Global Genetic History of Homo sapiens is the title of a new special issue of Current Biology (volume 20, issue 4, dated 23 February 2010), with eight papers available free online.

The first article is a guest editorial by Colin Renfrew, a British archaeologist who has worked for decades in the Middle East. His books often focus on the emergence of civilization, the emergence of Indo-European languages, and a relatively new subdiscipline in archaeology called archaeogenetics. Renfrew has defined archaeogenetics as research at the confluence of archaeology, linguistics, and genetics. Archaeogenetics, therefore, uses molecular genetics to expand archaeological data about early human populations. This is particularly useful in reconstructions—or models—of early human migrations and the populating of the globe.

Renfrew’s editorial, “Archaeogenetic—Towards a ‘New Synthesis’?” sets up the other articles in this special issue. The next six papers address human migration in specific geographic areas: Africa, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. Each provides considerable detail and summarizes genetic, linguistic, and archaeological data for the region.

Renfrew closes his introductory editorial with these observations:

Perhaps the most important general point that can be drawn from the reviews assembled in this special issue might be that we have not yet learnt how to interpret the data very effectively. A number of contributors have commented upon the need for simulation studies, based upon explicit models which might allow the testing of specific scenarios…, and this is likely to be one of the most important future research directions. Above all, the pace of research is now so fast that new insights are soon likely to become available. These are early days in the field of archaeogenetic research, and I predict that over the next twenty years or so a more coherent synthesis of the data from genetics, archaeology and linguistics is likely to emerge than we can yet envisage. [page R165]

Figure 1* from O’Rourke and Raff’s article.

As an example of the geographically defined articles, consider the one on the Americas, “The Human Genetic History of the Americas: The Final Frontier” by Dennis H. O’Rourke and Jennifer A. Raff. O’Rourke and Raff marshal mitochondrial DNA data (which is passed down through the maternal line) that shows five major genetic groups among New World peoples. They conclude that these data, along with other genetic data, suggest New World peoples coalesced “just prior to or immediately after the LGM”—the Late Glacial Maximum. The LGM refers to the last time ice sheets extended far south/north from the Earth’s poles, when mid-latitude locales were cooler and drier than today. As the ice formed, it lowered sea levels, when the ice captured sea water. Thus, more land was exposed on the margins of continents, and the Bering Sea land bridge could have provided a “highway” for Asian peoples traveling eastward, either on land or in small boats following the coast. Given the very early dates for human occupations from southern South America, O’Rourke and Raff note:

…the archaeological data in the Americas continue to raise questions regarding the timing and mode of colonization. The resolution afforded by the newer molecular data assists in evaluating alternative migration scenarios. [page R202]

Yet, even with all the data they bring together, O’Rourke and Raff conclude, as do many researchers regarding a wide variety of topics, that “more work is needed.” They write:

“Complete agreement between mtDNA, Y-chromosomal DNA and autosomal genetic systems has not yet been realized with respect to colonization models….” [page R206]

This is consistent with observations in the final article, “The Genetics of Human Adaptation: Hard Sweeps, Soft Sweeps, and Polygenic Adaptation” by Jonathan K. Pritchard, Joseph K. Pickrell, and Graham Coop. They agree with the last quote above:

Ultimately, a comprehensive model of the nature of selection would tell us how much adaptation occurs by any of a variety of different models and mechanisms. … To make real progress on these problems will require much greater integration of selection studies with biological information. [page R213]

These articles that summarize the current understanding of human archaeogenetics are insightful and informative, although some of the data they discuss is rather technical. Perhaps after you take a look at one or two of them, you will have some comments you’d like to note here—please login and do so!

The link to the special issue is here; you can download any of the eight papers individually.

* The original figure title reads: “Hypothesized routes for original migration into the Americas. The Beringian and Pacific coastal routes (blue and yellow, respectively) may have been roughly contemporaneous following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), although contemporaneity is not certain. The more hypothetical northern migration path (red) implies a pre-LGM population movement. These migration paths need not be considered mutually exclusive.”

Picture from Frontispiece of Riparian Lands of the Mississippi River: Past—Present—Prospective, by Frank H. Thompkins (1901, published in New Orleans, available as a free download from Google Books). Picture post-dates de Tocqueville’s trip.

