the Carter Robinson site in southwest Virginia. Like Hally’s (2008) use of multiscalar analyses of intra- and intersite variability, Meyers demonstrates how individuals obtained and maintained power through the advantages afforded them by being located at the frontier of other chiefdoms in the Southern Appalachian region. In Chapter 10, Patrick Livingood tests Hally’s model of territories in the late prehistoric Southern Appalachians by simulating travel times instead of straight line distances between constituent communities of

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chiefly polities. Livingood expands on his previous research investigating the validity of “Hally circles” and adds an interesting new linguistic interpretation to his context. The volume concludes with an Afterword by Robbie Ethridge, who provides a bookend to this festschrift that considers the intersections of our participants’ works and Hally’s research in a broader regional and theoretical context.

Concluding Thoughts Archaeological interpretations of past societies as a desired end result fits well in our early twenty-first century, processual-plus era of theorybased interpretations of the prehistoric and early historic Southeast. Kus (2000:169–170) suggests that we archaeologists frequently feel compelled to make a big theoretical statement when it is our smaller “moments of focused appreciation” that generate the most awe and inspiration about understanding the past. She compares this process to building a quilt of “historical moments and specific cultural contexts forming larger and larger patterns” with an emphasis on getting the individual pieces right and with careful attention to how they are “stitched” together. This is what we have aspired to assemble in this volume to honor a scholar whose career has been marked by a long series of awe-inspiring, small yet significant moments of discovery that have led us all to a better understanding of a substantial piece of Southeastern prehistory. REFERENCES CITED Anderson, David G. 1994 The Savannah River Chiefdoms: Political Change in the Late Prehistoric Southeast. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Ashmore, Wendy, and Richard R. Wilk 1988 Household Community in the Mesoamerican Past. In Household and Community in the Mesoamerican Past, edited by R. R. Wilk and W. Ashmore, pp. 1–27. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Binford, Sally R., and Lewis R. Binford (editors) 1968 New Perspectives in Archaeology. Aldine, Chicago. Blanton, Richard E. 1978 Monte Alban: Settlement Patterns at the Ancient Zapotec Capital. Academic Press, New York. Blanton, Richard E., Stephen A. Kowalewski, Gary M. Feinman, and Jill Appel 1982 Monte Albán’s Hinterland, Part I: Prehispanic Settlement Patterns of the Central and Southern Parts of the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. Memoirs of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan 15. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

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Blitz, John H. 1993 Big Pots for Big Shots: Feasting and Storage in a Mississippian Community. American Antiquity 58:80–96. 1999 Mississippian Chiefdoms and the Fission-Fusion Process. American Antiquity 64(4):577–592. Boyd, Robert, and Peter J. Richerson 1987 The Evolution of Ethnic Markers. Cultural Anthropologist 2:65–79. Braun, David P. 1991 Why Decorate a Pot? Midwestern Household Pottery, 200 B.C.–A.D. 600. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 10:360–397. 1995 Style and Selection. In Style, Society, and Person, edited by C. Carr and J. Neitzel. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Bray, Alicia 1982 Mimbres Black-on-White, Melamine or Wedgewood? A Ceramic Use-Wear Analysis. The Kiva 47(3):133–149. Carr, Christopher 1995 A Unified Middle-Range Theory of Artifact Design. In Style, Society, and Person: Archaeological and Ethnological Perspectives, edited by C. Carr and J. Neitzel, pp. 171–258. Plenum, New York. Chase-Dunn, C., and Thomas D. Hall (editors) 1991 Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalist World Systems. Westview, Boulder. Chernela, Janet 1969 In Praise of the Scratch: The Importance of Aboriginal Abrasion on Museum Ceramic Wear. Curator 12(3):174–179. Clarke, Michael J. 2001 Akha Feasting: An Ethnoarchaeological Perspective. In Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power, edited by Michael Dietler and Brian Hayden, pp. 144–167. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Cobb, Charles R. 1991 Social Reproduction and the Longue Durée in the Prehistory of the Midcontinental United States. In Processual and Postprocessual Archaeologies: Multiple Ways of Knowing the Past, editied by Robert W. Preucel, pp. 168–182. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Ocassional Paper No. 10, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. 2000 From Quarry to Cornfield: The Political Economy of Mississippian Hoe Production. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Deagan, Kathleen 1983 Spanish St. Augustine: The Archaeology of a Colonial Creole Community. Academic, New York. DeBoer, W. R. 1990 Interaction, Imitation, and Communication as Expressed in Style: The Ucayali Experience. In Uses of Style in Archaeology, edited by M. Conkey and C. Hastorf, pp. 82–104. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Emerson, Thomas E., Timothy R. Pauketat, and Susan M. Alt 2008 Locating American Indian Religion at Cahokia and Beyond. In Religion in the Material World, edited by Lars Foeglin, pp. 216–236. Center for Archaeological Investigations 36. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

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Ethridge, Robbie 2003 Creek Country. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. Ford, James A. 1999 Analysis of Indian Village Site Collections from Louisiana and Mississippi. Originally published 1936, Louisiana Department of Conservation, Anthropological Study 2. In Measuring the Flow of Time: The Works of James A. Ford, 1935–1941, edited by Michael J. O’Brien and R. Lee Lyman, pp. 131–414. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Gougeon, Ramie A. 1999 Mississippian Socio-Political Complexity as Historical Structure. Paper presented at the 56th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Pensacola, Florida. 2000 Individual Potters in Household Analysis. Paper presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Macon, Georgia. 2002 Household Research at the Late Mississippian Little Egypt Site (9MU102). Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens. Hally, David J. 1970 Archaeological Investigations of the Pott’s Tract Site (9MU103), Carters Dam, Murray County, Georgia. Laboratory of Archaeology Series, Report 6. University of Georgia, Athens. 1978 Archaeological Investigation of the Little Egypt Site (9Mu102), Murray County, Georgia, 1969 Season. With contributions by Beverly H. Conner and Janet E. Roth. Laboratory of Archaeology Series18. University of Georgia, Athens. 1980 Archaeological Investigation of the Little Egypt Site (9 MU 102), Murray County, Georgia, 1970–72 Seasons. Submitted to USDI National Park Service, Contract Nos. 14-10-9-900-390, 1910P21041, and 9911T000411 (University of Georgia and NPS) and Contract No. C5546 (University of Georgia and Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service), Athens. 1981 Plant Preservation and the Content of Paleobotanical Samples:A Case Study. American Antiquity 46:723–742. 1983a The Interpretative Potential of Pottery from Domestic Contexts. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 8:165–198. 1983b Use Alteration of Pottery Vessel Surfaces: An Important Source of Evidence for the Identification of Vessel Function. North American Archaeologist 4(1):3–26. 1984 Vessel Assemblages and Food Habits: Comparison of Two Aboriginal Vessel Assemblages. Southeastern Archaeology 3(1):46–64. 1985 Domestic Architecture in the Native South. Early Georgia 10:40–52. 1986 The Identification of Vessel Function: A Case Study from Northwest Georgia. American Antiquity 52:267–295. 1990 Lamar Pottery Types of Northwest Georgia. In Lamar Archaeology: Mississippian Chiefdoms in the Deep South, edited by Mark Williams and Gary Shapiro, pp. 43–44, 52–55. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. 1993 The Territorial Size of Mississippian Chiefdoms. In Archaeology of Eastern North America: Papers in Honor of Stephen Williams. Edited by James B.

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Stoitman, pp. 143–167. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Archaeological Report 25, Jackson. 1994 The Chiefdom of Coosa. In The Forgotten Centuries: Europeans and Indians in the American South, 1513–1704, edited by Charles Hudson, pp. 227–253. University of Georgia Press, Athens. 1996 Platform-Mound Construction and the Instability of Mississippian Chiefdoms. In Political Structure and Change in the Prehistoric Southeastern United States, edited by John F. Scarry, pp. 92–127. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. 2008 King: The Social Archaeology of a Late Mississippian Town in Northwestern Georgia. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Hally, David J., and Hypatia Kelly 1998 The Nature of Mississippian Towns in Georgia. In Mississippian Towns and Sacred Spaces: Searching for an Architectural Grammar, edited by R. Barry Lewis and Charles Stout, pp. 49–63. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Hayden, Brian 2001 Fabulous Feasts: A Prolegomenon to the Importance of Feasting. In Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power, edited by Michael Dietler and Brian Hayden, pp. 23–64. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Hudson, Charles 2010 Remarks made on Hally’s retirement. 67th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Lexington, KY. Jackson, Douglas, and Ned Hanenberger (editors) 1990 Selected Early Mississippian Household Sites in the American Bottom. American Bottom Archaeology, FAI-270 Site Reports, Vol. 22. University of Illinois Press, Urbana. Jefferies, R. W., E. Breitburg, J. Flood, and C. M. Scarry 1996 Mississippian Adaptation on the Northern Periphery: Settlement, Subsistence, and Interaction in the Cumberland Valley of Southeastern Kentucky. Southeastern Archaeology 15:1–28. Kelly, Patricia (Hypatia) 1988 The Architecture of the King Site. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens. Kelly, John, James A. Brown, and Lucretia S. Kelly 2008 The Context of Religion at Cahokia: The Mound 34 Case. In Religion in the Material World, edited by Lars Foeglin, pp. 297-318. Center for Archaeological Investigations 36, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. King, Adam 2003 Etowah: The Political History of a Chiefdom Capital. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. King, Adam (editor) 2007 Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Chronology, Content, Context. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. King, Adam, and Jennifer A. Freer 1995 The Mississippian Southeast: A World Systems Perspective. In Native American Interactions: Multiscalar Analyses and Interpretations in the

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Eastern Woodlands, edited by Michael Nassaney and Kenneth Sassaman, pp. 266–288. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. King, Adam and Maureen S. Meyers 2002 Exploring the Edges of the Mississippian World. Southeastern Archaeology 21(2):113–116. Knight, Vernon James, Jr. 2006 Farewell to the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Southeastern Archaeology 25(1):1–5. Kowalewski, Stephen A., Gary M. Feinman, Laura M. Finsten, Richard E. Blanton, and Linda M. Nicholas 1989 Monte Albán’s Hinterland, Part II: Prehispanic Settlement Patterns in Tlacolula, Etla and Ocotlán, the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. Memoirs of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan 23. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Kus, Susan 2000 Ideas Are Like Burgeoning Grains on a Young Rice Stalk: Some Ideas on Theory in Anthropological Archaeology. In Social Theory in Archaeology, edited by Michael Brian Schiffer, pp. 156–172. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. Lacquement, Cameron H. (editor) 2007 Architectural Variability in the Southeast. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Livingood, Patrick C. 2010 Mississippian Polity and Politics on the Gulf Coastal Plain: A View from the Pearl River, Mississippi. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. McGuire, Randall H. 1992 A Marxist Archaeology. Academic, San Diego. McKivergan, David A., Jr. 1995 Balanced Reciprocity and Peer Polity Interaction in the Late Prehistoric Southeastern United States. In Native American Interactions: Multiscalar Analyses and Interpretations in the Eastern Woodlands, edited by Michael S. Nassaney and Kenneth E. Sassaman, pp. 229–246. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Marcoux, Jon Bernard 2010 Pox, Empire, Shackles, and Hides: The Townsend Site, 1670–1715. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Mehrer, Mark W. 1988 The Settlement Patterns and Social Power of Cahokia’s Hinterland Households. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Meltzer, David J. 2011 Lewis Roberts Binford, 1931–2011. National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. Nash, Charles H. 1968 Residence Mounds: An Intermediate Middle-Mississippian Settlement Pattern. Master’s thesis, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Mississippi, Oxford. Memphis State University Archaeological Research Center Occasional Papers 2, Memphis.

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Nassaney, Michael S., and Kenneth E. Sassaman 1995 Introduction: Understanding Native American Interactions. In Native American Interactions: Multiscalar Analyses and Interpretations in the Eastern Woodlands, edited by Michael S. Nassaney and Kenneth E. Sassaman, pp. xix–xxxviii. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Patton, Robert B. 1990 An Investigation of Domestic Architecture at the Leake Site (9BR2), Bartow County, Georgia. Unpublished Honors thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens. Pauketat, Timothy R. 1997 Mississippian Ups and Downs: Book Review Essay of Political Structure and Change in the Prehistoric Southeastern United States and Mississippian Communities and Households American Anthropologist 99:634–636. 2000 Politicization and Community in the Pre-Columbian Mississippi Valley. In The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective, edited by M. A. Canuto and J. Yaeger, pp. 16–43. Routledge, London. 2007 Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions. AltaMira Press, Lanham, MD. Pauketat, Timothy R., and Thomas E. Emerson 1997 Introduction: Domination and Ideology in the Mississippian World. In Cahokia: Domination and Ideology in the Mississippian World, edited by Timothy R. Pauketat and Thomas E. Emerson, pp. 1–29. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Payne, Claudine, and John F. Scarry 1998 Town Structure at the Edge of the Mississippian World. In Mississippian Towns and Sacred Spaces: Searching for an Architectural Grammar, edited by R. Barry Lewis and Charles Stout, pp. 22–48. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Peebles, Christopher, and Susan M. Kus 1977 Some Archaeological Correlates of Ranked Societies. American Antiquity 42:421–448. Peregrine, Peter 1992 Social Change in the Woodland-Mississippian Transition: A Case Study of Household and Community Patterns in the American Bottom. North American Archaeologist 13:131–147. Pluckhahn, Thomas J. 2003 Kolomoki: Settlement, Ceremony, and Status in the Deep South, A.D. 350 to 750. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. 2010 Household Archaeology in the Southeastern United States: History, Trends, and Challenges. Journal of Archaeological Research 18(4):331–385. Polhemus, Richard 1987 The Toqua Site: A Late Mississippian Dallas Phase Town. Report of Investigations 41. Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. 1990 Dallas Phase Architecture and Sociopolitical Structure. In Lamar Archaeology: Mississippian Chiefdoms in the Deep South, edited by Mark Williams and Gary Shapiro, pp. 125–138. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

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1998

Activity Organization in Mississippian Households: A Case Study from the Loy Site in East Tennessee. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Powell, Mary L. 1988 Status and Health in Prehistory: A Case Study of the Moundville Chiefdom. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Regnier, Amanda L. 2006 An Examination of the Social Composition of Late Mississippian Towns in the Alabama River Valley through Ceramic Styles. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Riggs, Brett H. 1989 Interhousehold Variability Among Early Nineteenth Century Cherokee Artifact Assemblages. In Households and Communities: Proceedings of the 21st Annual Chacmool Conference, edited by S. MacEachern, D. J. Archer, and R. D. Garvin, pp. 328–338. University of Calgary, Calgary. Rodning, Christopher B. 2004 The Cherokee Town at Coweeta Creek. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Rogers, J. D., and Bruce D. Smith (editors) 1995 Mississippian Communities and Households. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Rouse, I. 1972 Settlement Patterns in Archaeology. In Man, Settlement, and Urbanism, edited by P. J. Ucko, R. Tringham, and G. W. Dimbleby, pp. 95–107. Duckworth, London. Sanders, William T. 1970 Settlement Patterns in Central Mexico. In Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 10, edited by R. Wauchope, G. F. Eckholm, and I. Bernal, pp. 3–44. University of Texas Press, Austin. Scarry, John F. 1990 The Rise, Transformation, and Fall of Apalachee. In Lamar Archaeology: Mississippian Chiefdoms in the Deep South, edited by Mark Williams and Gary Shapiro, pp. 175–186. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. 1996 Stability and Change in the Apalachee Chiefdom. In Political Structure and Change in the Prehistoric Southeastern United States, edited by John F. Scarry, pp. 192–227. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Schneider, Kent A. 1972 Microsample Extraction: Innovative Instrumentation for Archaeological Data Recovery. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens. Smith, Bruce D. 1978b Prehistoric Patterns of Human Behavior: A Case Study in the Mississippi Valley. Academic, New York. 1990 Introduction: Research on the Origins of Mississippian Chiefdoms in Eastern North America. In The Mississippian Emergence, edited by Bruce D. Smith, pp. 1–8. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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Hopewellian Farmers of Eastern North American. In Rivers of Change: Essays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America, edited by Bruce D. Smith, pp. 201–248. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 2007b Preface to the New Edition. In The Mississippian Emergence, edited by Bruce D. Smith, pp. xix-xxxi. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Smith, Bruce D. (editor) 1978a Mississippian Settlement Patterns. Academic, New York. 2007a The Mississippian Emergence. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Smith, Marvin T. 1975 European Materials from the King Site. Southeastern Archaeological Conference Bulletin 18:63–66. Smith, Marvin T., and Stephen A. Kowalewski 1980 Tentative Identification of a Prehistoric “Province” in Piedmont Georgia. Early Georgia 8(1 and 2):1–13. Steponaitis, Vincas P. 1983 Ceramics, Chronology, and Community Patterns: An Archaeological Study at Moundville. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Stout, C. B. 1989 The Spatial Patterning of the Adams Site, a Mississippian Town in Western Kentucky. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Struever, Stuart 1965 Flotation: A Method for Recovery of Small-Scale Archaeological Remains. Proceedings of the 21st Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Bulletin 3:32–35. Sullivan, Lynne P. 1986 The Late Mississippian Village: Community and Society of the Mouse Creek Phase in Southeastern Tennessee. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. 1987 The Mouse Creek Phase Household. Southeastern Archaeology 6(1):16–29. Trigger, Bruce G. 1989 A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge University Press, New York. Tringham, Ruth 1991 Households with Faces. In Engendering Archaeology, edited by Joan Gero and Meg W. Conkey, pp. 93–131. Blackwell, Oxford. Wallerstein, Immanuel 1974 The Modern World System I. Academic, New York. Welch, Paul 1991 Moundville’s Economy. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Welch, Paul, and Margaret Scarry 1995 Status-Related Variation in Foodways in the Moundville Chiefdom. American Antiquity 60(3): 397–419. Willey, Gordon R., and J. A. Sabloff 1993 A History of American Archaeology, 3rd ed. W.H. Freeman, San Francisco. Wiessner, P. 1989 Style and Changing Relations Between the Individual and Society. In The Meaning of Things, edited by Ian Hodder, pp. 56–63. Unwin Hyman, London.