At last, at last, my dear Mama, the signal is given and here we are cruising down the Mississippi, as rapidly as possible under the combined influence of steam and a strong current. We were beginning to despair of ever escaping the wilderness. If you take the trouble to examine your map, you will see that we had reached a pretty pass. In front of us, the Mississippi half frozen and no boats launching; overhead, a Russian sky, pure and frozen. We could have retraced our steps, you say. But that option was fast disappearing. During our sojourn in Memphis, the Tennessee had frozen, and carriages could no longer cross. So there we were, in the middle of a triangle formed by the Mississippi, the Tennessee, and impenetrable backwoods to the south. We might as well have been marooned on a rock in mid-ocean, inhabiting a world made expressly for us, without papers, without news of the rest of mankind, and facing the prospect of a long winter. That is how we spent a week. I must say, however, that except for our anxiety, those days were not disagreeable. We were staying with good people, who did their utmost to ingratiate themselves. Only twenty paces from our house was the edge of the world’s most beautiful forest, a sublime place, picturesque even under snow. We had rifles and plenty of powder and lead. A few miles from the village lived an Indian nation, the Chikasaws; once on their land, we always found a few natives happy to join us in the hunt. Hunting and warring are the sole occupations of the Indian, his pleasures as well. For large game we would have had to go too far afield. Instead, we killed a great many pretty birds of a species unknown in France. We found this highly diverting, though it didn’t do us much credit in the eyes of our allies. I killed red, blue, yellow birds, including parrots with plumage more brilliant than any I had ever seen. That’s how time passed, lightly at any given moment, but with the future weighing upon us.

So wrote the French historian known as Alexis de Tocqueville, in a letter dated 25 December 1831, while he was staying along the Mississippi River waiting for winter to let up so he could continue his trip. He had landed in New York City in May 1831, and had been traveling ever since researching American prisons, along with his supervisor, Gustave de Beaumont. Both worked for as prosecutors for the French government. (This letter has been excerpted in The Hudson Review, volume LXII, no. 3, translated by Frederick Brown, and available here on the web.) De Tocqueville is best known for the two volumes of De la démocratie en Amérique (usually translated as Democracy in America) that were published in 1835 and in 1840.

Toward the end of this excerpt, de Tocqueville describes Native Americans of the Chickasaw tribe (one of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes, which also included the Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole groups; all were officially removed from southeastern North America beginning in 1832, just after de Tocqueville’s visit, but that’s a story for another time/place), and their enjoyment of going hunting. What does he mean? Do all Chickasaws like to hunt? Perhaps de Tocqueville really means that MALE Chickasaws liked to hunt?

There’s another good clue for an archaeologist in this letter that would be difficult to document archaeologically. De Tocqueville writes that large game had been extirpated from around the community where he was trapped by the winter weather. Why was this? Do you think it was due to overhunting? Instead of hunting large game, when he went out nearby, de Tocqueville killed birds. He also describes those birds as very colorful, probably suggesting particular species to any ornithologists knowledgable about this area.

Historical archaeologists have the distinct advantage over their peers who work primarily with prehistoric peoples in that they have historical records that may illuminate the archaeological record. Sometimes, however, the historical archival materials are at odds with archaeological remains.

For example, written records may indicate that a family abstained from alcohol, yet among the foundations of their house, archaeologists may find a trove of bourbon bottles. What is the best way to interpret them? Does their location beneath the house necessarily mean that the family inhabiting the house above consumed their contents? Or, does their location, hidden in the basement, instead suggest secret consumption of alcohol? What additional archaeological data would help refine interpretation of the buried booze bottles?

Published in spring 2009, Richard Wrangham’s book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (Basic Books) argues that the ability to use fire for cooking foodstuffs allowed the changes that have made humans a distinct species.

Says Wrangham, “cooking is the signature feature of the human diet, and indeed, of human life—but we have no idea why. It’s the development that underpins many other changes that have made humans so distinct from other species.”

Cooking changed digestion and, Wrangham argues, freed up physiological energy that made the larger brains we see in the fossil record possible. Cooking made many foods easier to chew, and increased the potential for food preservation. Also, using fire meant more warmth and protection during dark hours.

In the introduction, Wrangham writes,

Nowadays we need fire wherever we are. Survival manuals tell us that if we are lost in the wild, one of our first actions should be to make a fire. In addition to warmth and light fire gives us hot food, safe water, dry clothes, protection from dangerous animals, a signal to friends and even a sense of inner comfort. In modern society fire might be hidden from our view, tidied away in the basement boiler, trapped in the engine block of a car, or confined in the power-station that drives the electrical grid, but we are still completely dependent on it. A similar tie is found in every culture.