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Wilk, Richard 1990 Household Ecology: Decision Making and Resource Flows. In The Ecosystem Approach in Anthropology: From Concept to Practice, edited by E. F. Moran, pp. 323–356. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Wilk, Richard R., and Robert McC. Netting 1984 Households: Changing Forms and Functions. In Households, edited by R. McC. Netting, R. R. Wilk, and E. J. Arnould, pp. 1–28. University of California Press, Berkeley. Willey, Gordon R. 1998 Archaeology of the Florida Gulf Coast. Reprinted. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Originally published 1949, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 113, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Williams, Mark, and Gary Shapiro 1990 Paired Towns. In Lamar Archaeology, edited by Mark Williams and Gary Shapiro, pp. 163–174. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. 1996 Mississippian Political Dynamics in the Oconee Valley, Georgia. In Political Structure and Change in the Prehistoric Southeastern United States, edited by John F. Scarry, pp. 128–149. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Wilson, Gregory D. 2008 The Archaeology of Everyday Life at Early Moundville. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

1

THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE OF THE LATE WOODLAND TO MISSISSIPPIAN TRANSITION IN NORTHERN GEORGIA Julie G. Markin

Archaeologists have long recognized that the archaeological record contains a great deal of information on social organization, which can be accessed through spatial distributions of material remains. Because these distributions are produced through cultural activities that attach meaning to locations, structures, and other artifacts (Rodning 2009, 2010), reconstructing past social and political systems and the changes that occurred within them involves making social inferences from spatial distributions (Renfrew 1986). Settlement patterns (Binford 1962) are a primary avenue that archaeologists explore to determine the interrelationships between contemporary, interacting sites that had differential uses (Binford 1982) or that exercised differential levels of authority or means of expressing power (Mizoguchi 2009; Munson and Macri 2009; Thompson 2009). These studies locate settlements in larger political entities that involve regular interactions between individual settlements and an overarching, incorporating relationship of each settlement to a larger, regional network. By understanding these levels of interaction and connectedness and applying this approach to settlement patterns in north Georgia, we can map the significant demographic changes that occurred during the late Woodland to Mississippian transition to begin to answer questions about how complex societies develop and shape themselves and how cultures change. The period between A.D. 900 and A.D. 1000 has received much attention across the Southeast as a period of dynamic changes in social and political organization that transformed politically decentralized late

2 THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE IN NORTHERN GEORGIA

Woodland tribes into highly centralized Mississippian chiefdoms. In fact, Anderson and Mainfort state that the “Southeast . . . is one of the best places in the world to explore important questions of cultural evolution [because] the potential database is enormous” for trying to understand the ways people used their landscapes through time (2002:19). Late Woodland political organization involved the distribution of authority among many peers in a rather egalitarian system in which individuals could achieve but not inherit differential statuses (Sahlins 1958; Service 1962). In contrast, the more complexly organized Mississippian chiefdoms concentrated authority, status, and control over resources in the hands of a few elite individuals under a system of hereditary leadership (Earle 1987, 1991; Johnson and Earle 2000; Sahlins 1958; Steponaitis 1986). In north Georgia, the period of transition from late Woodland tribes to Mississippian chiefdoms is represented by the Woodstock phase, which falls stylistically and chronologically between the late Woodland Swift Creek/Napier phase (A.D. 600 to A.D. 750) and the early Mississippian Etowah phase (A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1200) (Caldwell 1957). Northern Georgia here denotes the area that stretches across Georgia above the Fall Line, bordered by Alabama to the west and South Carolina to the east. This period of change involved the maintenance of certain Woodland characteristics—e.g., the ceramic complicated stamping technique—in the context of incorporation of newer Mississippian cultural traits, such as the addition of new vessel forms and vessel size classes (Markin 2007). This process of incorporating new traits into the traditional system is indicative of the negotiations and decisions made by individuals and groups with regard to new ideas, subsistence practices, and settlement patterns that ultimately led to a dramatic change in sociopolitical organization. Thus, understanding the changes that occurred during the Woodstock phase is critical for reconstructing the processes of political evolution in north Georgia and the greater Southeast. Research in northwest Georgia (Markin 2007) suggests that this process of change was likely due to growing populations that ultimately circumscribed the availability of fertile bottomlands, resulting in competition over arable land. Much of the region is characterized by narrow valleys with limited tracts of alluvial soils, with fertile alluvial flood plains arising only below the fault line where wide tracts of flood plain soils are replenished by the periodic overbank flooding (Hally and Langford 1988; Meyers 1995). Existing coping mechanisms were insufficient to manage the risks associated with a decreased availability of land in the context of an increased need for production. To efficiently

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manage crop production, groups developed regional social networks, integrating multiple communities under a system of collective decisionmaking (Markin 2007). An unintended consequence of the development of these collective networks, however, was the opportunity for a powerful leadership to arise through the control of access to productive resources. Analysis of the mundane nuts and bolts of archaeology—ceramic and settlement data—allows us to determine the turning points where the collectivity of undirected human actions tips the scale towards the consolidation of power into the hands of a few that has been a defining trait of the Mississippian period and of the evolution of political complexity in general.

Regional Settlement Patterns In northern Georgia, our understanding of late Woodland (A.D. 600 to A.D. 900) settlement patterns and sociopolitical organization is limited based on the excavation of only a few sites. According to settlement pattern data, late Woodland sites tend to be located along major rivers rather than on tributaries (Cobb and Garrow 1996; Rudolph 1991), but no real tendency toward spatial clustering is suggested (Anderson 1996). More data are needed to verify these patterns specifically for northwestern Georgia. Annewakee Creek Mound is the only recorded late Woodland Napier mound site in northern Georgia (Dickens 1975), but its position in the late Woodland settlement system is unclear due to poor reporting of the site (Garrow 2000). Based on a greater number of excavated sites, the early Mississippian, early Etowah phase is better understood than preceding late Woodland phases (Hally and Rudolph 1986). Mound sites served as centers of political systems, and habitation sites clustered around mound centers (Hally 1996; Steponaitis 1978). Characteristic ramped platform mounds were constructed at Etowah (9BR1) and Sixtoe (9MU100), and defensive fortifications were common as evidenced by palisades at Etowah and Hickory Log (9CK9) (Cable 2000; Cobb and Garrow 1996; Larson 1972; Webb 2000). These traits were elaborated throughout succeeding Mississippian phases in northwest Georgia and across the Southeast. Nucleated, palisaded communities were built around central plazas that were dominated by one or more mounds (Lewis et al. 1998). Later Mississippian phases also exhibit site clustering, site hierarchies with habitation sites and platform mound centers, and a town-and-dispersedhamlet settlement pattern.

4 THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE IN NORTHERN GEORGIA

Concentrated in the upper Piedmont of northern Georgia (Hally and Rudolph 1986), limited Woodstock phase settlement pattern data indicate a wide spectrum of site types, from large villages (180,000 m2) to small camps (3,300 m2) and rockshelters (Cobb and Garrow 1996). A few larger sites along the flood plains of large rivers appear to have been occupied for longer periods and may have served as important political or social central places. Terraces and flood plains of smaller tributaries appear to have been occupied by seasonal or specialized sites (Cobb and Garrow 1996). While a range of site types and sizes exist for the Woodstock phase, current settlement pattern data do not suggest the presence of mound centers, site clustering, or the type of site hierarchy typical of the later Mississippian period (Cobb and Garrow 1996). Construction of defensive fortifications may have been common during the Woodstock phase as documented by palisade construction at Hickory Log (9CK9) (Webb 2001) and Woodstock Fort (9CK85) (Caldwell 1957). Two additional sites (9CK104 and 9TO48) (Caldwell 1957; Cable 2000) exhibit palisades, but the project area at Site 9CK104 and inadequate datable ceramic evidence at 9TO48 make the assignment of these palisades to the Woodstock phase questionable. Mound data are even scantier as only two potential mound centers, Summerour Mound (9FO16) and Chauga (38OC47), have been documented. While ceramic data suggest a Woodstock phase construction of the mound at Chauga (38OC47) (Anderson 1996; Caldwell 1953), ceramic and feature data at Summerour indicate a late Swift Creek period onset of mound construction, explaining its strong resemblance to the Napier Annewakee Creek Mound (Caldwell 1953; Cobb and Garrow 1996; Dickens 1975; Hally and Rudolph 1986; Pluckhahn 1996:191, 205). However, an early construction date does not preclude the use of the mound during the Woodstock phase.

Determining Site Clustering The spatial distribution of sites is a fairly direct means of mapping social organization on the ground (Ashmore 2002; Trigger 1967; Willey 1953). Settlement size and distribution data have a strong tradition of use among Mesoamerican archaeologists (Beekman 1996; de Montmollin 1995; Lucero 1999) to “infer political boundaries and changes in social organization” (Munson and Macri 2009:424). The locations and spacing of contemporaneous sites has frequently been used to indicate settlement clustering and polity organization (Hally 1996) because (1) competition

JULIE G. MARKIN 5

between neighboring groups leads to the creation of uninhabited buffer zones between them, and (2) the administration of a polity is more efficient when distances between settlements and the administrative center are small. Thus, settlement clustering may occur in both non-centralized and centralized societies although the expression of clustering differs. In non-centralized societies, all settlements within a cluster should resemble each other in size and architectural complexity because all towns are politically equal. Among the Mandan and Hidatsa of the Great Plains, each village was an independent political and economic unit but was bound to its neighbors by the need for common defense against external enemies, a pool of eligible spouses, and a network for internal and external trade (Bowers 1950; Meyer 1977:12–17, 71–73). To the extent that such groups act as a unit against neighbors of a different identity, uninhabited buffer zones may be expected to develop between settlement clusters. Conversely, political centralization is evidenced archaeologically through the clustering of settlements into defined territorial entities, possibly around administrative centers. Such societies should exhibit a settlement hierarchy in which most settlements are of equal size and architectural complexity while the administrative center is larger and has monumental public architecture such as temple mounds. To minimize within polity distances, administrative centers are generally located in the geographical center of the polity, and the maximum distances between settlements and the administrative center are usually 20 km or less, reflecting the distance that can be easily traveled in a single day (Hally 1993, 1999; Livingood, chapter 10, this volume). In northern Georgia and adjacent portions of Alabama and Tennessee, the patterning of settlement locations across the landscape reveals that Mississippian chiefdoms are in fact characterized by such spatial site clustering as habitation sites tend to be distributed within well-defined clusters around mound centers (Anderson 1994; Hally 1993, 1999; Steponaitis 1978). Hally’s comparison of the straight-line distances between mound sites in northern Georgia revealed a bimodal distribution of intersite distances (1999). Mound sites separated by less than 18 km represent the primary and secondary administrative centers of a single complex chiefdom while mound sites located 32 km or more from each other represent different polities. Assuming that these latter mound sites represented administrative centers of independent chiefdoms, “polities could have utilized, controlled, and/or claimed territories as large as 40–55 km in diameter” (Hally 1999:104). A portion of these territories may

6 THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE IN NORTHERN GEORGIA

have served as a military buffer zone or wild food reserve, particularly as these second-growth forest areas provided a habitat that was preferred by white-tailed deer (Anderson 1994; Marcus 2012). The Moundville chiefdom exhibits a similar pattern, with sites clustering within a 30 to 50 km-wide area (Welch 1998). This pattern is also demonstrated in “historically and archaeologically documented chiefdoms” (Welch 1998:134) throughout the world that are defined by the distance a person can travel by foot in a single day, which is approximately 56 km (Spencer 1982). To investigate site clustering, the distributions of contemporary sites must be established. Using ceramic cross-dating to accurately date contemporary sits and mound construction episodes, Hally (1999) was able to assess the tendency of sites in northern Georgia to cluster around mound centers. To determine the contemporaneity of sites across the region, Hally merged locally developed phase sequences (Hally and Langford 1988; Hally and Rudolph 1986; Wauchope 1948; Williams and Shapiro 1996) into a region-wide Mississippian ceramic sequence because the local sequences represented a single style zone throughout much of the Mississippian period. This region-wide ceramic sequence extends back in time to encompass the Emergent Mississippian Woodstock phase and the late Woodland Swift Creek and Napier phases, enabling the determination of contemporary sites and the occurrence of site clustering and polity development for these earlier periods as well. To answer larger questions about interactions between Mississippian polities in the north Georgia region, Hally investigated the locations and spacing of platform mound sites as recorded in available published settlement pattern data and regional site inventories (Hally 1999). In the absence of full-scale survey, Hally (1999) utilized reviews of published data, field and laboratory investigations, and unpublished reports and manuscripts on file with the Georgia Archaeological Site File to answer questions about the size of polities, the influence of the physical environment on polity location, and the variation in polity sizes. Following Hally’s methods, I analyzed Woodstock ceramic collections and reviewed archaeological records housed in the Georgia Archaeological Site File to first determine contemporary Woodstock sites and to then assess the tendency of contemporary sites to cluster into defined territories. Of the 205 Woodstock sites recorded in the Georgia Archaeological Site File, 152 sites had collections that were unsuitable for analysis because they had fewer than 10 sherds, artifact contexts were not recorded, curation location was unknown, or permission to analyze

JULIE G. MARKIN 7

was not granted. An additional 10 collections consisted of only lithic artifacts or were lacking site location data. Only 43 sites had substantial collections of unweathered sherds that were relatively large in size. To establish a chronology separating the 200–year Woodstock phase into early and late divisions, I analyzed the relative frequencies of diamond and line block motifs and the number of border lines surrounding the diamond motif. Early Woodstock motifs are dominated by concentric diamond designs that are surrounded by a high number of border lines. The line block motif is present in small amounts. The line block motif increases in frequency through time to constitute a greater percentage of the late Woodstock complicated stamped design repertoire, but it does not fully replace the concentric diamond and oval motifs. Also, the numbers of lands and grooves surrounding the concentric diamonds declines through time. Although no confirmed Woodstock phase mound sites exist, we can still search for centralization by identifying clusters of habitation sites within 40 km territories. According to Williams and Shapiro (1996:148), “the density and distribution of nonmound sites” may in fact be a better indicator of regional integration than the distribution of mound centers because the former more accurately define “rural expansion and the formation of buffer zones.” Using the newly created Woodstock ceramic chronology, I assigned sites to either early or late Woodstock. Based on the co-occurrence of limited amounts of Swift Creek, Napier, and Etowah ceramics in conjunction with the relative frequencies of the diamond and line block motifs, four sites (9CA18, 9FO16, 9LU7, 9TO48) appear to have been occupied during both early and late Woodstock and are counted in both sub-phases. Consultation of original site forms, manuscripts, and reports that described the ceramic data yielded an additional 22 sites that could be assigned to the early Woodstock period and 10 sites that could be assigned to the late Woodstock period. I plotted the distribution of early Woodstock (n=39) sites (Table 1.1) and late Woodstock (n=31) sites (Table 1.2) in ArcView to assess clustering. Clusters were determined based of the co-occurrence of at least three sites within a 40 km circle; additional Woodstock sites that were inaccessible for motif analysis or that lacked sufficient reporting of ceramic data were assigned to these clusters based on proximity to cluster members and the assumption that they would not have been operating outside the social sphere of the polity. I followed the same methods to map early and late Etowah site clusters. Of the 167 Etowah sites recorded in the Georgia Archaeological

8 THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE IN NORTHERN GEORGIA

Table 1.1. Ceramic analysis for Early Woodstock sites Site Number

Site Name

Woodstock Diamond#

Woodstock Line Block#

Other Woodstock

Swift Creek

Incised (262)

Late Comp (15)

Napier

9CA18

Isaiah Hunter

9 (50%)

9 (50%)

9CK2b

Woodstock

1717 (83.1%)

348 (16.9%)

9CK4b

Horseshoe Bend

14 (100%)

0 (0%)

4

9CK5b

Wilbanks

32 (100%)

0 (0%)

1

9CK7b

Noonday Creek

49 (100%)

0 (0%)

a

Hickory Log

115 (89.2%)

14 (10.8%)

Incised (2)

b

Ingram

32 (64%)

18 (36%)

Incised (5)

b

Smithwick Creek

233 (61.6%)

145 (38.4%)

9CK20b

Humphrey

37 (94.9%)

2 (5.1%)

Incised (1)

9CK23

Chambers

2 (66.7%)

1 (33.3%)

Check (22)

23 (92%)

2 (8%)

Check (2)

1 (11.1%)

Check (14) Incised (1)

9CK9a 9CK12 9CK17

a

9CK68a

8 (88.9%)

9CK103a

39 (84.8%)

7 (15.2%)

Check (3)

9CK647a

25 (78.1%)

7 (21.9%)

Incised (2)

38 (76%)

12 (24%)

Standing Peachtree

4

4

1

Late Comp (3)

9DA255a

5 (62.5%)

3 (37.5%)

9DA260a

21 (67.7%)

10 (32.3%)

Vandiver

2 (100%)

0 (0%)

High Tower

100%

0%

Whitehead Farm I

101 (96.2%)

4 (3.8%)

9FN4b

Noontootla Creek

100%

0%

B-Complex (2)

9FO1a

Strickland Ferry

24 (96%)

1 (4%)

B-Complex (2)

9FO3b

Settingdown Creek

48 (82.8%)

10 (17.2)%

9FO12b

Caldwell 41A

5 (100%)

0 (0%)

9FO16a

Summerour

5 (62.5%)

3 (37.5%)

Terry’s Ferry

8 (80%)

2 (20%)

Captain Johns

88 (97.8%)

2 (1.1%)

94.5%

5.5%

148 (73.6%)

53 (26.4%)

9DO1a 9DW1

b

9FL193

9FO29

b

a

9FU2b 9FU3b 9GW209

b

9GW497b 9HL17b

Caldwell 41

5 (83.3%)

1 (16.7%)

29 (80.6%)

7 (19.4%)

6

1

9CK72a

9CO1a

B-Complex (5)

Incised (3) Late Comp (3)

Incised (33)

1

Late Comp (2)

2

9

JULIE G. MARKIN 9

Table 1.1. Ceramic analysis for Early Woodstock sites (cont'd) Site Number

Site Name

Woodstock Diamond#

Woodstock Line Block#

9HL32

Caldwell 57

5 (100%)

0 (0%)

b

9LU7a

Chestatee

85 (72.6%)

32 (27.3%)

5 (62.5%)

3 (37.5%)

Tate

30 (81.8%)

7 (18.9%)

Banks B

4 (100%)

0 (0%)

9OG306a 9PI3

b

9RO53b 9TO48b

Lumsden

9WH5b 9WN5b

Other Woodstock

Swift Creek

Napier

B-Complex (7) Check (2) Incised (4)

Incised (1)

8

Late Comp (2) UID Comp (84)

UID Comp (18)

1

52

5 (55.6%)

4 (44.4%)

67 (81.7%)

15 (18.3%)

Late Comp (1)

2

35 (92.1%)

3 (7.9%)

UID Comp (1)

1

15

Numbers based on reanalysis of collections. Percentages and counts derived from archaeological reports, site forms, and manuscripts. # Percentages denote only the relative frequencies of Woodstock Diamond and Woodstock Line Block motifs. a

b

Table 1.2. Ceramic analysis for Late Woodstock sites Site Name

Woodstock Diamond#

Woodstock Line Block#

9BA17a

Grove Creek

4 (57.1%)

3 (42.86%)

9BR12a

Pumpkin Vine

1 (25%)

3 (75%)

9BR139a

Stamp Creek

98 (59%)

68 (41%)

9BR140a

Caldwell BR71

34 (60.7%)

22 (39.3%)

9CA18a

Isaiah Hunter

9 (50%)

9 (50%)

7 (43.7%)

9 (52.3%)

18 (62.1%)

11 (37.9%)

3 (50%)

3 (50%)

Site Number

9CK16a 9CK26

a, b

Sixes Old Town

9DA259a

Other Woodstock

Early Etowah

Check (23)

1

Incised (1)

9

9FN40b

Davenport

0%

100%

9FO16a

Summerour

5 (62.5%)

3 (37.5%)

9FO208a

Settles Pasture

2 (28.6%)

5 (71.4%)

9FO209a

Settles

5 (35.7%)

9 (64.3%)

2 (50%)

2 (50%)

Thompson

131 (67.2%)

64 (32.8%)

Check (12) Incised (4)

3

Rivermoore

Incised (5)

19

9FO256a 9GO4a

533 (49.8%)

538 (50.2%)

9GW193b

3 (50%)

3 (50%)

9GW494b

11 (61.1%)

7 (38.9%)

9GW495a

32 (33%)

9GW70

a

65 (67%)

13

9HL16b

Caldwell 40

4 (28.6%)

10 (71.4%)

1

9HL36

Caldwell 61

0 (0%)

39 (100%)

16

b

10 THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE IN NORTHERN GEORGIA

Table 1.2. Ceramic analysis for Late Woodstock sites (cont'd) Site Number 9HL45b 9HL366

Site Name

Woodstock Diamond#

Woodstock Line Block#

Caldwell 70

10 (23.3%)

33 (76.7%)

b

9JK141a 9LU7a

Chestatee

9MU8a 9MU103

Other Woodstock

4

0 (0%)

5 (100%)

30 (50%)

30 (50%)

85 (72.6%)

32 (27.3%)

Check (2) Incised (4)

8

46 (68.7%)

21 (31.3%)

Check (4)

2

119 (32.5%)

Check (9) Incised (2)

13

Incised (1)

Potts’ Tract

247 (67.5%) 4 (33.3%)

8 (66.7%)

9ST3a

Estatoe

17 (43.6%)

22 (56.4%)

9TO2

Brasstown Creek

UID Comp (1)

Indian Trail

a

9RA88a

b

9TO11b 9TO48b

Early Etowah

7

97 (40.6%)

142 (59.4%)

Check (4) Cordmarked (3) Incised (2)

5 (55.6%)

4 (44.4%)

UID Comp (18)

5

30

Numbers based on reanalysis of collections. Percentages, counts, and presence derived from archaeological reports, site forms, and manuscripts. # Percentages denote only the relative frequencies of Woodstock Diamond and Woodstock Line Block motifs. a

b

Site File, 65 sites had collections that were unsuitable for analysis because they had fewer than 10 sherds, were private collections, curation location was unknown, or permission to analyze was not granted. An additional six collections consisted of only lithic artifacts or were lacking site location data. Line block and ladder-based diamond motifs constitute early Etowah complicated stamping while the late Etowah period is characterized by the filfot cross, barred diamond or oval designs, and a series of concentric lines forming what looks like the letter “P” (King 2001; Hally and Rudolph 1988). Based on the co-occurrence of early Etowah ladder-based diamond and line block motifs in conjunction with late Etowah filfot cross and number nine motifs, two sites (9CK20 and 9WH19) appear to have been occupied during both the early and late Etowah phases and are counted in both sub-phases. Additional sites were assigned to each phase following consultation of original site forms, manuscripts, and reports that described the ceramic collections in sufficient detail and the addition of mound centers as determined by Hally (1996) using stratigraphic ceramic collections. I plotted the distribution of sites for early Etowah (n=22) (Table 1.3) and late Etowah (n=29) (Table 1.4) in ArcView to determine whether contemporary sites

JULIE G. MARKIN 11

fell into clusters within 40 km territories. I then assigned Etowah sites that were inaccessible for motif analysis to these clusters based on their proximity to cluster members. To test the validity of the clusters determined on the basis of cooccurrence within a 40–km circle, I performed a nearest neighbor analysis. Nearest neighbor analysis compares the observed average distance between neighboring points and the distance of a known pattern (Lee and Wong 2000). Sites are considered to be clustered if the observed average distance between nearest neighbors is less than the distance expected in a random pattern. To test for clustering, I calculated the R statistic for randomness by dividing the observed average distance (robs) between nearest neighbors by the expected average distance (rexp) between neighbors (Table 1.5). r = –1 2√n/A I measured distances for the nearest and second nearest neighbors for all sites I had mapped for the early Woodstock, late Woodstock, and early Etowah sub-phases as well as the sites designated as Swift Creek and Napier in the Georgia Archaeological Site File database. Observed average distance was calculated by averaging the distances for nearest (N1) and second nearest (N2) neighbor according to phase. The expected average distance was calculated for each phase, with n representing the number of sites and A representing the area (38,828 km) of the 44– county north Georgia study region. When R = 0, points are completely clustered; when R = 1, point distribution is random. Values greater than R = 2 indicate a dispersed pattern. Thus, “clustered patterns are associated with smaller R values (robs < rexp)” (Lee and Wong 2000:74). The standard error (SEr) indicates the likelihood that the difference between observed average distances and expected average distances is due purely to chance. A relatively large difference compared to the standard error indicates that the difference is statistically significant and is not the result of chance. I calculated standardized ZR scores for each phase to determine the statistical significance of the difference between observed and expected average robs distances as compared to the standard error (Table 5). ZR scores that are greater than 1.96 or less than –1.96 would indicate that any tendency for sites to cluster is statistically significant (at p = .05). It is possible that the R values returned for each of the phases may be as much the result of the locations where extensive archaeological survey has been conducted (e.g., reservoirs) as they are the result of a real tendency for sites to cluster. However, as such large-scale survey

12 THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE IN NORTHERN GEORGIA

projects typically locate sites regardless of time period, nearest neighbor analysis is still applicable and can provide some useful insights when site distributions for different phases are compared. Although an irregular distribution of survey areas may be contributing to lower R values for nearest neighboring sites overall, higher R values suggest that Swift Creek and Napier sites are more widely distributed across the survey areas while early and late Woodstock sites occur more densely in a smaller number of survey areas. This assertion is upheld by the higher R values (R > 1) for the second nearest neighbor distances for both the Napier and Swift Creek phases. To further assess the tendency of sites to be either widely distributed across the landscape or clustered, I plotted the distance (in km) from each site to the nearest through the fourth nearest neighbor by phase (Figure 1.1). For all phases, the nearest neighbor is located within 10 km with the late Woodstock phase distances being very similar at 6.9 km. A greater difference appears when the distance to the second closest neighbor is compared. Early and late Woodstock phase sites tend to be located within 11 km of the second nearest neighbor while Swift Creek phase sites are located at a distance of 13.5 km, and Napier sites are located at a distance of almost 16 km. The divergence from the patterns exhibited by the early and late Woodstock phase distributions becomes more notable when third (N3)

Figure 1.1. Nearest and next nearest neighbor distances by phase.

JULIE G. MARKIN 13

Table 1.3. Ceramic analysis for Early Etowah sites Site

Site Name

9BR1 b *

Etowah

9BR12 a

Pumpkin Vine

Early Etowah

Woodstock Diamond#

Woodstock Line Block#

369

2 (100%)

0 (%)

3

2 (100%)

0 (%)

UID Woodstock

9BR40 c 9CK4 c

Horseshoe Bend

9CK5 c

Wilbanks

9CK19 b

Coker

6

—

—

9CK20 b

Humphrey

16

37 (94.9%)

2 (5.1%)

9CK26 a, b

Sixes Old Town

11 (37.9%)

9EB1 b 9FO3 b

Settingdown Creek

9

18 (62.1%)

26

7 (100%)

0 (0%)

2

48 (82.8%)

10 (17.2%)

19

9FO4 c

Thomas

9FO12 b

Caldwell 41A

2

5 (100%)

0 (0%)

9FO25 b

Caldwell 48A

2

—

—

9HL38 b

Caldwell 63

7

—

—

Chestatee

8

85 (72.6%)

32 (27.3%)

30

5 (55.6%)

4 (44.4%)

18

5

9LU7 a 9MU100 c

12

Sixtoe Field

9RA3 c 9TO48 b 9WH2 c

Eastwood

9WH3 c

Nacoochee

9WH19 b

Burrong

9WH32 b

91

—

—

2

1 (100%)

0 (0%)

Numbers based on reanalysis of collections. Percentages, counts, and presence derived from archaeological reports, site forms, and manuscripts. c Early Etowah mound centers as assigned by Hally 1996:Figures 6.1 and 6.2. * Counts from Mound B Saucers 1-4 only. # Percentages denote only the relative frequencies of Woodstock Diamond and Woodstock Line Block motifs. a

b

and fourth (N4) nearest neighbor distances are compared. While the distance between each successive neighbor increases for all phases, the distances for early and late Woodstock tend to cluster within a tight (2.5 km) size range. While sites have a slight tendency to cluster during the Swift Creek and Napier phases, the greater distances noted for the third and fourth nearest neighbors indicate that clustering may occur on a local scale (i.e., first and second nearest neighbors) but on a larger, regional scale, sites are actually dispersed at this time. The tendency for sites to cluster becomes stronger through the subsequent early and late Woodstock sub-phases. Early Woodstock sites (Figure 1.2) appear to be located primarily along major rivers. Two clusters are evident on the Etowah River while

14 THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE IN NORTHERN GEORGIA

Table 1.4. Ceramic analysis for Late Etowah sites Site Name

Late Etowah#

Early Etowah#

9BR1 b *

Site

Etowah

354 (49%)

369 (51%)

Woodstock

9BR41 b

Winneman

2 (67%)

1 (33%)

1

9BR139 a

Caldwell BR60

83 (100%)

0 (0%)

166

9CK4 b

Horseshoe Bend

250 (77.4%)

73 (22.6%)

14

9CK5 b

Wilbanks

16 (100%)

0 (0%)

32

2

9CK1 c

9CK15 b

Cline Farm

1 (100%)

0 (0%)

9CK17 b

Smithwick Creek

40 (81.6%)

9 (18.4%)

378

9CK20 b

Humphrey

23 (59%)

16 (41%)

39

5 (100%)

0 (0%)

2

9CK129 b 9DO1 c

Annewakee Creek

9DW3 b

Palmer Creek

9EB1 b

10 (100%)

0 (0%)

24 (48%)

26 (52%)

7

9FO4 b

Thomas

12 (70.6%)

5 (29.4%)

9FU2 b

Captain Johns

4 (80%)

1 (20%)

90

9GO8 c 9HL17 b 9PI3 b

Caldwell 41

42 (100%)

0 (0%)

52

Tate

157 (80.5%)

38 (19.5%)

37

9RA3 c 9ST1 c

Tugalo Mound

9ST14 b

7 (100%)

0 (0%)

304 (100%)

0 (0%)

9WH2 b

Eastwood

9WH3 b

Nacoochee

99 (97.1%)

3 (2.9%)

9WH5 b

Lumsden

240 (92.3%)

20 (7.7%) 0 (0%)

9WH6 b

Williams

3 (100%)

9WH15 b

Sutton

6 (100%)

0 (0%)

9WH18 b

New

14 (66.7%)

7 (33.3%)

9WH19 b

Burrong

96 (51.3%)

91 (48.7%)

9WH29 b

Will White

33 (89.2%)

4 (10.8%)

Numbers based on reanalysis of collections. Percentages, counts, and presence derived from archaeological reports, site forms, and manuscripts. Early Etowah mound centers as assigned by Hally 1996:Figures 6.1 and 6.2. * Counts from Mound B Saucers 1-4 only. # Percentages denote only the relative frequencies of Early Etowah and Late Etowah motifs. a

b c

Table 1.5. Nearest neighbor statistics by phase

Napierc

Standard Error

R value

Phase

Z score (ZR)

N1a

N2a

(SEr)

N1a

N2a

0.67

1.06

1.20

-4.19

0.73

Swift Creekc

0.78

1.25

.62

-3.77

4.33

Early Woodstockb

0.65

0.84

1.03

-4.73

-2.80

Late Woodstockb

0.53

0.76

.87

-6.90

-3.47

N1 = nearest neighbor; N2 = second nearest neighbor. Based on Early (n=39) and Late Woodstock (n=31) sites as determined from analysis and written sources. c Based on Napier (n=43) and Swift Creek (n=83) sites recorded in the GASF for the north Georgia study area. a

b

JULIE G. MARKIN 15

three clusters are apparent on the Chattahoochee River to the southeast. The southwestern cluster occurs in the same location as the Napier phase Annewakee Creek (9DO2) mound site in Douglas County. Nearest neighbor analysis indicates that the early Woodstock sites are somewhat clustered (R = 0.65 and R = 0.84) and that this clustering is not the result of chance (ZR = –4.73, p < .0001 and ZR = –2.80, p < .0001). Conversely, late Woodstock sites (Figure 1.3) cover a more extensive geographic area and exhibit clustering in several additional locations in the north Georgia study area. Settlement is located farther westward on the Etowah River, in the area where the Mississippian Etowah chiefdom began to rise at the type site (9BR1) during the following 100 years (A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1100). The northernmost early Woodstock cluster on the Chattahoochee River, located in Hall, Forsyth, and Gwinnett Counties, continues to be occupied during late Woodstock as a large number of sites continue to concentrate around the Summerour Mound (9FO16). This cluster becomes the southernmost cluster on the river during this time period, however, as settlement extends northward to form two additional clusters. New clusters also occur on the Hiawassee River at the Tennessee line, on the Savannah River at the South Carolina line, and on the Broad River in Clark County, Georgia. Nearest neighbor analysis confirms that late Woodstock sites are more clustered (R = .53 and R = .76) than early Woodstock sites and that this clustering also is not the result of chance (ZR = –6.90, p < .0001 and ZR = –3.47, p < .0001). However, nearest neighbor analysis suggests that Swift Creek sites exhibit some clustering (R = .78) and that this initial clustering is unlikely to be purely the result of chance (ZR = –3.77, p = .0001). The second nearest neighbor statistic (R = 1.25, ZR = 4.33, p = .0001) indicates that settlements are even more widely dispersed than would be expected in a random distribution. Considering the current data set, analysis suggests that Napier sites exhibit some clustering (R = .67), which is unlikely due purely to chance (ZR = –4.19, p = .0001). Again, the second nearest neighbor statistic (R = 1.06, ZR = 0.73) indicates that Napier sites are more randomly distributed, and thus more widely dispersed, than Woodstock sites. Cycling of sites and clusters rather than continuous, uninterrupted occupation has been suggested for the Mississippian Etowah phase, with chiefdoms typically lasting for periods of less than 100 years (Hally 1996:113). The rise and fall of chiefdoms, i.e., cycling, has been investigated to explain political change in the Savannah River Basin (Anderson 1994, 1996) or the diversity of political strategies that guided interactions among the Classic Maya (Iannone 2002; Marcus 1998). Periodic

16 THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE IN NORTHERN GEORGIA

(above) Figure 1.2. Early Woodstock site clusters based on analysis, written sources, and proximity to cluster members. (below) Figure 1.3. Late Woodstock site clusters based on analysis, written sources, and proximity to cluster members.

(above) Figure 1.4. Early Etowah site clusters based on analysis, written sources, and proximity to cluster members. Stars denote mound centers (based on Hally 1996:Figures 6.1 and 6.2). (below) Figure 1.5. Late Etowah site clusters based on analysis, written sources, and proximity to cluster members. Stars denote mound centers (based on Hally 1996:Figures 6.1 and 6.2).

18 THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE IN NORTHERN GEORGIA

collapses were due to “factional disputes, military defeats, revolts against overly demanding chiefs, and episodes of weak leadership” (Flannery and Marcus 2012:307). Seemingly contrary to this Mississippian cycling model, early (Figure 1.4) and late Etowah clusters (Figure 1.5) appear to overlap in a number of locations, with six mound centers apparently occupied during both phases. However, at five of these mound sites, there is no stratigraphic evidence for when mound construction and use occurred (Hally 1996). As a result, we cannot say when each mound site functioned as an administrative center for a chiefdom: only during early Etowah, only during late Etowah, or during both phases. Three areas with early Etowah site clusters and mound construction continue to have site clusters and mound building in the late Etowah phase: around the Nacoochee Mound site on the Chattahoochee River in White County, farther south along the Chattahoochee River below Lake Lanier, and around the Etowah mound site on the Etowah River in Bartow County. Three late Etowah clusters arise in areas where early Etowah settlement appears to have been absent: the southern portion of the Chattahoochee River where the Napier phase Annewakee Creek mound site was located, an area in the southeastern part of the study area that was vacant during all but the Swift Creek phase, and an area along the Savannah River on the South Carolina border. Additionally, the early Etowah cluster farther south on the Savannah River appears to have been abandoned by late Etowah. Five mound centers are occupied during both early and late Etowah. Explaining the overlapping nature of these centers, Hally suggests that environmental factors limiting the number of locations that could support a chiefdom organization led to continued occupation of areas that boasted large expanses of alluvial floodplains, large stretches of shoals with abundant aquatic resources, and easy access to two different ecological zones where a diversity of resources could be exploited (Hally 1999). Anderson similarly notes the importance of location and resource availability in polity dissolution rather than polity maintenance, positing that a lack of adequate soils to support a system based on the intensive agricultural production of surplus resulted in the late Mississippian collapse of chiefdoms on the Lower Savannah River (1994; 1996). He further argues that additional factors, e.g., the regional political geography of competing chiefdoms and climate changes, must be considered in combination as “monocausal explanations of complex culture change . . . are incomplete and hence suspect” (Anderson 1996:190). In the case of northern Georgia, the reoccupation of specific mound centers

JULIE G. MARKIN 19

in the early and late Etowah phases may have been a means by which chiefs appropriated the authority of the previous chiefdom, reflecting their “decisions and dispositions to reproduce the social, political, and moral order” (Ashmore 2002:1178), reaffirming their increasingly unequal view of society. Following the Mississippian chiefdom cycling model proposed by Hally, one would expect areas of late Woodstock clusters to be abandoned during the early Etowah phase. Comparison of site clusters for the two phases reveals that a number of clusters in both phases overlap. Two clusters overlap completely: around the Etowah mound site on the Etowah River and around the Nacoochee Mound site on the northern reaches of the Chattahoochee River. However, four late Woodstock clusters appear to have been abandoned during the early Etowah phase. Additionally, during the early Etowah phase, previously vacant areas on the South Carolina state line along the Savannah River and west of Lake Lanier on the northern reaches of the Etowah River become centers.