Wrangham says he’s the first to advance this argument, that the shift to cooking food made such a difference in human evolution. If this hypothesis is so plausible, why hasn’t it been put forth before? Also, what do you think of this argument?

Links

Harvard University press release by Steve Brandt.

Book review by Simon Ings on Telegraph.co.uk.

Book review on Powells books website, including link to author interview.

Book review by Dwight Garner on the New York Times website.

Basic Books webpage on this book.

Excerpt from the book’s introduction on the New York Times website.

Detail from map by Jonathan Corum, published in the New York Times here.

The phrase “Old Europe” refers to Neolithic Europe, or the portions of the European continent inhabited by people who made pottery and lived in small villages, ate domesticated and wild plant foods, between about 7000 BC and around 1500 BC (when the Bronze Age began in parts of Europe).

Data on these ancient peoples is sketchy, in part because their populations were relatively low, and in part because this whole region has had many settlements and sometimes intensive land use, which damaged and sometimes obliterated the ancient, Neolithic remains.

The word Neolithic translates as New Stone Age, and was originally used to denote peoples who used ground stone tools instead of only those stone tools made through percussion techniques. In the context of early Europe, Neolithic refers to the first agriculturalists who occupied the area. Many archaeologists believe their ancestors emmigrated into the area from the Near East (aka the Levant), bringing both their knowledge of farming and their Indo-European languages with them.

In a recent article dated 30 November 2009 in the New York Times discussing a recent exhibit at New York University called “The Lost World of Old Europe: the Danube Valley, 5000-3500 B.C.,” John Noble Wilford notes:

New research, archaeologists and historians say, has broadened understanding of this long overlooked culture, which seemed to have approached the threshold of “civilization” status. Writing had yet to be invented, and so no one knows what the people called themselves. To some scholars, the people and the region are simply Old Europe.

Actually, most archaeologists use the phrase Neolithic Europe, rather than “Old Europe.” The Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994) coined the term “Old Europe.” Gimbutas theorized that the people native to Old Europe, the non-agriculturalists, had a goddess-centric belief system and were peaceful peoples. Those arriving from the Levant had a patriarchal and hierarchical society, and, she said, the men were warriors. Her interpretation is based in part on what she saw as the absence of fortified settlements prior to the arrival of the invading groups.

Whatever term you use and whatever interpretation you follow, some artifacts from Neolithic Europe required careful craftsmanship to manufacture. Wilford continues:

At its peak, around 4500 B.C., said David W. Anthony, the exhibition’s guest curator, “Old Europe was among the most sophisticated and technologically advanced places in the world” and was developing “many of the political, technological and ideological signs of civilization.”

Wilford also notes:

The story now emerging is of pioneer farmers after about 6200 B.C. moving north into Old Europe from Greece and Macedonia, bringing wheat and barley seeds and domesticated cattle and sheep. They established colonies along the Black Sea and in the river plains and hills, and these evolved into related but somewhat distinct cultures, archaeologists have learned. The settlements maintained close contact through networks of trade in copper and gold and also shared patterns of ceramics.

For more information, here’s a link to the exhibit catalog.

Food for thought

Does the terminology you use, for example Old Europe instead of Neolithic Europe, telegraph certain meanings to your audience? Is this good or bad?

Suggested reading

These are all recent single-author volumes, which tend to be more comprehensive than edited volumes. They tend to have an academic style and vocabulary.

Anthony, David W.
2007 The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Beckwith, Christopher I.
2009 Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Bernstein, William J.
2008 A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York.

Earle, Timothy K.
2002 Bronze Age Economics: The Beginnings of Political Economies. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado.

Harding, A.F.
2000 European Societies in the Bronze Age. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Kristiansen, Kristian
1998 Europe before History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Maisels, Charles Keith
1999 Early Civilizations of the Old World: The Formative Histories of Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, India, and China. Routledge, New York.

Fact: Georgia has many archaeological sites along the coast at sea level or only a few feet above sea level.

Fact: Scientists have measured a global rise in sea level over the last few years.

Fact: Scientists say the sea level will continue to rise.

The question: how much will it rise?