Summary and Discussion Comparison of Woodstock site distributions to the preceding Swift Creek and Napier phases and the succeeding Etowah phase reveals interesting changes in site clustering through time. Napier and Woodstock sites tend to be located in different areas (Figure 1.6), but the small number of Napier sites located in north Georgia makes a robust comparison of site distributions difficult. Swift Creek and Woodstock sites share somewhat similar distributions across the north Georgia area (Figure 1.7); however, as the Swift Creek phase has not been divided into early and late components, the value of comparison between the Swift Creek and Woodstock phase site distributions is limited. While early Woodstock clusters are centrally located in north Georgia on the Etowah and Chattahoochee Rivers, late Woodstock settlement expands to the South Carolina and Tennessee borders, leaving vacant many of the areas where early Woodstock clusters were located. The early and late Woodstock settlement data lack centralized mound sites although a tentative mound center has been identified. Summerour (9FO16) may eventually prove to be a Woodstock mound center, but currently, the ceramic and stratigraphic data indicate that the mound was constructed during the Swift Creek phase and that the site was merely reoccupied during both early and late Woodstock. That being said, current data do enable us to say some interesting things about early and

(above) Figure 1.6. Distribution of Napier and Early Woodstock sites. (below) Figure 1.7. Distribution of Swift Creek and Early Woodstock sites.

JULIE G. MARKIN 21

late Woodstock settlement and polity development. Early Woodstock clusters tend to be located closer to each other than late Woodstock clusters. The buffer distance between early Woodstock clusters ranges from a mere 7.7 km to 13.2 km. During the late Woodstock phase, the buffer distance between neighboring clusters increases to an average of 24.2 km, with the exception of two clusters that are located within 7.7 km of each other. Assuming site clustering characterizes politically centralized polities (Hally 1993; Steponaitis 1978), political centralization in north Georgia appears to have begun during the Woodstock phase. The abandonment of early Woodstock settlements and expansion of late Woodstock occupation into previously vacant areas may suggest growing populations while the greater spacing between clusters may indicate the increasing influence of certain Woodstock villages among interconnected groups and the development of “a sense of community that was not possible in pre–late Woodland times when nucleated settlement did not exist” (Mehrer 2000:47). In this case, community refers not to individual sites and distributions of artifacts or structures but to the interactions between sites or the inferred social processes that connected them to each other (Yaeger and Canuto 2000). As growing late Woodland populations filled in the landscape, limited fertile bottomlands became increasingly less available, resulting in competition over the acquisition and control of arable land. Although current Woodstock settlement pattern data do not provide sufficient evidence to assess a population increase, a pattern of increased cultivation of maize as seen in other Emergent Mississippian phases is evidenced in the Woodstock botanical assemblage. Existing coping mechanisms were no longer sufficient to mange the risks associated with a decreased availability of land and an increased need for production, leading groups to engage in social networks to organize the allocation of land and to schedule labor needed to plant crops. These developing social networks fit well with Marcus’s (2000:239) discussion of how numerous native groups in the Americas define community as developing through “network[s] of interactions among families . . . trading partners, hamlets, and villages, occupied lands and orchards.” During late Woodstock, the need for effective coordination of defense of fields and labor for larger scale cultivation efforts led multiple settlements and spaces to integrate under a system of collective decision-making, forming identities and territorial entities that were differentiated from similarly clustered neighboring entities. To assess the reality of this development in the late Woodstock, however, we need a

22 THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE IN NORTHERN GEORGIA

better understanding of the flow of materials and peoples between the sites located within each cluster as well as the nature of interaction between neighboring clusters. One such means of understanding the nature of interactions and the level of community decision-making may be provided by the Emergent Mississippian Range site that was part of the developing Cahokia chiefdom in the American Bottom. At Range, communal organization and coordination by a local community leader may be indicated through the presence of a central courtyard surrounded by residential huts, large storage pits, and a large residence that faces this courtyard (Mehrer 2000). Similarly, at the late Woodstock Rivermoore site in Gwinnett County, Georgia, the largest structure sat upon a slight rise north of the general habitation area and was associated with several large pits. Differing in location, size, and construction technique from other structures at the site, this circular building may have served as a community house (Webb, personal communication). In turn, these collective networks provided the opportunity for a powerful leadership to arise through the control of access to productive resources. Late Woodstock settlement indicates a preference toward flood plains of large rivers (Markin 2007), enabling the cultivation of greater quantities of food, notably maize, that could be exploited to fuel the centralization of political power through the nucleation of populations and the manipulation of surplus production by a few. For example, in the Mississippian Moundville and Cahokia chiefdoms, the organizational demands of intensified production of native crops, and of maize in particular, resulted in the centralization of the political system through the consolidation of power by individual leaders. The settlement pattern of both the Cahokia and Moundville chiefdoms reflects this process of centralization through the clustering of multiple settlements around single administrative centers. The larger sized “sparsely occupied buffer zone” around most of the late Woodstock and early Etowah clusters as opposed to early Woodstock buffer zones reflects this development and the growing strength of certain north Georgia societies (Flannery and Marcus 2012:307). Although they were not based around administrative centers that exhibited monumental architecture, by the end of late Woodstock these socially integrated communities were becoming independent, small-scale polities, or politically integrated communities. The transition between late Woodstock and early Etowah may represent the precise moment that settlements in the region are becoming integrated into centralized polities and authority is becoming centralized under presumably charismatic leaders.

JULIE G. MARKIN 23

The construction of monumental architecture and public buildings is often cited as evidence of the authority of elites and a means by which they express their power (Beck 2003; Blanton et al. 1996; Cobb 2003; Kowalewski et al. 1992). Specifically, platform mound construction has been central in Mississippian archaeology as an indicator of chiefdoms that are based on inherited hierarchical leadership (Pauketat 1994; Steponaitis 1986; Worth 1998). Following this paradigm, the emergence of a powerful leadership is noted in the Etowah settlement data through the elaboration of the existing Woodstock settlement pattern and architecture to include administrative centers that exhibited platform mound and plaza construction. Four late Woodstock and early Etowah clusters overlap (Figure 1.8)—most notably around the Etowah mound site (9BR1), the Nacoochee Mound site (9WH3), and possibly the Chauga mound site (38OC47). This pattern of continued occupation challenges the established late Mississippian pattern of chiefly cycling, in which chiefdoms typically last for periods of less than 100 years (Hally 1996). However, application of that model to the late Woodstock and early Etowah phases may not be appropriate in the first place since the model is based on polity fluctuations within fully developed chiefdoms. What factors, then, might be at play in the case of the late Woodstock to early Etowah transition to better explain the continuation of polities? Turning back to the idea that settlement patterns, locations, and structures are spatial representations of cultural activity that are imbued with symbolic meaning (Rodning 2010), what we may be seeing through the continued occupation of the Etowah mound, Nacoochee mound, and Chauga mound sites is the emergence of a sense of “place” in which certain locations within the late Woodstock clusters are taking on variably significant roles within a developing social, economic, and political system. Villages and mound sites were not simply locations of settlement or spaces where we can document the presence of people across a larger landscape. These spaces were being constantly conceived, built, and altered through cultural activities related to how people acquired their food, how they related to each other, and beliefs they had about the world and their position within it. Rather than being static data points, through cultural mediation—practices, memories, and history—spaces become places. Rodning defines this process as “emplacement” or the “set of practices by which a community attaches itself to a particular place through formal settlement patterns, architecture, burials, and other material additions” (2009:629). In the wake of great disruptions to the cultural landscape brought on by European contact, continuity in the

24 THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE IN NORTHERN GEORGIA

Figure 1.8. Late Woodstock and Early Etowah site distributions. Stars denote mound centers (based on Hally 1996:Figures 6.1 and 6.2)

placement and alignment of Cherokee public townhouses, specifically at the Coweeta Creek site in southwestern North Carolina, symbolically anchored people to certain locations, providing a sense of permanence and stability by creating “a durable connection between the present and the past” (Rodning 2009:656). Using cultural geography as a backdrop, Thompson (Lefebvre 1991; Merrifield 1993, 2000) unravels how space and the co-opting of architectural forms are actively used by political leaders to negotiate social relations at the Irene site (9CH1), a Mississippian mound site located in Chatham County on the Georgia coast (2009:445). While previous authors have argued Irene social organization became more egalitarian through time as indicated by the shift from construction of individualizing, pyramidal platform mounds to construction of public structures such as the council house (Anderson 1994, Saunders 2000), Thompson suggests changes in architecture and use of space have less to do with

JULIE G. MARKIN 25

changes in political authority or organization and more with how leaders changed the ways they used space to negotiate and exercise their authority. Leaders “control[ed] spatial practices and further legitimize[d] their power” (Thompson 2009:461) by reshaping the platform mound, building a pentagonal council house that referenced the form of the pyramidal mounds, and increasing inclusive feasting. As such, Irene inhabitants used prior conceptions of space and architecture to construct a new view of society and social relations, one that utilized more inclusive strategies and architecture to maintain political power but at the same time provided opportunities for resistance to power (Thompson 2009). Use of architecture to legitimize authority is not a new concept in Mississippian archaeology. According to ethnohistoric and ethnographic evidence (Hally 1996; Hudson 1976), the ascension of a new leader saw the addition of mantles or layers of earth to existing mounds, thus incorporating the old mound into the new structure and legitimizing the power and authority of the new chief (Blitz 1993; Hally 1996; Knight 1980; Lewis and Stout 1998). Therefore, through architecture we can see the ongoing “constructions and reconstructions of community as meaning and identity” (Pauketat 2000:33, 2007) and the process of Mississippian politicization. Although cultural significance of a place may be more apparent where repeated rebuilding of monumental architecture (e.g., mounds and plazas) occurs, the development of “place” can be identified in situations lacking formal construction. At the onset of the Mississippian period, late Woodstock and early Etowah places see the construction of monumental earthen mounds, reflecting their development as loci of authority and arenas in which a new vision of social and political organization is emerging. The overlapping of late Woodstock and early Etowah clusters may be suggestive of an early stage in the life history of a “place” in which these locations are becoming part of a “socially cognized landscape” (Ashmore 2002:1178). Analyzing architectural, artifactual, and skeletal data, King (2003) situates the development of chiefly power in the Etowah chiefdom within a corporate strategy of cooperation, accommodation, and group decisionmaking. A lack of prestige goods and large-scale feasting as well as an emphasis on universal themes of world renewal, as practiced through ongoing mound construction (Knight 1986, 1989, 2001), built solidarity among participants from the greater community through creation of social alliances rather than through competition or military domination. Early Etowah archaeological data indicate that occupation was a modest village characterized by residences, large community buildings

26 THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE IN NORTHERN GEORGIA

(suggested by their much greater size), and possibly a small plaza. A communal organization is further suggested by the presence of dense middens of large animal bones that exhibit low levels of carnivore or rodent gnawing, indicating episodes of large-scale feasting (King 2003). The development of power may be indicated in the construction of the first stage of Mound A during this time as noted by the presence of several large pits north of the mound that may have served as borrow pits. Construction of this new architecture in the context of a place that has a strong connection to the past legitimized a new state of chiefly power. The refinement of the Woodstock phase chronology into two 100– year sub-phases is a step toward developing “the fine chronological controls” (Williams and Shapiro 1996:148) necessary to determine the context within which mound centers developed. Examining settlement patterns in the context of changing ceramic motifs within a continuing complicated stamping tradition allows us to map the important social and political organizational changes that occurred across the Woodstock to Etowah transition (Markin 2007). The striking similarity between Woodstock and Etowah vessel assemblages (Markin 2007) and continuity in complicated stamping, with changes within specific motifs, from the Woodstock phase to the late Mississippian Barnett phase argue for in situ cultural change rather than for replacement of technology or people by migrating Mississippian groups. Two new vessel forms and multiple size classes within these new forms are introduced during the Woodstock phase; these forms and size classes are maintained in the Etowah phase, with only a few typical Mississippian traits, e.g., red-filming, hooded bottles, and loop handles, appearing at this time. Thus, in north Georgia, the development of centralized political institutions was not the result of imitating neighboring systems to the north in Tennessee and west in Alabama. Instead, centralization occurred as a response to “population growth, subsistence intensification, [and] decreased mobility” (Nassaney 1992:132) from within existing tribal organizations. Although there is no current evidence to suggest the existence of administrative centers in the Woodstock phase as evidenced by the lack of platform mound construction, the phase certainly experiences the first steps toward the development of independent, small-scale polities and settlements into integrated, multisite territorial entities or communities that are clearly differentiated from similarly clustered neighboring entities. In the absence of pre-existing architecture, the space itself is what is incorporated to legitimize the authority of the rising leadership, as is evidenced in the continuation of four cluster, or polity, locations

JULIE G. MARKIN 27

from the late Woodstock through the early Etowah phases. The later construction of mounds at central places within these politicized communities exhibits the elaboration of a new understanding of community or identity (Pauketat 2007) that set northern Georgia populations on the path toward becoming consolidated, complexly organized, and socially stratified Mississippian chiefdoms. REFERENCES CITED Anderson, David G. 1994 The Savannah River Chiefdoms: Political Change in the Late Prehistoric Southeast. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. 1996 Chiefly Cycling and Large-Scale Abandonments as Viewed from the Savannah River Basin. In Political Structure and Change in the Prehistoric Southeastern United States, edited by John F. Scarry, pp. 150–191. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Anderson, David G., and Robert C. Mainfort 2002 An Introduction to Woodland Archaeology in the Southeast. In The Woodland Southeast, edited by David G. Anderson and Robert C. Mainfort, Jr., pp. 1–19. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Ashmore, Wendy 2002 “Decisions and Dispositions”: Socializing Spatial Archaeology. Archeology Division Distinguished Lecture, 99th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, California, November 2000. American Anthropology 104(4):1172–1183. Beck, Robin A., Jr. 2003 Consolidation and Hierarchy: Chiefdom Variability in the Mississippian Southeast. American Antiquity 68(4):641–661. Binford, Lewis R. 1962 Archaeology as Anthropology. American Antiquity 28:217–225. 1982 The Archaeology of Place. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1:5–31. Blanton, Richard E., Gary M. Feinman, Stephen A. Kowalewski, and Peter N. Peregrine 1996 A Dual-Processual Theory for the Evolution of Mesoamerican Civilization. Current Anthropology 37(1):1–14. Blitz, John H. Ancient Chiefdoms of the Tombigbee. University of Alabama Press, 1993 Tuscaloosa. Bowers, Alfred W. 1950 Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization. University of Idaho Press, Moscow. Cable, J. S. 2000 Archaeological Excavations in Brasstown Valley: Late Woodland and Etowah Occupations. Early Georgia 28(2):102–111. Caldwell, Joseph R. 1957 Survey and Excavations in the Allatoona Reservoir, Northern Georgia. Manuscript on file, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens.

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Cobb, Charles R. 2003 Mississippian Chiefdoms: How Complex? Annual Review of Anthropology 32:63–84. Cobb, Charles R., and Patrick H. Garrow 1996 Woodstock Culture and the Question of Mississippian Emergence. American Antiquity 61(1):21–37. Dickens, Roy S. 1975 A Processual Approach to Mississippian Origins in the Georgia Piedmont. Southeastern Archaeological Conference Bulletin 18:31–42. Earle, Timothy 1991 Chiefdoms: Power, Economy and Ideology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1997 How Chiefs Come to Power: The Political Economy in Prehistory. Stanford University Press, Stanford. Earle, Timothy, and Elizabeth Brumfiel (editors) 1987 Specialization, Exchange and Complex Societies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Flannery, Kent, and Joyce Marcus 2012 The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Garrow, Patrick 2000 The Woodland Period above the Fall Line. Unpublished report. TRC Garrow Associates, Inc., Atlanta. Hally, David J. 1993 The Territorial Size of Mississippian Chiefdoms. In Archaeology of Eastern North America: Papers in Honor of Stephen Williams, edited by James Stoltman, pp. 143–168. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson. 1996 Platform-Mound Construction and the Instability of Mississippian Chiefdoms. In Political Structure and Change in the Prehistoric Southeastern United States, edited by John F. Scarry, pp. 92–127. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. 1999 Settlement Patterns of Chiefdoms in Northern Georgia. In Settlement Pattern Studies in the Americas: Fifty Years since Viru, edited by B. R. Billman and Gary M. Feinman, pp. 96–115. Smithsonian Series in Archaeological Inquiry, Smithsonian Books, Washington, D.C. Hally, David J., and James B. Langford, Jr. Mississippi Period Archaeology of the Georgia Valley and Ridge Province. Georgia Archaeological Research Design Papers, No. 4. Laboratory of Archaeology Series, Report 25, University of Georgia, Athens. Hally, David J., and James L. Rudolph Mississippi Period Archaeology of the Georgia Piedmont. Laboratory of Archaeology Series, Report 24, University of Georgia, Athens. Hudson, Charles 1976 The Southeastern Indians. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Iannone, Gyles 2002 Annales History and the Ancient Maya State: Some Observations on the “Dynamic Model.” American Anthropologist, New Series, 104(1):68–78.

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Johnson, Allen W., and Timothy Earle 2000 The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. Stanford University Press, Stanford. King, Adam 2001 Excavations at Mound B, Etowah: 1954–1958. Laboratory of Archaeology Series, Report 37, University of Georgia, Athens. 2003 Over a Century of Explorations at Etowah. Journal of Archaeological Research 11(4):279–306. Knight, V. James 1986 The Institutional Organization of Mississippian Religion. American Antiquity 51(4):675–687. 1989 Symbolism of Mississippian Mounds. In Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast, edited by P. H. Wood, G. A. Waselkov, and M. T. Hatley, pp. 279–291. University of Oklahoma Press, Lincoln. 2001 Feasting and the Emergence of Platform Mound Ceremonialism in Eastern North America. In Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power, edited by M. Dietler and B. Hayden, pp. 311–333. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Larson, Lewis H., Jr. 1972 Functional Considerations of Aboriginal Warfare in the Southeast during the Mississippi Period. American Antiquity 37:383–392. Lee, Jay, and David Wing-Shun Wong 2000 GIS and Statistical Analysis with ArcView. John Willey & Sons, Inc., New York. Lewis, R. Barry, and Charles Stout 1998 The Town as a Metaphor. In Mississippian Towns and Sacred Spaces: Searching for an Architectural Grammar, edited by R. Barry Lewis and Charles Stout, pp. 227–242. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Lewis, R. Barry, Charles Stout, and Cameron B. Wesson 1998 The Design of Mississippian Towns. In Mississippian Towns and Sacred Spaces: Searching for an Architectural Grammar, edited by R. Barry Lewis and Charles Stout, pp. 1–21. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Marcus, Joyce 1998 The Peaks and Valleys of Ancient States: An Extension of the Dynamic Model. In Archaic States, edited by Gary Feinman and Jocye Marcus, pp. 60–94. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe. 2000 Toward an Archaeology of Communities. In The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective, edited by Marcello A. Canuto and Jason Yaeger, pp. 231–242. Routlege, London. Markin, Julie 2007 Woodstock: The Rise of Political Complexity in North Georgia. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens. Mehrer, Mark W. 2000 Heterarchy and Hierarchy: The Community Plan as Institution in Cahokia’s Polity. In The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective, edited by Marcello A. Canuto and Jason Yaeger, pp. 44–57. Routlege, London.

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Merrifield, Andrew 1993 Place and space: A Lefebvrian Reconciliation. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 18:516-31. 2000 Henri Lefebvre: A Socialist in Space. In Thinking Space, edited by Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift, pp. 167-182. Routledge, London. Meyer, Roy. W. 1977 The Village Indians of the Upper Missouri: The Mandans, Hidatsas and Arikaras. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Meyers, Maureen 1995 Natural Factors Affecting the Settlement of Mississippian Chiefdoms in Northwestern Georgia. Master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens. Mizoguchi, Koji 2009 Nodes and Edges: A Network Approach to Hierarchisation and State Formation in Japan. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28(1):14–26. Munson, Jessica L., and Martha J. Macri 2009 Sociopolitical Network Interactions: A Case Study of the Classic Maya. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28(4):424–438. Nassaney, Michael S. 1992 Communal Societies and the Emergence of Elites in the Prehistoric American Southeast. In Lords of the Southeast: Social Inequality and the Native Elites of Southeastern North America, edited by A. Barker and T. Pauketat, pp. 111–143, Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, No. 3, Washington, D.C. Pauketat, Timothy R. 1994 The Ascent of Chiefs: Cahokia and Mississippian Politics in Native North America. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. 2000 Politicization and Community in the Pre-Columbian Mississippi Valley. In The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective, edited by Marcello A. Canuto and Jason Yaeger, pp. 16–43. Routlege, London. 2007 Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions. Altamira, Lanham, Maryland. Pluckhahn, Thomas J. 1996 Joseph Caldwell’s Summerour Mound (9FO16) and Woodland Platform Mounds in the Southeastern United States. Southeastern Archaeology 15(2):191–211. Renfrew, Colin 1986 Approaches to Social Archaeology. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Rodning, Christopher 2009 Mounds, Myths, and Cherokee Townhouses in Southwestern North Carolina. American Antiquity 74(4):627–663. 2010 Place, Landscape, and Environment: Anthropological Archaeology in 2009. American Anthropologist 112(2):180–190. Rudolph, Teresa P. 1991 The Late Woodland “Problem” in North Georgia. In Stability, Transformation, and Variation: The Late Woodland Southeast, edited by Michael S. Nassaney and Charles R. Cobb, pp. 259–283. Plenum, New York. Sahlins, Marshall 1958 Social Stratification in Polynesia. University of Washington Press, Seattle.

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Saunders, Rebecca 2000 Stability and Change in Guale Indian Pottery A.D. 1300–1702. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Service, Elman R. 1962 Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective. Random House, New York. Spencer, Charles 1982 The Cuicatlan Canada and Monte Alban: A Study of Primary State Formation. Academic, New York. Steponaitis, Vincas 1978 Location Theory and Complex Chiefdoms: A Mississippian Example. In Mississippian Settlement Patterns, edited by Bruce D. Smith, pp. 417–453. Academic, New York. 1986 Prehistoric Archaeology in the Southeastern United States, 1970–1985. Annual Review of Anthropology 15:363–404. Thompson, Victor D. 2009 The Mississippian Production of Space Through Earthen Pyramids and Public Buildings on the Georgia Coast, USA. World Archaeology 41(3):445–470. Trigger, Bruce 1967 Settlement Archaeology—It’s Goals and Promise. American Antiquity 32:149–160. Wauchope, Robert 1948 The Ceramic Sequence in the Etowah Drainage, Northwest Georgia. American Antiquity 13(3):201-209. Webb, Paul 2000 Excavations at Hickory Log (9CK9). Unpublished report. TRC Garrow Associates, Inc., Atlanta. Webb, Steve 2000 Excavations at Rivermoore (9GW70). Unpublished report. R. S. Webb and Associates, Canton. Welch, Paul 1998 Outlying Sites within the Moundville Chiefdom. In Archaeology of the Moundville Chiefdom, edited by V. J. Knight and V. P. Steponaitis, pp. 133–166. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Willey, Gordon R. 1953 Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Virú Valley, Peru. Bulletin 153. Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D.C. Williams, Mark, and Gary Shapiro 1996 Mississippian Political Dynamics in the Oconee Valley, Georgia. In Political Structure and Change in the Prehistoric Southeastern United States, edited by John F. Scarry, pp. 128–149. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Worth, John 1998 The Timucuan Chiefdoms of Spanish Florida, Vol. 1, Assimilation. University of Florida Press, Gainesville. Yaeger, Jason, and Marcello A. Canuto 2000 Introducing and Archaeology of Communities. In The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective, edited by Marcello A. Canuto and Jason Yaeger, pp. 1–15. Routlege, London.

2

EXPLAINING CERAMIC STYLISTIC VARIABILITY DURING THE LATE MISSISSIPPI PERIOD IN NORTHWEST GEORGIA A Design Type Analysis of Lamar Bold Incised Pottery John E. Worth

Introduction Stylistic variability in the material culture of past societies has historically been employed by archaeologists as a descriptive tool for establishing chronological and spatial divisions for archaeological materials. Recent work within the last half-century, however, has proceeded beyond the mere exploitation of stylistic variability to facilitate description and has explored the very roots of stylistic variability, permitting inferences regarding social organization within the dimensions of social interaction and information exchange. An extensive literature has developed, in large part focusing on stylistic variability within both archaeological and modern ceramics and the relationship of that variability to the individuals and social groups that produced those ceramics. Although the development and refinement of chronological sequences and the definition of archaeological phases in the Southeastern United States has relied heavily on ceramic studies, there have been only sporadic attempts to evaluate the underlying relationship between stylistic variability and the social organization of Southeastern Indians in particular (e.g., Saunders 2000; Wallis 2011). Building on my own recent research into the relationship between aboriginal ethnicity and archaeological ceramics for the Spanish mission period (Worth 2009), this study represents an attempt to push this understanding back into the late prehistoric period

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by developing a testable model explaining ceramic stylistic variability on incised pottery within the context of a sixteenth-century paramount chiefdom in northwest Georgia. The research for this project was originally conducted as part of a graduate seminar in archaeological ceramics taught by David Hally at the University of Georgia, to whom I am very grateful for the guidance and original impetus for this work, as well as for my foundational training in ceramic analysis.

Models of Ceramic Stylistic Variability While my intent in this chapter is not to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature regarding ceramic stylistic variability (e.g., Hegmon 1992; Rice 1996a, 1996b; Graves 1998; Stark 2003), it is nonetheless important to frame my case study briefly within the context of broader issues that shaped the development of my original research design. A first question to be addressed is what exactly is meant by the term style. While it is tempting to compartmentalize formal variation in artifacts as representing either functional (relating to utilitarian or technological function) or stylistic (relating to non-utilitarian, often purely aesthetic, characteristics), numerous authors have acknowledged the fact that function and style are strongly interrelated. Sackett (1977, 1982, 1990), for example, distinguishes two dimensions of formal variation in material culture, instrumental form and adjunct form, corresponding roughly to the divisions above, but he nonetheless observes that both exhibit what he refers to as isochrestic variation, meaning “a spectrum of equivalent alternatives, of equally viable options, for attaining any given end” (Sackett 1990:33). Consequently, in this sense stylistic variation encompasses both the instrumental and adjunct characteristics of any given object, which might otherwise be distinguished as “purely” functional (non-stylistic) and “purely” stylistic (non-functional). Despite this, however, he and many others nevertheless acknowledge that decoration, which is generally classified as an adjunct form, is “particularly stylerich” with a broad range of functionally-equivalent options (Sackett 1990:33), making it particularly useful for the study of stylistic variation. Although theories attempting to explain stylistic variability are almost as numerous as the researchers engaged in such work, it is important here to delineate briefly two general perspectives which have commonly been viewed in opposition to one another and which guided the original research design that I followed when conducting this analy-

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sis during 1987 and 1988. Plog (1983) recognizes these as the social interaction theory and the information exchange theory while more recently Sackett (1990) uses the simplified terms passive style and active style. Proponents of the social interaction (or passive style) theory argue that the iconic properties of style generally (though not exclusively) vary unconsciously, as a passive, or latent, expression of the aesthetic choices made by individual artisans, and that stylistic variation therefore principally reflects patterns of human interaction within broader social systems (e.g., Deetz 1965; Longacre 1970; Friedrich 1970). Individuals or groups which interact more than others will display styles of greater similarity. Variation among the styles of individuals or groups emerges from barriers—geographic, social, or otherwise—to social interaction (Hardin 1984). Implicit within this argument is the assumption that social groups at each level of aggregation will display a greater degree of internal homogeneity than between all the groups as a whole. Longacre (1964:166–7), for example, presents evidence for the existence of regional, village, and even lineage ceramic traditions, appearing archaeologically within the spatial distribution of potsherds. An important dimension of this explanation of stylistic variability, that of scale, is discussed by Friedrich (1970). Constructing a hierarchy of design structure ranging from spatial divisions at the highest level through design configurations to design elements (the smallest selfcontained design units), Friedrich (1970:342) argues that specific design configurations and even design elements are easily borrowed and as such would not serve as good indicators of more intense social interaction between potters since easy diffusion of such stylistic elements could result from even minimal interaction. Microstylistic variables, below the level of conscious application, would be better diagnostics for individual styles. Longacre (1981:63), on the other hand, asserts that even design elements may be too small a unit for a clear evaluation of social relations. He views more complex dimensions of design, such as motifs and motif combinations, as better correlates for social interaction. While these positions may initially seem contradictory, the problem may be one of scale of analysis. For an examination of styles of individual potters, analysis on the lower end of the design hierarchy may be more appropriate (e.g., Hill 1978), whereas design configurations or motifs may be better for evaluating the styles of larger social groups, such as lineages or villages. A contrasting explanation for stylistic variability, the information exchange (or active style) theory, lends style a more active role in

36 EXPLAINING CERAMIC STYLISTIC VARIABILITY IN NORTHWEST GEORGIA

cultural processes. Style is seen as a medium of communication in which information about individual or social group identity is contained within the styles themselves (Wobst 1977; Conkey 1978; Wiessner 1983, 1984). Wobst (1977:335) argues that stylistic behavior is tied to the cultural process of information exchange. Stylistic variability emerges from the many and varied social groups to which individuals belong and thus serves to enhance social differentiation (Wobst 1977:328). Styles are seen as transmitting recognizable messages regarding social group identity. Following Wobst, Wiessner (1983) distinguishes two aspects of style that serve to communicate identity in different ways and at distinct scales: emblemic style, with a distinct visual referent communicating group identity, and assertive style, which is personally based and communicates individual identity without a distinct referent. In its most extreme form, criticized by Sackett (1990:36–37; 1982:80) as the iconological approach, all stylistic variation is assumed a priori to convey social information, and any other formal variation is assumed therefore to be non-stylistic, and hence merely functional (Sackett’s instrumental style category). Nevertheless, Wobst (1977) does clarify that such identifying stylistic messages tend to be transmitted on high visibility artifacts such as headdress and clothing. In general, the larger the social group whose identity is being communicated, the more highly visible the artifact in which the stylistic messages are contained. In this connection, Wobst (1977:337) himself points out that most of the artifacts with which archaeologists typically work, such as utilitarian goods, would be unlikely contexts for such stylistic information exchange regarding social identity. Graves (1981), for example, suggests that ceramic vessels would typically fall into this category (see also Smith, chapter 3, this volume). Despite the differences between these two perspectives, it is evident that these two models of stylistic variability are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and may actually operate concurrently, even within the same category of material culture. Friedrich (1970) recognizes that different explanations for such variability may be valid at different levels of the design hierarchy, and Voss (1980) suggests that one dimension of stylistic variability may be explained by social interaction while at the same time another may involve processes of information exchange. Different explanations for variability may therefore be valid at different levels of the design hierarchy, and thus one dimension of stylistic variability may be explained by social interaction while at the same time another may involve processes of information exchange. Much of this complexity, of course, may be attributed to differences between the many stages of

JOHN E. WORTH 37

the ceramic manufacturing process, the chaine opératoire within which learning and practice are carried out by individual potters (Gosselain 1998; Stark 1999). It is also important to note as a general observation that the evaluation of the precise social context of stylistic variation as measured through archaeological data is fraught with its own methodological challenges (Allen and Richardson 1971; Plog 1978; Roe 1980), making it even more difficult to develop convincing and unambiguous tests of these two models. Consequently, since both explanations may indeed have validity at different scales of the stylistic hierarchy, it would seem necessary to develop specific criteria for assessing which is more appropriate for a particular archaeological context. Each of the above models should be recognizable within the archaeological record, and a specific test may be devised in order to evaluate which model more accurately portrays reality for any given dimension of the style hierarchy for a particular artifact type within a specific archaeological culture. Only after such a test has been performed would it be possible to make effective use of that aspect of stylistic variability to evaluate its specific implications regarding the social organization of cultures within a particular culture area or region.

A Test of Two Models If ceramic decorative styles do in fact function to communicate social identity, as would be predicted by the information exchange/active style theory, then it seems reasonable to assume that at some level of social aggregation, emblematic styles should be internally homogeneous and mutually exclusive, i.e., unambiguous about the message they communicate (DeBoer and Moore 1982:152–153). These styles should provide an immediate visual identification with a single social group or individual, and thus it appears likely that such styles would be manifested at the higher levels of the design hierarchy, at those levels which Friedrich (1970) considers easily recognizable and thus more easily diffused. A careful examination of the decorative styles recovered archaeologically within each level of social aggregation should provide evidence, if present, confirming the theory of information exchange. At one level within Late Mississippian societies— the individual, household, community, or polity scale—ceramic designs should be internally homogeneous and mutually exclusive, if such styles do in fact carry information content regarding social group affiliation. If, on the other hand, stylistic variability is instead the result of barriers or hindrances to social interaction,

38 EXPLAINING CERAMIC STYLISTIC VARIABILITY IN NORTHWEST GEORGIA

one would expect to find a large degree of similarity in a variety of designs at each level of social aggregation, with differences between neighboring households, communities, or chiefdoms recognizable largely in terms of the presence and relative proportions of various designs in each assemblage. Styles at each level of scale should thus incorporate a degree of internal heterogeneity, and one should observe some overlap between the representative styles of neighboring groups, with greater overlap between groups at scales where social interaction was more frequent and less overlap between groups at scales with less regular interaction. A primary difficulty in such analysis lies in the necessity for defining and recovering archaeological collections directly attributable to each level of social aggregation present in the society in question, from the smallest to the largest scale. In order to minimize the possibility of circular reasoning in defining group boundaries at any given level based on the very same stylistic characteristics to be tested, recognition of these levels of aggregation is best carried out with the aid of associated ethnological or ethnohistorical evidence, providing at least some independent confirmation of social organization as reflected on the archaeological landscape. Beyond this, the actual recovery of artifact assemblages from reliably discrete archaeological contexts at each level of scale is in large part a question of the integrity of the archaeological deposits as well as archaeological technique used to isolate and recover them from good context. Once collections are secured, however, stylistic analysis of decorative variability should provide data for the acceptance or rejection of the alternative models described above. Based on the need for artifact collections from well-controlled excavations, in which discrete collections from each level of social aggregation are available, the study area was chosen to be within the Barnett Phase of Northwest Georgia, one of the most extensively-excavated Late Mississippi period phases in Georgia (Figure 2.1). The Barnett Phase, originally defined by David Hally (1970), presently encompasses what has been argued to represent two local chiefdoms in the Ridge and Valley section of Georgia (Hally and Langford 1988:77) and comprises a central portion of the ethnohistorically-documented 16th–century chiefdom of Coosa (Hudson et al. 1985; Smith 2000). The Barnett Phase dates to the Late Lamar period, roughly between A.D. 1450 and 1550 (Hally 2008:33; Smith 2000:21; King 2003:29, 32). Two sites were chosen for analysis, based partly on their location within separate but neighboring chiefdoms, and due to the extensive and systematic excavations which have been carried out at each site. Collections from both

JOHN E. WORTH 39

Figure 2.1. Northwest Georgia’s Barnett Phase and the locations of King and Little Egypt.

sites were excavated under Hally’s direction, including the Little Egypt Site (9Mu102) from 1969–1972 and the King Site (9FI5) during 1974 (Hally 1975, 1979, 1980, 2008). Archaeological materials from both projects are curated at the Laboratory of Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia. The Barnett Phase is characterized by a ceramic assemblage that has been well described in the literature, displaying a range of ceramic types commonly associated with both the Lamar and Dallas archaeological cultures (Hally 1970; Hally and Langford 1988: 72–77; Langford and Smith 1990). Hally (1986) defines thirteen morphological vessel types for the Barnett Phase, discriminated on the basis of shape and size. Three of the vessel forms, the large and small carinated bowl and the flaring rim bowl, fall under the ceramic type description Lamar Bold Incised, as originally described by Jennings and Fairbanks (1939:4). The type Lamar Bold Incised appears across a wide geographic region after

40 EXPLAINING CERAMIC STYLISTIC VARIABILITY IN NORTHWEST GEORGIA

A.D. 1450, including parts of Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida. This type comprises a portion of the ceramic assemblages of a number of Mississippian societies during the Late Lamar period, and as such falls within the definition of various archaeological phases dating to this period, collectively comprising what can be referred to as the Lamar culture area (Williams and Shapiro 1993; Hally 1994). Incised decoration is only one of two predominant decorative techniques used throughout this broader Lamar region, including both incised and stamped decorations, not to mention the occasional use of red filming. Stamped decorations associated with the Lamar culture area are predominantly complicated stamped (curvilinear and rectilinear designs carved into wooden paddle stamps), though some phases also include minority check stamped, cord marked, or cob marked decorations, as well as historic-era appearances of roughened (brushed) and possibly simple stamped decorative treatments which seem to replace earlier complicated stamping (Williams and Shapiro 1993; Hally 1994; Knight 1994; Saunders 2000:48–49). Of the two most common Lamar decorative techniques, in fact, incised decoration is less common than complicated stamping but, nonetheless, shows what appears to be greater diversity in decorative motifs. Incised decoration also provides far more clarity, especially given the tendency for substantial overlap and overstamping of Lamar Complicated Stamped paddle designs, which makes it nearly impossible to discern the original design. Beyond this, it is also important to note here that incised decorations in the Barnett Phase include not just the grit-tempered Lamar type described above but also Dallas Incised (Lewis and Kneberg 1946:105; Hally 1970), a predominantly shell-tempered type which generally differs in style, application, and placement. Dallas Incised is most commonly typified by rectilinear designs applied in wet paste above the shoulders of Mississippian jar forms with strap handles. For the present study, only Lamar Bold Incised decorations were analyzed. Lamar Bold Incised pottery is characterized by incised decoration in a variety of curvilinear and rectilinear designs, applied using fine tools greater than 2 mm in width while the vessel was in the leather-hard stage. This incised decoration typically appears on the panel above the shoulder of carinated bowls, filling the visible space below the rim of the vessel (Figure 2.2). Incised decoration additionally appears on the inside surfaces of the flaring rim of the flaring rim bowl, on the narrow panel between the neck and rim of the bowl. As a general rule, all of the space on the decorative panel was filled with incised decoration on Lamar vessels in the Barnett Phase. The principal reasons Lamar Bold Incised was

JOHN E. WORTH 41

chosen for stylistic analysis are threefold: first, the designs were created freehand for each new vessel (as opposed to stamped designs repeatedly applied to different vessels using a single paddle); second, the designs appear to represent a limited range of simple geometric figures; and third, the designs were obviously crafted on the most visible upper surfaces of vessels commonly employed in serving food (Hally 1986:275–276). In a manner reminiscent of Margaret Friedrich's (1970) hierarchical treatment of design structure, Lamar Bold Incised designs were broken down for this study into (1) primary and (2) secondary, or filler and border elements (Figures 2.3a–d). The primary elements, considered the fundamental core of the design, were divided into continuous, semi-continuous, and isolated elements based on the degree to which the incised line forming the primary element continued unbroken around the vessel's design panel. Only eight primary elements were distinguished for the Barnett Phase based on the sherds analyzed for this study. Each of these primary elements, however, is expressed in several different fashions; each expression of primary elements is termed a motif. It is evident that there is a greater range of diversity at the motif level of the stylistic structure. The secondary elements, including both filler and border elements, were regarded as subordinate elements of the design structure, added largely in order to fill the empty space between primary elements or to delineate borders. The type of filler elements used was certainly

Figure 2.2a and b. Lamar bold incised vessel forms.