Why do we ask this question on the Society for Georgia Archaeology’s website? Because members of the society are concerned about the impact a sea level rise will have on coastal archaeological sites. One type of coastal site is prehistoric shell mounds, that is, mounds of shells discarded by ancient diners. Other coastal archaeological sites are historic buildings like lighthouses and fishing piers and docks.

So, along with other scientists, archaeologists look to research on changes in the sea level and the impact it will have on the shoreline. This means we look to models, or scientific predictions, of how the sea level will rise, both how much and how.

Modeling such a complex situation is very difficult. A model in this sense is a carefully described if-then assessment of the factors involved, and how they interact. For example, if rainfall increases, or if temperatures increase, or if desertification increases, THEN the effect is…whatever. A robust model will incorporate many, many factors, and describe how these factors are interrelated, or how changes in one will cause changes in others.

In a recent editorial article called “Rising seas and retreating coastlines” in the professional journal Climatic Change, and available free online, Roshanka Ranasinghe and Marcel J.F. Stive discuss what we need to generate a good model for predicting climate change:

A robust solution to the problem [that is, modeling climate change] lies in comprehensive bottom–up (small-scale, process-based) and top–down (large-scale, behavior-based) numerical models. Once comprehensively validated by field data, such numerical models can be strategically applied to determine quantitative forcing-response relationships of complex, non-linear coastal processes. These relationships can then be aggregated and/or parameterized and embedded into a robust and easy-to-use numerical model which accounts for at least the primary physical processes governing coastal recession. (page 467)

There are a lot of Big Words there!

So, what do these sentences mean?

The first sentence means that a good model will take into account both local, small-scale factors (e.g., the angle of an individual island relative to offshore currents) and large-scale factors (e.g., widescale changes in landuse patterns so that vegetation cover increases).

The second sentence is a recommendation that the model be cross-checked with actual field data. In other words, it’s not enough to make a model, but a good model should be checked against data we already have to make sure they fit the model. This also makes the model more robust.

The last sentence recommends taking the factors and the existing data and incorporating them into a numerical or mathematical model that includes the factors usually discussed—like temperature, rainfall, and landuse changes—and also includes coastline processes including the impact of waves along the shore, and how sediment is transported along the shoreline.

This last is probably something you’ve not heard about with regard to the climate change debate. Still, the recommendation to include how sediments move, and how this affects landforms does seem important. After all, as the water level rises, this is the place it contacts land, and this is the place where the higher levels will change the land.

What other factors do you think are important in modeling climate change?

This website has another, older story on climate change and Georgia archaeology; find it here.

Transportation networks, and the potential for social connectivity across landmasses and via waterways and along coastlines is worth pondering as part of reconstructing an understanding of our human past that emphasizes continuity—social, political, technological, etc.—rather than a series of major events. Barry Cunliffe’s Europe between the Oceans: 9000 BC to AD 1000 (Yale University Press, 2008) is not inexpensive—due in part to its wonderful visuals—but it is worth tracking down as an example of this approach. Cunliffe makes the point repeatedly as he traces Europe’s past that this was not a large area, nor was it trackless. He views Europe’s landmass as a peninsula, which could be crossed, despite a few mountainous zones, by following river systems, or by circumnavigating the landmass. Cunliffe writes:

In Europe, distances are not great and knowledge could spread rapidly. The networks of communication pulsated with the flow of information—stories of exotic lands and people, technological know-how, systems of values and beliefs. At the notes where the exchanges took place…, the excitement of the new would have been palpable. Even the most remote communities would not have been totally immune from the flow of information. So it was that the disparate peoples of Europe, from the most innovative to the most conservative, became enmeshed in networks of contact that inexorably drove change. (page 29)

As reviewer Benjamin Schwarz noted in The Atlantic:

Geography forms the essential basis of Cunliffe’s history. The waters encircling Europe, the transpeninsular rivers that penetrated it, and its topography, currents, tides, and seasonal wind patterns all determined millennia-old sailing routes, and thus the goods and beliefs transported along them. From Cunliffe’s perspective, even the Roman Empire was just an interlude, and perhaps its main achievement was to institutionalize through its ports, roads, and market centers Europe-wide networks of exchange that had been operating since the Middle Stone Age.