42 EXPLAINING CERAMIC STYLISTIC VARIABILITY IN NORTHWEST GEORGIA

constricted by the shape of the primary elements, but where a choice existed between two or more fillers, the decision appears to have been largely arbitrary although important exceptions to this rule exist. In the Barnett Phase, only a restricted range of filler elements were utilized. The combination of the motif, as an expression of the primary element, and the one or more fillers, creates what is here termed the design configuration, following Friedrich (1970). This level of the design structure is characterized by a considerable degree of ambiguity since a single motif may be associated with one or more fillers, which vary not only from vessel to vessel but also from place to place on the same

JOHN E. WORTH 43

Figures 2.3a–d. Primary and secondary elements.

vessel (as a response to the variable size and shape of empty space in the design panel). This creates a long list of separate design configurations, each of which may occur only once in a site or even only in one place on a single vessel. It was this problem that led me to construct a data sheet which would display the range of such design configurations and which graphically show clusters of design configurations which could be combined into what is here termed design types. Design types are defined for this paper as units of design, consisting of single or multiple design configurations, which exhibit an overall visual similarity that may be grasped upon initial inspection. As may be

44 EXPLAINING CERAMIC STYLISTIC VARIABILITY IN NORTHWEST GEORGIA

Figure 2.4. Lamar bold incised design types.

seen in this schematic, some design types combine two motifs which are remarkably similar at first glance, such as the spiral and concentric circle, which often seem to have been used interchangeably. More typically, however, design types consist of single motifs, which are paired with a variety of fillers on different vessels or even on the same vessel, often on a seemingly arbitrary basis. The fillers in these cases seemed largely interchangeable, with the motif the only constant. It will be evident, then, that the design types identified for this project are not precisely equivalent groupings and thus are based on a combination of clustering evident in the data and the author's subjective interpretation of this data (Figure 2.4). These design types appear to be the most minimal groupings of design which display the least degree of visual ambiguity. While it is entirely possible for these design types to be combined in some cases or subdivided in others, these units of design demonstrated a great degree of functional utility in assessing the stylistic variability between the two archaeological sites and thus appear to be practical units for comparative stylistic analysis. It must be stressed, however, that the structural analysis described above is not intended to replicate the thought processes of the aboriginal potter but rather derives from patterning evident in the data and serves a purely heuristic purpose.

Stylistic Variability within Lamar Bold Incised Upon initial inspection of the data, it became clear that the range of variability in design types was markedly different for each of the two major vessel types on which Lamar Bold Incised decoration occurs. While the

JOHN E. WORTH 45

carinated bowls exhibited a considerable range of varied design types, the decoration on flaring rim bowls was restricted to a small number of similar design types. Using the Shannon and Weaver (1949) formula, the average stylistic diversity for carinated bowls in the Barnett Phase is 2.34 out of a maximum possible diversity of 5.00. The flaring rim bowls, on the other hand, display a marked lack of diversity, with an average diversity of 1.16, less than half that calculated for the carinated bowls. These figures serve to quantify the initial impression that potters incorporated a much broader range of design types into decoration on carinated bowls than they did for flaring rim bowls, for which reason only carinated bowl designs were utilized for comparative analysis. Even these results do not fully reflect the true homogeneity of design present on flaring rim bowls; with few exceptions, these vessels were decorated using a single primary element, the continuous wave, and only three expressions of that element. How can this disparity be explained? DeBoer and Moore's (1982) ethnographic study of the ceramics of the Shipibo-Conibo, a tribal society of the Amazon basin, may suggest some possibilities. Based on a study of ceramic rim designs, it was discovered that "the greater the exposure of a vessel category, the greater the diversity of its designs" (DeBoer and Moore 1982: 152). Vessel types which were more socially visible exhibited a higher degree of diversity in rim design, and those vessels with low social visibility were characterized by a notable homogeneity of rim designs. The social context of a vessel form seems therefore to have been responsible for variance in the diversity of ceramic design. While this one example cannot be presumed to represent a universal pattern, it suggests one explanation for the Barnett Phase results, namely that carinated bowls may have been more socially visible than the flaring rim bowls. This generalization may even extend to vessel forms not analyzed for this study. The relatively small number of decorative motifs observed to be present on Lamar Complicated Stamped jars used in the Barnett Phase, for example, may correlate with Hally's (1986:285–287) argument that these vessels were primarily used for cooking and storage rather than serving. It is apparent, nonetheless, that even within the category of serving vessels, certain vessel forms may have been more socially visible than others. In an examination of a contemporaneous Georgia ceramic assemblage, for example, Shapiro (1984) suggested that serving vessel size is directly related to the size of the group being served, and thus to the social visibility of vessel forms. This may in part account for the pattern noted for the Barnett Phase carinated bowls, which are as a group generally larger than the flaring rim bowls, which show less diversity in incised decoration.

46 EXPLAINING CERAMIC STYLISTIC VARIABILITY IN NORTHWEST GEORGIA

In order to compare the styles of two villages within separate chiefdoms, the design type assemblages of each site were subjected to a comparative analysis. During analysis, care was taken to ensure that counts were based on recognizably-distinct vessels within each structure-floor context, regardless of the number of sherds belonging to each broken vessel. As a result, the tables reflect numbers of vessels, not numbers of sherds (Tables 2.1 and 2.2). In comparing the design type assemblages on carinated bowls from the Little Egypt and King Sites, the relative frequencies of each design type identified at each site was calculated based on the number of vessels bearing that design type. Sample sizes were not only large (85 vessels from Little Egypt and 81 from King) but also almost equal between sites, adding strength to the comparison. As can be seen in a comparative chart, there is considerable variability in the relative frequencies of specific design types from each site (Figure 2.5a). Not only does each site possess design types not present at the other, but also the frequencies of shared design types vary greatly in most cases. Of the total sample from Little Egypt, 13 percent of the vessels, including six separate designs, exhibit design types not identified at King. The King Site sample includes five design types, comprising 26 percent of the sample, which are exclusive to that site alone. Ten design types occurred on both sites, comprising 87 percent of the vessels at Little Egypt and 74 percent at King. As can be seen in a second chart (Figure 2.5b), all but two of the shared types differed from 1 to 9 percent in their relative frequencies. Nevertheless, 90 percent of the five most frequent design types at both sites were shared types. Based on this comparison, it is clear that there is both variability and overlap between the design type assemblages of the Little Egypt and King sites, even though they are only 50 miles apart and on the same drainage. In other words, the whole-site assemblages are internally heterogeneous and externally inclusive. In order to assess the degree to which these limited samples adequately represented the total assemblage in use by the inhabitants of each site and to evaluate the degree of heterogeneity and inclusivity at the household level, a graph was constructed comparing sample size and the total number of design types identified for each provenience, in particular the structures excavated at each site (Figure 2.6). Artifact collections from three structures at the Little Egypt Site and seven at the King Site were used in this study. Based on the data plotted in the graph, it is clear that there is a relationship between the sample size and the number of design types present in the sample. Two archaeological contexts are represented on this graph: the samples of vessels from individual structures and the cumulative whole-site samples

JOHN E. WORTH 47

from each site. For the structure samples, the graph reaches an apparent plateau at around 15 or 20 vessels in sample size. Given this, it seems reasonable to conclude that household assemblages generally contain fewer than 10 design types even with a relatively large sample. The whole-site samples of over 80 vessels include just over 15 design types, again possibly suggesting a typical village assemblage size. The implications of these results are discussed in the final section of this chapter. What is clear from the results of the analysis of stylistic variability within Lamar Bold Incised decorations conducted here is that at no level of social aggregation is there any evidence for the internally homogeneous and externally exclusive styles expected based on the information exchange model. Certainly this is not the case for the whole site samples,

Table 2.1. Lamar bold incised design types identified for Little Egypt Site (9Mu102). CARINATED BOWLS: DIVERSITY = 2.42 COUNT

TYPE

DESCRIPTION

16

I4

Spirals/Concentric Circles with Opposing Nested Triangles

14

C8

Single Rectilinear Wave with Line-Filled Triangles

10

I3

Spirals/Concentric Circles with Horizontal Brackets

9

S4

Closed Curvilinear Scroll with Nested and/or Line-Filled Triangles Figure Nine with Horizontal Brackets

8

S1

5

C2

Symmetrical Pendant

4

C5

Single Curvilinear Wave with Nested Semicircles

4

C7

Single Rectilinear Wave with Nested Triangles

3

S3

Open Curvilinear Scroll with Nested Triangles

3

C3

Asymmetrical Pendant

2

I5

Concentric Squares

2

I6

Concentric Diamonds with Nested Triangles

2

S5

Open Rectilinear Scroll with Nested Triangles

1

I1

Barred Vertical Oval with Horizontal Brackets

1

C1

Pendant Loop

1

C4

Bifurcated Pendant

85

Total: 16 Design Types FLARING RIM BOWLS: DIVERSITY = 1.28

COUNT 16

TYPE

DESCRIPTION

C8

Single Rectilinear Wave with Line-Filler Triangles

9

C7

Single Rectilinear Wave with Nested Triangles

4

C5

Single Curvilinear Ware with Nested Semicircles

1

C10

Woven Paired Curvilinear Wave

1

C11

Single Rectilinear Wave with Line-Filled Nested Triangles

1

I4

Spirals/Concentric Circles with Opposing Nested Triangles

32

Total: 6 Design Types

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Table 2.2. Lamar bold incised design types identified for King Site (9Fl5) CARINATED BOWLS: DIVERSITY = 2.42 COUNT

TYPE

Count

Type

Description

C8

Single Rectilinear Wave with Line-Filled Triangles

20

DESCRIPTION

13

I2

Concentric Semicircles with Horizontal Brackets

9

I4

Spirals/Concentric Circles with Opposing Nested Triangles

9

C3

Asymmetrical Pendant

6

I3

Spirals/Concentric Circles with Horizontal Brackets

4

C5

Single Curvilinear Wave with Nested Semicircles

4

C7

Single Rectilinear Wave with Nested Triangles

4

S2

Pendant Spiral

4

S4

Closed Curvilinear Scroll with Nested and/or Line-Filled Triangles

2

C6

Woven Paired Curvilinear Wave

2

I7

Concentric Diamonds and Circles with Line-Filled Triangles Concentric Diamonds with Nested Circles

1

I6

1

S1

Figure Nine with Horizontal Brackets

1

S3

Open Curvilinear Scroll with Nested Triangles

1

C9

Rectilinear Stepped Wave with Bar Filler

81

Total: 15 Design Types FLARING RIM BOWLS: DIVERSITY = 1.28

COUNT

TYPE

DESCRIPTION

2

C8

Single Rectilinear Wave with Line-Filled Triangles

1

C7

Single Rectilinear Wave with Nested Triangles

1

I2

Concentric Semicircles with Horizontal Brackets

4

Total: 4 Design Types

which display a considerable range of diversity in their design type assemblages, and this conclusion may likewise be extrapolated for the two higher levels of local chiefdom and paramount chiefdom. In addition, based on an assumption of household production of utilitarian pottery for the Barnett Phase (Hally 1986:273), it is also evident that household assemblages are neither internally homogeneous nor mutually exclusive. Considering the number of designs typical of household design type assemblages (less than 10) and the considerable degree of overlap between the assemblages of the various structures in each village, it is impossible even to suggest that each design type was made by a single female potter. There is no level of social aggregation which satisfies the expectations of the information exchange model for Lamar Bold Incised decoration. Results do, however, largely conform to the expectations of the social interaction model. Assemblages within each level of aggregation largely vary in terms of the presence and relative proportions of various design types, and the degree of similarity broadly corresponds to the expected

Figures 2.5a and b. Relative frequencies of Lamar bold incised carinated bowl design types.

Figure 2.6. Relationship of sample size to number of design types identified.

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degree of social interaction between potters at each level. Suites of design types employed in decorating the exposed upper panel of carinated bowls were evidently heterogeneous at all levels of social integration. While there was considerable overlap between the suites employed by neighboring units at the same level (whether households or communities or polities), the degree of similarity between design type assemblages at any given level diminished with increased social and/or geographic distance. As a result, the total inventory of design types comprising decorative assemblages within social units at each level was greater than that represented at the lower level. As the total pool of interacting potters increased, so too did the heterogeneity of the design type assemblages.

A Model for Stylistic Variability of Incised Ceramic Decoration during the Late Mississippi Period Based on the results of the design type analysis conducted here, it is possible to propose the outlines of a model accounting for decorative stylistic variability on incised carinated bowls during the Late Mississippi period within the Lamar culture area, with potential applicability to many other times and places in the Southeast and beyond. Instead of focusing on an approach configured for comparing design type assemblages between aggregate social groupings at varying scales, I propose to focus on the social landscape of the individual potters who crafted and decorated each vessel, generally thought to have been women living within a matrilineal kin network. Pots were created by individuals who collectively comprised the social groupings that form the object of this study, and it is the agency of these individuals that both actively formed and were simultaneously constrained by the structure of the broader society at large. Here, of course, I make a conscious nod to the field of practice theory, and more specifically to Pierre Bordieu’s concept of habitus, occupying the recursive and active middle-ground between societal structure and individual agency, as well as to Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration, in which “the structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of the practices they recursively organize” (Giddens 1984: 25; Bourdieu 1977; see also Dietler and Herbich 1998; Stark 2006:20–23). It is precisely this individually-generated but collectively-manifested structure which provided the social framework within which potters learned and practiced their craft. The habitus of each potter provided both a range of individual design choices and structural limitations on that range, varying at least in part by the extent and nature of available social interactions.

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By focusing first on ceramic decorative stylistic variability as a product of individual potters interacting within a dynamic, multiscalar social system, we can better avoid reifying the very social groupings (whether political, linguistic, or simply geographical) that we hope to infer using ceramic analysis. Instead of assuming a priori the existence of aggregate social groups within which we hope to discover stylistic commonalities that are somehow presumed to communicate group identity and affiliation within an information exchange/active style model, I suggest we first need to develop techniques to map out the geographic zones of inferred interaction between potters, seeking to discover the extent to which contemporaneous stylistic variation is clinal and/or discontinuous across the landscape. Furthermore, this should ultimately not be limited simply to one category of artifact or level of the stylistic hierarchy, nor solely to adjunct or instrumental formal variation, but should instead incorporate a range of stylistic analyses of material culture in a diversity of contexts. In this way, it should be possible to discover the degree of co-variation that may or may not be displayed by similar and different categories of material culture, possibly providing important insight into the social landscape in which individual artisans and craftspeople learned, interacted, and practiced their assorted crafts. While such a research strategy might seem to pre-suppose the universal applicability of the social interaction model over that of the information exchange model of style, in practice it should actually provide an opportunity to discover strong empirical proof of instances where emblemic messaging is the best explanation for stylistic variation that displays intragroup, internal homogeneity at some level of social aggregation. While the strategy described above may seem indicative of early twentieth-century culture historical approaches to delineating the bounded space-time cultural units that normally became the de facto equivalent of reconstructed prehistoric social groups (Lyman et al. 1997), the key difference here is the focus on individual agents (potters and other craftspeople) as the source and manifestation of the very same social structure that reflexively conditioned and constrained the range of isochrestic stylistic choices made during the production of material culture. Instead of presupposing that spatial stylistic variation must somehow be coterminous with named polities or language areas or other social groups easily recognizable from the ethnological or ethnohistoric record, or that stylistic change over time must necessarily reflect the immigration of extralocal populations, and therefore that the lack of such change similarly mandates against such immigration (both of which definitely seems not to be the case with regard to utilitarian household

52 EXPLAINING CERAMIC STYLISTIC VARIABILITY IN NORTHWEST GEORGIA

ceramics in the early historic-era Southeast; see Worth 2009), an agentbased approach to the analysis of stylistic variation should allow us to focus on individual craftspeople producing and reproducing the social landscape within which they lived. Potters who actually traced the incised decorations on ceramic vessels are no longer relegated to the anonymity of the invisible “individual” whose presence is acknowledged intellectually but ignored in analytical practice but are instead viewed as the direct source of not just the artifacts bearing stylistic information but also the day-to-day (and thus lifelong) process of learning, interaction, and practice that shaped the resultant patterns of stylistic variability measurable at each level of social integration in past cultures. While an agent-based approach to ceramic stylistic variation clearly militates against the unconditional a priori acceptance of established ceramic types and typological constructs as a sole or even principal basis for the study of stylistic variation, this does not mean that these types do not still serve a useful function. Nevertheless, what seems clear to me based on the present study (and many other lines of argument) is that we need to turn our attention increasingly to sub-typological dimensions of stylistic variability, which appear to be the arena in which the patterns of social interaction between individual potters is displayed at the most fine-grained level of resolution. Saying that the Lamar Bold Incised ceramic type is present at two contemporaneous archaeological sites, even in varying proportions, is virtually meaningless with respect to any useful measure of actual social interaction between two potters since those two sites could just as easily be located just a few hundred meters from each other in the Oconee Valley in eastern Georgia (e.g., Kowalewski and Hatch 1991), or well over 700 kilometers apart in southern Virginia and northern Florida (e.g., Scarry 1985; Meyers 2011). While some degree of indirect, down-the-line transmission of decorative aesthetic concepts spanning the entire length of the Lamar culture area may be presumed in the latter instance, it would be ludicrous to suggest that this corresponded to any meaningful degree of actual social integration between potters or even chiefdoms. But the sub-typological demonstration of decreasing degrees of shared incised design types with increasing physical and social distance inside the ethnohistorically-documented chiefdom of Coosa (Hudson et al. 1985; Hally et al. 1990; Smith 2000), as illustrated in this chapter, actually does provide useful information regarding tangible social interaction. If for no other reason than this information provides a baseline against which similar comparisons may be made both within and beyond the Northwest Georgia region during the Late Mississippi period, perhaps providing pivotal details about the

JOHN E. WORTH 53

social landscape both within and beyond the boundaries of Coosa or other late prehistoric chiefdoms. Based on the present study, incised surface decoration on Lamar Bold Incised bowls, and likely many other Late Mississippian domestic utilitarian pottery types, would appear to represent an artistic medium for social display, in which aesthetically-acceptable designs were selected from each potter's design pool for purposes of vessel decoration. While it is likely that these designs were not bereft of at least some ideological significance, they have been empirically demonstrated here not to equate with group affiliation or identity, at least as regards their ultimate context of use and deposition. Lamar Bold Incised decoration seems to have been applied with a motivation akin to what DeBoer and Moore (1982:153) described for Shipibo-Conibo rim decorations created for inter-compound fiestas, which “seem to be saying ‘see how fancy and different we are’ rather than ‘recognize us as emblems of the host compound.’” And like the Amazonian example, for Lamar pottery the social context of each type of vessel seems to have played a significant role in the size of this design pool; vessels with greater social exposure, such as the carinated bowl, tended to display the greatest diversity of design types. The content of the design pool of any one female Lamar potter may be argued to have been influenced by two primary factors: the traditional designs that she was taught by her mother or other elder female relatives from previous generations, and the designs of other potters of her own generation with whom she interacted, or whose finished work she had opportunity to see. The overall size of this design pool was therefore determined to a large degree by the number of potters with whom she or her ancestors interacted and perhaps practiced their craft or finished pots they had the opportunity to view. In addition to the historical, transgenerational dimension of learned skills and habits, then, it was the active social landscape within which such interactions between potters and pots occurred that probabilistically defined the scale and diversity of each potter’s design pool. Since direct and more frequent interaction occurred at the household scale, potters within each household might be expected to display nearly identical design pools. Interaction by potters living in distinct households within a community would be somewhat less intensive, and hence more variations might be expected between household design pools within a community, resulting in a somewhat larger collective design pool for all the potters in an entire community. Interaction by potters living in different communities within a single chiefdom would likely be considerably less intensive, presumably resulting in even greater variability between design pools, and an even larger

54 EXPLAINING CERAMIC STYLISTIC VARIABILITY IN NORTHWEST GEORGIA

aggregate design pool for all the potters within an entire chiefdom, or among multiple affiliated chiefdoms within a regional network of interacting polities (whether politically integrated or not). Based on the results of this study, I propose that the design pool for incised ceramic decorations within any single household in the broader Lamar culture area will be manifested in the archaeological record (with a sample of 15–20 vessels or more) as no more than about 10 design types of the sort constructed for this study. The overall design pool for each community would be somewhat larger, on the order of at least 15 or 16 design types for a sample of 80 vessels or more. The total design pool for an entire chiefdom, consisting of an aggregate of the design pools of each household in each constituent community, would undoubtedly be larger. In this study, a total of 21 distinct design types were identified at two communities in two separate local chiefdoms that have been ethnohistorically demonstrated to have been integrated into the broader polity known as Coosa, but this number would likely be larger if households at other sites in each local chiefdom were included. The research described in this chapter must be viewed as a pilot study upon which future research and additional analyses may build, but I believe the broad outlines of an overarching model of stylistic variability are nonetheless justified using solely the tests conducted here. While the implications of this sort of design type analysis remain to be explored and elaborated for the Southeastern United States, the agent-based model proposed in this chapter provides generalizations from which directed research may proceed, testing and further refining the model proposed here. Further studies of ceramic stylistic variability in the greater Southeast, including different regions and time periods, hold promise for providing answers to anthropological questions regarding not just the broader social organization of late prehistoric chiefdoms but also how individual potters negotiated this complex social landscape, drawing upon both received and actively-created norms for decorating household pottery. The record of that interaction is literally inscribed in clay, awaiting further archaeological analysis. REFERENCES CITED Allen, William L., and James B. Richardson 1971 The Reconstruction of Kinship from Archaeological Data: The Concepts, the Methods, and the Feasibility. American Antiquity 36(1): 41–53. Bourdieu, Pierre 1977 Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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Conkey, Margaret W. 1978 Style and Information in Cultural Evolution: Toward a Predictive Model for the Paleolithic. In Social Archaeology: Beyond Subsistence and Dating, edited by Charles L. Redman, Mary Jane Berman, Edward V. Curtin, William T. Langhorne, Jr., Nina M. Versaggi, and Jeffery C. Wanser, pp. 61–85. Academic, New York. DeBoer, Warren R., and James A. Moore 1982 The Measurement and Meaning of Stylistic Diversity. Nawpa Pacha 20:147–162. Deetz, James 1965 The Dynamics of Stylistic Change in Arikara Ceramics. Illinois Studies in Anthropology 4. University of Illinois Press. Dietler, Michael, and Ingrid Herbich 1998 Habitus, Techniques, Style: An Integrated Approach to the Social Understanding of Material Culture and Boundaries. In The Archaeology of Social Boundaries, edited by Miriam Stark, pp. 232–263. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Friedrich, Margaret 1970 Design Structure and Social Interaction: Archaeological Implications of an Ethnographic Analysis. American Antiquity 35:332–343. Gosselain, Olivier P. 1998 Social and Technical Identity in a Clay Crystal Ball. In The Archaeology of Social Boundaries, edited by Miriam T. Stark, pp. 78–106. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Graves, Michael W. 1981 Ethnoarchaeology of Kalinga Ceramic Design. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe. 1998 The History of Method and Theory in the Study of Prehistoric Puebloan Pottery Style in the American Southwest. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 5(4): 309–343. Hally, David J. 1970 Archaeological Investigations of the Potts Tract Site (9Mu103), Murray County, Georgia. University of Georgia, Laboratory of Archaeology Series 6. Athens. 1975 Archaeological Investigation of the King Site, Floyd County, Georgia. Final report submitted to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Manuscript on file, Department of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Georgia, Athens. 1979 Archaeological Investigations of the Little Egypt Site (9Mu102), Murray County, Georgia, 1969 Season. University of Georgia, Laboratory of Archaeology Series 18. Athens. 1980 Archaeological Investigation of the Little Egypt Site (9Mu102), Murray County, Georgia, 1970–1972 Seasons. University of Georgia, Athens. 1986 The Identification of Vessel Function: A Case Study from Northwest Georgia. American Antiquity 51(2): 267–295. 1994 An Overview of Lamar Culture. In Ocmulgee Archaeology, 1936–1986, edited by David J. Hally, pp. 144–174. University of Georgia Press, Athens.

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2008

King: The Social Archaeology of a Late Mississippian Town in Northwestern Georgia. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Hally, David J., and James B. Langford, Jr. 1988 Mississippi Period Archaeology of the Georgia Valley and Ridge Province. Georgia Archaeological Research Design Paper 4. Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens. Hally, David J., Marvin T. Smith, and James B. Langford, Jr. 1990 The Archaeological Reality of de Soto’s Coosa. In Columbian Consequences, Volume 2: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands East, edited by David Hurst Thomas, pp. 121–138. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Hardin, Margaret 1984 Models of Decoration. In The Many Dimensions of Pottery, edited by S. E. van der Leeuw and A. C. Pritchard, pp. 573–614. Universiteit von Amsterdam. Hegmon, Michelle 1992 Archaeological Research on Style. Annual Review of Anthropology 21:517–536. Hill, James N. 1978 Individuals and Their Artifacts: An Experimental Study in Archaeology. American Antiquity 43(2):245–257. Hudson, Charles, Marvin Smith, David Hally, Richard Polhemus, and Chester DePratter 1985 Coosa: A Chiefdom in the Sixteenth-Century Southeastern United States. American Antiquity 50(4):723–737. Jennings, Jesse D., and Charles H. Fairbanks 1939 Type Descriptions of Pottery. Southeastern Archaeological Conference Newsletter 1(2). King, Adam 2003 Etowah: The Political History of a Chiefdom Capital. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Knight, Vernon J., Jr. 1994 Ocmulgee Fields Culture and the Historical Development of Creek Ceramics. In Ocmulgee Archaeology, edited by David J. Hally, pp. 181–189. University of Georgia Press, Athens. Langford, James B., Jr., and Marvin T. Smith 1990 Recent Investigations in the Core of the Coosa Province. In Lamar Archaeology: Mississippian Chiefdoms in the Deep South, edited by Mark Williams and Gary Shapiro, pp. 104–116. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Lewis, Thomas M. N., and Madeline Kneberg 1946 Hiwassee Island: An Archaeological Account of Four Tennessee Indian Peoples. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Longacre, William 1964 Sociological Implications of the Ceramic Analysis. In Chapters in the Prehistory of Eastern Arizona II, edited by P. S. Martin, et al., pp. 155–170. Fieldiana Anthropology 55. Chicago Natural History Museum, Chicago. 1970 Archaeology as Anthropology: A Case Study. Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona 17. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

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1981

Kalinga Pottery: An Ethnoarchaeological Study. In Pattern of the Past: Studies in Honor of David Clarke, edited by I. H. Hodder and N. Hammond, pp. 49–60. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Lyman, R. Lee, Michael J. O’Brien, and Robert C. Dunnell 1997 The Rise and Fall of Culture History. Plenum, New York. Meyers, Maureen Elizabeth Siewert 2011 Political Economy of Exotic Trade on the Mississippian Frontier: A Case Study of a Fourteenth Century Chiefdom in Southwestern Virginia. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, Lexington. Plog, Stephen 1978 Social Interaction and Stylistic Similarity: A Reanalysis. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 1:143–182. 1983 Analysis of Style in Artifacts. Annual Reviews in Anthropology 12:125–142. Rice, Prudence M. 1996a Recent Ceramic Analysis: 1. Function, Style, and Origins. Journal of Archaeological Research 4(2):133–163. 1996b Recent Ceramic Analysis: 2. Composition, Production, and Theory. Journal of Archaeological Research 4(3):165–202. Roe, Peter G. 1980 Art and Residence among the Shipibo Indians of Peru: A Study in Microacculturation. American Anthropologist, New Series 82(1):42–71. Sackett, James R. 1977 The Meaning of Style in Archaeology: A General Model. American Antiquity 42(3): 369–380. 1982 Approaches to Style in Lithic Archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1: 59–112. 1990 Style and Ethnicity in Archaeology: The Case for Isochrestism. In Uses of Style in Archaeology, edited by Margaret W. Conkey and Christine A. Hastorf, pp. 32–43. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Saunders, Rebecca 2000 Stability and Change in Guale Indian Pottery, A.D. 1300–1702. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Scarry, John F. 1985 A Proposed Revision of the Fort Walton Ceramic Typology: A Type-Variety System. The Florida Anthropologist 38(3):199–233. Shannon, C. E., and W. Weaver 1949 The Mathematical Theory of Communication. University of Illinois Press, Urbana. Shapiro, Gary 1984 Ceramic Vessels, Site Permanence, and Group Size: A Mississippian Example. American Antiquity 49(4):696–712. Smith, Marvin T. 2000 Coosa: The Rise and Fall of a Southeastern Mississippian Chiefdom. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Stark, Miriam T. 1999 Social Dimensions of Technical Choice in Kalinga Ceramic Traditions. In Material Meanings: Critical Approaches to Interpreting Material Culture, edited by E. Chilton, pp. 24–43. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

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2003

Current Issues in Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology. Journal of Archaeological Research 11(3):193–242. 2006 Glaze Ware Technology: the Social Lives of Pots, and Communities of Practice in the Late Prehistoric Southwest. In Social Lives of Pots, edited by Judith A. Habicht-Mauche, Suzanne L. Eckert, and Deborah L. Huntley, pp. 17–33. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Voss, Jerome A. 1980 Tribal Emergence During the Neolithic of Northwestern Europe. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Wallis, Neill J. 2011 The Swift Creek Gift: Vessel Exchange on the Atlantic Coast. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Wiessner, Polly 1983 Style and Social Information in Kalahari San Projectile Points. American Antiquity 48(2):253–276. 1984 Reconsidering the Behavioral Basis for Style: A Case Study among the Kalahari San. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 3:190–234. Williams, Mark, and Gary Shapiro 1990 Lamar Archaeology: Mississippian Chiefdoms in the Deep South. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Wobst, H. Martin 1977 Stylistic Behavior and Information Exchange. In For the Director: Research Essays in Honor of James B. Griffin, edited by C. E. Cleland, pp. 317–342. University of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology, Anthropological Papers 61, Ann Arbor.

3

PROTOHISTORIC CERAMICS OF THE UPPER COOSA RIVER DRAINAGE

Marvin T. Smith

David Hally spent an important portion of his career advancing our knowledge of Southeastern ceramics. From his early work in Louisiana (Hally 1967) to work in Georgia at the Potts Track (Hally 1970) and Little Egypt sites (Hally 1979), Hally defined new ceramic types and varieties. From this cultural historical descriptive work, Hally expanded his interests to questions of vessel function (1983a, 1983b, 1984, 1986). He worked to define ceramic phases in Northern Georgia (Hally and Langford 1988; Hally and Rudolph 1986). Later in his career, Hally investigated incised motifs on Lamar pottery as indicators of regional phases (Hally 1985, 1994). This paper attempts to build on Hally’s foundation, analyzing Lamar ceramics on the Coosa River drainage of Georgia and Alabama into the contact period. During the sixteenth century, the Coosa River drainage included several clusters of archaeological sites believed to represent aboriginal polities (chiefdoms) mentioned in the accounts of Spanish explorers, as well as a few apparently unaffiliated towns (Hally, Smith, and Langford 1990; Hudson et al. 1985). In previous studies, I have proposed that the sixteenth-century aboriginal population of northwestern Georgia abandoned that area shortly after contact with Spanish exploratory expeditions of the mid-sixteenth century (Smith 1977, 1987, 1989, 2000). It is clear from the archaeological remains that new towns rose up in the Weiss Reservoir area of Cherokee County, Alabama by the beginning of the seventeenth century. These towns were abandoned ca. 1630, and a new group of towns appeared farther south on the Coosa near presentday Gadsden, Alabama at this time. These towns were abandoned

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ca. 1670, about the same time that the Woods Island Site was established. I previously assumed that these towns represented the same ethnic group, members of the sixteenth-century paramount chiefdom of Coosa. This explanation was the most logical and was based on the historically documented fact that the town of Coosa ultimately appeared downstream in the Childersburg area (DeJarnette and Hansen 1960) in the eighteenth century. But disruption following European contact was severe, and it is quite possible that groups of people moved long distances and across drainages. The present project was initiated to test the hypothesis that the groups of sites located on the Coosa River represented the same ethnic group moving downstream (Smith 1989). I have also suggested that sixteenth-century clusters of sites in Northwest Georgia may have been reduced to individual towns by the early seventeenth century. Is it possible to determine, through ceramic analysis, which seventeenth-century site represents the remnants of specific sixteenth-century chiefdoms? Continuity in ethnicity may be inferred from the study of certain stylistic characteristics of aboriginal artifacts. This study will focus on an analysis of aboriginal ceramics as the most appropriate artifact class to exhibit continuity. The notion that artifact styles reflect ethnicity has been discussed by Lewis Binford, who noted that stylistic attributes served to promote group solidarity and served as a basis for group awareness and identity (1962:220). James Sackett coined the term “Ceramic Sociology” to refer to studies which attempt to tie ceramic decorative attributes into an analysis of social groups (1977:376–379). The underlying rationale behind ceramic sociology states: since the craft norms of pottery manufacture are socially transmitted, a human group within whose confines such transmission takes place will receive symbolic expression in the form of a micro-tradition of ceramic decorative style. And, in broader perspective, it follows that the degree to which two or more such social units share the same or similar stylistic elements ought to be directly proportional to the amount of interaction that takes place between them [Sackett 1977:376].

Wiessner (1983:257) makes another useful distinction. She discusses what she calls “emblemic style, that is, formal variation in material culture that has a distinct referent and transmits a clear message to a defined target population about conscious affiliation or identity, such as an emblem or a flag.” It is possible that some ceramic attributes serve as emblems symbolizing group affiliation. Finally, Sampson (1988:16) makes the important observation that “group signals” (in his example, as well as in this case, ceramic decora-

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tive motifs) will “be expressed more emphatically under conditions of stress and competition for resources, and that the reverse should also be true—in times of the absence of pressures of contact between groups, emblemic style production slackens off.” Given these theoretical precepts, how should ceramic stylistic attributes manifest in the Coosa Province of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Sixteenth-century Coosa consisted of several clusters of archaeological sites, each comprising a local chiefdom (Hally, Smith, and Langford 1990; Hally and Langford 1988; Hudson et al. 1985; Smith 2000). These clusters of sites were at peace with one another in the midsixteenth century when they were visited by De Soto, but there is no evidence of how long this arrangement persisted before or after 1540. Nevertheless, it can be assumed for our purposes that these groups of people in northern Georgia probably shared a distant level of group identity, with stronger identity focused on the individual site cluster, if not the individual town. If we assume matrilineal descent and matrilocal residence were practiced for this time period, as recorded for Southeastern groups during the eighteenth century, and assume that pottery was produced by women, then there should be strong village-level ceramic traditions. If the inhabitants of site clusters (i.e., chiefdoms after Hally, Smith, and Langford 1990) identified themselves as members of a polity and had more internal communication/intermarriage/trade than interactions with people in other polities, then we should expect their ceramics to differ in some attributes from those of their neighbors. At an even more attenuated level of interaction and identity, we might expect the site clusters comprising the Coosa Province to manifest some degree of stylistic homogeneity. Thus we would expect stylistic homogeneity within a group (chiefdom and perhaps even a paramount chiefdom) and stylistic differences between groups (chiefdoms, or perhaps more evident at the level outside the paramount chiefdom). To the extent that groups persist through time, there should be continuity in style as well. The major efforts to express emblemic style would have been directed outside of the Ridge and Valley Province to other aboriginal groups to the south, west, and east. For example, there is a clear boundary between Lamar and Moundville–related ceramic series to the west, and Hally (1985, 1994) has shown that there are differing frequencies of incised designs on Lamar pottery from different areas in Georgia. Certain incised motifs appear on the Chattahoochee River and Ocmulgee River that do not appear in the northwest Georgia area, and these are the two closest groups to northwest Georgia in Hally's study. It should be noted that all of

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the Lamar groups in Georgia that Hally studied shared some motifs, but the frequencies at which these motifs occurred were often very different. Based on Sampson's comments above about pressure from the outside strengthening efforts to symbolize ethnicity, it could be hypothesized that under the stress of European contact and the subsequent depopulation, inter-aboriginal group conflict might have slackened and there might have been less effort to signal differences as groups struggled for survival. Thus, it might be reasonable to expect a decrease in emblemic styles during the seventeenth century when aboriginal populations were declining and when, theoretically, intergroup conflict may have been at a low. Given that ceramic style attributes can signal ethnicity, how does one choose attributes to be studied? There is no easy answer to this question. Whallon (1968:224) notes that “initial selection of attributes for analysis is made largely intuitively, though often with consideration of experiences in previous analyses.” Within the broad concept of style, James Sackett differentiates what he calls adjunct form (essentially external decoration) as opposed to instrumental form, which comes from manufacturing processes and choice of temper (1990:33). Similarly, Gosselain (1998) argues that “technological style,” or the choices made at each step in the manufacture of a vessel should also be considered. Such characteristics as various methods of shaping the vessel, tempering, and firing techniques may be important indicators of style. While “instrumental form” (Sackett) or “technological style” (Gosselain) was no doubt socially transmitted and might be significant as a marker of ethnicity, I have chosen to focus primarily on the adjunct form of style, including surface decoration, incised motifs, frequency of punctated decoration used in conjunction with incising, jar rim treatment, and cazuela bowl shoulder treatment although I will also consider temper. Other technological aspects of pottery production are beyond the scope of this study. It is hypothesized that these attributes I have selected for analysis will show continuity in the groups of sites along the Coosa River. It would obviously be a more powerful argument to demonstrate that other, contemporary groups made and decorated their ceramics differently. Unfortunately, in only a few instances are comparable data available from outside of the Coosa drainage. These data have been utilized when available.

The Samples Several sites were chosen for analysis in this project (Figure 3.1). Sixteenth-century sites in northwestern Georgia form the baseline for

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the analysis. The Little Egypt site (Hally 1979), Potts Tract site (Hally 1970), Brown Farm, Poarch, and Swancy sites (Langford and Smith 1990) represent the Carters cluster of sites occupied duringthe Barnett Phase. Together these sites are believed to be the Coosa chiefdom of the Spanish chronicles. The Etowah and Leake sites represent the Cartersville Cluster occupied during the Brewster phase, believed to be the Itaba chiefdom. The King site, the Mohman site, Site 9Fl175, and the Coosa Country Club site represent the Rome cluster, believed to be the chiefdom of Ulibahali. This cluster has not been given a phase designation at this time. Hally (1979, 1983, 1985) has reported ceramics from the Little Egypt site. Unpublished surface treatment data from the King, Leake, Mohman, 9Fl175, and Coosa Country Club sites were generously provided by Hally while an analysis of rim, shoulder, and motif attributes was conducted by the present author as part of an earlier project (Smith 1989). Selected ceramics from a King site type collection and from Structures 7, 8, 14, and 23 were analyzed for the earlier project, yielding a sample of over 200 incised and rim sherds. In all cases, an attempt was made not to recount sherds from the same vessel for attributes. This proved easy for crushed vessels found on house floors but less simple for general sherds. No attempt was made to produce true minimum vessel counts, but any sherds obviously from the same vessel were only counted as one. Several sixteenth-century sites located downstream from these sites in Alabama were also considered. Some ceramics from Site 1Ce308 (Little and Curren 1981) were also included in the study. These data were collected by the author from collections stored at Mound State Monument. The sample size from Site 1Ce308 was 129 incised or rim sherds. Unfortunately, some of the material from Site Ce308 appears to date to different components; not all material appears to belong to the sixteenth- century occupation of the site. Early forms of Lamar rim treatment and even Savannah Complicated Stamped sherds were noted in the collections. Apparently Site Ce308 had an occupation of at least 250 years during the Mississippian period, making comparisons with the other sites difficult, all of which were occupied for less than 50 years, except for Little Egypt where occupation span was controlled by using only the Barnett Phase material. Three other sixteenth-century Alabama sites were added to the present study. The Davis Farm site (Holstein and Little, ca. 1986) is located on Choccolocco Creek in Calhoun County; The Ogeltree Island site (Walling 1993) is located further south on the Coosa River; and the Hightower Village site (Knight 1985a; Veech 1994), the most southerly site in this study, is located in

64 PROTOHISTORIC CERAMICS OF THE UPPER COOSA RIVER DRAINAGE

Figure 3.1. Sixteenth and seventeenth century sites in north Georgia and Alabama.

Talladega County. The collections from these sites were not examined by the author and therefore comparisons are limited to the published surface treatment and temper data. Early seventeenth-century Weiss Phase sites (Holstein et al. 1990) in Alabama include the Bradford Ferry Site (lCe73) and the Seven Springs Site (lCe101). Surface treatment data were obtained from the Weiss Res-

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ervoir report (DeJarnette et al. 1973) while other attributes were collected by this author as a part of the 1989 project. Sherds from Weiss Reservoir sites were previously sorted into decorated or rim sherds and other sherds. The former had been placed in “photo” or “special” boxes, and it was these sherds that were analyzed (Smith 1989). An effort was made to look at all such sherds from Sites Ce73 and Ce101, except for those from Site Ce101 X3, where published records showed no incised sherds. The resulting samples contained 86 sherds from Site Ce73 and 86 sherds from Site Ce101. Temper and surface treatment attributes from the nearby Hurley site (Holstein, Hill, and Little 1997) and Terrapin Creek site (Holstein et al. 1990) were obtained from the published reports. The Milner Village (lEtl), Whorton Bend or Tukabatchee Plate site (lEt21), and the Cooper Farm site (lEt26) produced ceramic data from the mid-seventeenth century. Sample sizes for these sites were meager. Only 199 total sherds were in the Mound State Monument collections from Milner, 70 total sherds from Site Et21 and 51 sherds from Site Et26. Thus, individual samples of motifs, rim treatments, and shoulder treatments were very small. The Milner Village was excavated by David DeJarnette and Steve Wimberly for the Alabama Museum of Natural History in 1948 (Smith, Knight, Smith, and Turner 1993). Much of the Milner village collection was reanalyzed for the 1989 study (Smith 1989). Small ceramic samples from Site 1Et21 and the Cooper Farm site housed at Mound State Monument and the University of Georgia were collected as part of the Lock 3 (Neely Henry) Reservoir project. These materials were analyzed during the 1989 study. The generally small sample of ceramics from this cluster of sites was a major disappointment. An effort was made to locate private collections of material for additional study, but these efforts were not successful. Most collections have disappeared or become mixed in the intervening 25 years since reservoir construction. The late seventeenth century is represented by the Woods Island Site. Morrell (1965) provides a good discussion of the surface treatment of these ceramics while rim modes and incised motifs were recorded from the collections at Moundville by the present author. All rim sherds had been pulled for analysis, and this collection, along with the material set aside for report photos, was restudied (Smith 1989). The sample size was approximately 140 selected decorated and rim sherds. The eighteenth-century town of Coosa, the Childersburg site (DeJarnette and Hansen 1960), provides a sample of late Coosa River ceramics. Again, surface treatment frequencies were taken from the published

66 PROTOHISTORIC CERAMICS OF THE UPPER COOSA RIVER DRAINAGE

report, but rim and shoulder attributes and incised motifs were analyzed by the author. Sherds from the plow zone, Feature 41, Feature 50, Feature 54, Feature 64, Feature 100 plowzone, Feature 105, and a Tennessee Valley Authority type collection were analyzed, yielding a collection of 218 incised and rim sherds (Smith 1989). Other sites were chosen from adjacent areas for comparison. Hally (1985) studied incised motifs from the Chattahoochee River while Knight (1985b) reported samples of ceramics from the middle seventeenthand eighteenth-century components from the Tukabatchee site on the Tallapoosa River south of the present study area. These samples make it possible to look at some of the range of variability for some of the attributes outside the Coosa area. Temper

In the sixteenth century, sites in Georgia and Alabama contained both shell-tempered and grit-tempered ceramics, but by the seventeenth century, shell was used almost exclusively for temper. For purposes of this study, sherds with any quantity of shell were considered shell tempered, even if they also contained some sand, grit, or grog. It should be noted that the collections analyzed by other researchers may not have utilized these same criteria and may not be strictly comparable. As noted earlier, several clusters of sites are thought to represent chiefdoms and the provinces of the De Soto narratives (Hally, Smith, Langford 1990). At least one site from each of three clusters in Northern Georgia has been excavated, and surface collections are available for several other sites. Representing the Carters cluster, the sixteenth-century component at the Little Egypt site contains 73% grit-tempered ceramics (Hally 1979:206), the Pott’s Tract site has 74.6% (Hally 1970), the Poarch site has 86% grit, the Brown site has 87.5% grit, and the Swancy site has 90.4% grit. Langford and Smith note that they included some sherds with a combination of shell and grit in their Lamar (grit-tempered) classification, thus, explaining the seemingly high frequency of grit temper at Poarch, Brown, and Swancy. To the south, the Leake site from the Cartersville cluster contains 99.1% grit-tempered types, and the Etowah site contains 98% grit (Hally and Langford: 1988:16). Data are available from several sites in the Rome cluster to the west. The excavated sample from the King site contains 58% grit-tempered ceramics and 42% shell. Other sites are known from surface collections. Site 9Fl175 contains 85.6% grit-tempered ceramics, the Coosa Country Club site has 38.9% grit, the Johnstone Farm site has 72.8% grit, and the Mohman site has 77.7% grit

MARVIN T. SMITH 67

(Hally personal communication). Small sample size may be a problem at the sites in the Rome cluster known only from surface collections. Temper frequency at the Little Egypt and Potts Tract sites are virtually identical, showing about three-quarters grit and one-quarter shell tempering. The frequency of temper from the Etowah and Leake sites are also nearly identical and show virtually no shell tempering and are thus very different from the assemblages from the Carters sites. The Rome cluster of sites, however, seems to show a lot of variability, perhaps due in part to the small sherd samples from some sites (see Table 3.1). If the large King site collection is representative of this cluster, then this cluster has the lowest frequency of grit temper and the highest frequency of shell temper of the three Georgia areas. In Alabama, the sixteenth-century site 1Ce308 contains 58.4% grittempered pottery (Little and Curren 1981:119). Although the long term occupation at this site makes this number suspect, it is virtually identical to the frequency seen at the nearby King site. The Davis Farm site, located up Choccolocco Creek from the Coosa River, has 81% grit, 18% shell, and 1% grog temper (Holstein and Little nd:56). Continuing downstream on the Coosa River proper, Ogletree Island has only 32.9% grit but 61.6% shell-tempered pottery and 5.5% grog. Walling (1993) assigns this site to the Kymulga phase based on the presence of grog temper, and Hally, Smith, and Langford (1990) classify it as the northernmost site in the Childersburg cluster. The Hightower Village further downriver also has been classified as a Kymulga Phase settlement (Knight 1985a) and represents the Childersburg cluster defined by Hally, Smith, and Langford (1990). It contains only 9.2% grit-tempered sherds but 52.11% shell and 38.87% grog. It is clearly different from other sites in its high frequency of grog temper. Based on temper, I would question the assignment of Ogletree Island to the Kymulga phase and to the Childersburg cluster. All of these sites except Davis Farm have produced sixteenth-century Spanish artifacts and are considered roughly contemporary. I suspect that Davis Farm is earlier and that is why it shows a high frequency of grit tempering. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, only 5.7% of pottery at the Bradford Ferry site was grit tempered as compared to 0.3% at the Seven Springs Site; however, frequencies are higher at the Hurley Site (24.7%) and at the Terrapin Creek site (24.1%) (but this latter frequency includes pottery with sand and grit temper which might be Woodland period). Elsewhere I have argued that Terrapin Creek is earlier than Bradford Ferry and Seven Springs (Smith 2000) so perhaps this

68 PROTOHISTORIC CERAMICS OF THE UPPER COOSA RIVER DRAINAGE

ceramic difference is significant in the temporal dimension. The Hurley site produced very little European material, and might also be earlier than Bradford Ferry and Seven Springs although sample size of burials and consequently European trade material is quite small. Alternatively, perhaps Hurley or Terrapin Creek represent the descendent population of the Cartersville cluster of sites (Itaba chiefdom) based on the highest frequency of grit tempering in their respective clusters. During the middle seventeenth century, the Milner village contained only 5% pottery that was not shell tempered while at the late seventeenth-century Woods Island site, all pottery was shell tempered. The eighteenth-century Childersburg site (DeJarnette and Hansen 1960) has 0.6% non-shell-tempered ceramics. For all practical purposes, then, we can state that shell tempering replaced grit tempering by the early seventeenth century on the Coosa River. By contrast, mid-seventeenth century occupation at Tukabatchee on the lower Tallapoosa is characterized by 87% grit or sand-tempered pottery (Knight 1985b). With the possible exception of the Rome cluster, choice of temper seems to characterize different clusters of sites or chiefdoms, especially in the sixteenth century on the Coosa drainage and mid-seventeenth century as seen in differences between the Coosa and Tallapoosa drainages. The Carters cluster shows about 75% grit and 25% shell temper, the Cartersville cluster shows almost total grit temper, the Rome cluster appears variable. However, if we accept the large sample from King as representative and ignore the small surface collections, then there is approximately 60% grit and 40% shell tempering for this cluster, and Site Ce 308, only 27km away, would fit nicely with King. Ceramics from the Ogletree Island site are predominantly shell tempered with the appearance of grog while the Hightower Village of the Childersburg cluster shows a majority of shell but nearly 40% grog. Tempering seems to be distinctive for each cluster of sites. While I would not want to argue that temper choice signals intentional emblemic style, I do believe that it shows evidence of a higher level of interaction within clusters of sites. Either potters were more frequently interacting within site clusters than between site clusters, or their wares moved frequently between towns in a cluster to be seen and potentially copied by potters from different towns. Whatever the mechanism, the end result appears to be a homogenization of temper choice within site clusters in the sixteenth century. Sixteenth-century regional (site cluster or chiefdom) temper differences disappear by the early to mid-seventeenth century and are replaced by virtually total shell tempering on the Coosa river. It could be suggested

MARVIN T. SMITH 69

that as shrinking populations amalgamated in smaller areas, and closer ties developed between towns, ceramics became more homogenous. Surface Treatment

Table 3.1 illustrates the data on the surface treatment of ceramics from the study area. Several trends are apparent. Complicated stamped surface treatment is much more abundant in the Carters cluster sites and Cartersville cluster sites of the sixteenth century; and, although complicated stamping is present in other sixteenth-century sites further downstream, it becomes much less common. Complicated stamping disappears rapidly from the assemblages. Early-seventeenth-century sites have almost totally plain and incised surface treatments, but by the mid-seventeenth century, brushing becomes popular. These data indicate that brushing did not replace complicated stamping since the early-seventeenth-century sites have neither treatment. Although the sample sizes for sherds from the mid-seventeenthcentury sites are small, the sites show consistent frequencies of decoration. Furthermore, the contemporary Atasi Phase component of the Tukabatchee site (Knight 1985) on the Tallapoosa River shows nearly the same frequencies of decoration although the temper is grit instead of shell as on the Coosa. While it would certainly be preferable to have larger samples of sherds from the mid-seventeenth-century Gadsdenarea sites, the samples seem adequate for a study of surface treatment. The late-seventeenth-century Woods Island site sees a decline in brushing but an increase in cordmarking and plain surface treatments. The appearance of cordmarking can probably be tied to a migration of people from the Tennessee River valley. Smith (1987) dates the latest sites in the Guntersville Reservoir as roughly contemporary with Woods Island, and these sites produce McKee Island Cordmarked pottery. There are no later sites in the Guntersville Reservoir, indicating that the people moved elsewhere. We also have historical evidence from Marcos Delgado that some Koasati towns (western Muskhogeans believed to have lived on the Tennessee River) were beginning to appear along the Coosa and Tallapoosa by 1686 (Boyd 1937; Smith 1987). All these facts suggest that the Tennessee River groups moved south, and some appeared at Woods Island, accounting for the addition of McKee Island Cordmarked ceramics to the site assemblage. By the eighteenth century, brushing increased in popularity as a surface decoration and is found on nearly 50% of all sherds at the Childersburg site in the Coosa drainage. Cordmarking disappeared from the

70 PROTOHISTORIC CERAMICS OF THE UPPER COOSA RIVER DRAINAGE

Table 3.1. Surface treatment of ceramics SITE

PLAIN

INCISED

COMP. ST.

BRUSHED

CORDMKD.

OTHER

N

Mid-Sixteenth Century Carters cluster Little Egypt

79

10

8

—

—

—

1575

Potts Tract

77.5

10.8

10.9

—

0.8

—

2582

Brown Farm

72.8

11.9

14.3

—

—

0.9

537

Poarch

76.5

11.4

11.4

—

—

0.7

612

Swancy

78.8

10.8

10.4

—

—

—

269

Leake

71.5

12.5

14.9

—

.006

1.1

3488

Etowah

56

35

—

—

—

376

Cartersville cluster

9

Rome Cluster King

85

9

5