By stressing historical continuity and adroitly employing a wide-ranging archaeological record to highlight mobility and interconnectedness, Cunliffe draws a startling picture. Europe, he demonstrates, was geographically and culturally merely “the western excrescence of the continent of Asia.” His archaeological and topographic analysis shows how for thousands of years the steppe lands linked central Asia to the Great Hungarian Plain, thus providing “easy access” from China to the Atlantic Ocean. Here was a corridor for trade and migration, starting with nomadic groups deep in prehistory and continuing through the preclassical, classical, medieval, and early modern eras with great hordes of Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Huns, Magyars, Bulgars, Moguls, and Tatars. Knowledge of, for example, the chariot seems to have moved from the Russian forest steppe (the earliest known examples date to 2800 B.C.) to the Carpathian basin in Hungary and, by the 16th century B.C., to Mycenaean Greece and Sweden. Sarmatian horsemen, originally from central Asia, served in northern England as mercenaries in the Roman army.

The core of the European peninsula, without northern Scandinavia.

The Caribbean area, including southern North America and Central America.

These two satellite views are screen-grabs from Google Earth (downloadable for free), and are at the same scale; north is “up” on both. Note how the maritime edges of Europe provide a different transportation scenario compared to continental North America. Clearly, the Arctic, the Great Lakes region, and the circum-Caribbean area are the only parts of North America with the topographic potential for similar maritime transportation networks.

Yet, summaries of the prehistory of the Southeast rarely mention much about circum-Caribbean transportation and exchange networks. Is this because data for them are scanty? Is it due to the fractured modern political boundaries of the region? Is it because such exchange networks just didn’t exist? Or…?

Click here to read The Atlantic review by Benjamin Schwarz, published in December 2008.

Click here to read about Sir Barry Cunliffe on Wikipedia.

On the highest hill in Astoria, Oregon, near the mouth of the Columbia River, stands a 125-foot tall column, patterned after Trajan’s Column in Rome. The exterior of both have a series of carved scenes winding around and up the column. The Astoria Column was built in 1926, and has an interior stairway of over 160 steps, and observation deck near the top.

The Astoria Column has fourteen different scenes carved by Italian immigrant artist Attilo Pusterla. They are in temporal order, and begin at the base of the column and wind upward. However, by the time of the dedication of the monument in July 1926, only a portion of the sgraffito bas-relief carved scenes were complete. The now-complete scenes, if unwound, would extend for over 500 feet.

The carvings quickly began to deteriorate in this location, exposed to storms from the Pacific and the freeze-thaw of winter. It was only in the mid-1990s, with the assistance of conservators from J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, that the column’s art was better stabilized.

Even a cursory examination of cross-cultural data indicates that around the globe, in many societies, peoples with many belief systems have built structures important to them on high places. In addition, the structures are often unusually tall when compared to residential buildings. Indeed, important buildings are often tall, large, or both.

Why do you think this is so?

Website of Friends of the Astoria Column.

Wikipedia entry on Trajan’s Column.

In Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story (Counterpoint, 1997), ethnobotanist and essayist Gary Paul Nabhan argues that modern peoples tend not to have opportunities for discovery in the natural world, and that this distance from our environment means we don’t grasp the complexity of the world and of ecology. He writes on pages 97–98:

I have a wish for humanity: that all of our children would become field naturalists as they grow up. Imagine living in a society where every youth has the chance to explore the earth on foot and in hand, getting to know its creatures on a first-name basis.

…

The reason that I want everyone to become field naturalists has nothing to do with financial or professional rewards—or, for that matter, with the hope of advancing science. To the contrary, ecology seems to be the field in which I am most likely to fail to prove any scientific hypothesis I attempt to test. And that’s why I like it; I am constantly reminded how wrong I can be about how the world works.

That’s half the problem: most of us need to be humbled more often, to be reminded that nature is not only more complex than we think, it’s more complex than we can think.

The other half of the problem is that most children today grow up robbed of the chance of discovering anything at all on their own. They are told early on that scientists in little white coats discover all the world’s “facts” in neat, antiseptic laboratories. These facts are then handed to an ecologically illiterate public on an equally antiseptic platter filled with pasteurized, homogenized truisms to nibble on as stale appetizers empty of much of their former nutrition. Trouble is, all those tasty tidbits taste far more bland than any wild fruit plucked right off the tree.

And so I wish to champion the fine art of discovering, a process far different from the heroic act of discovery. Through the process of discovering, we seldom achieve any hard-and-fast truth about the world, its cornucopia of creatures, or its cultural interactions with them. Instead, we are inevitably assured of how little we know about that on which each of our lives depends.

Nabhan defines cultures of habitat as human communities that have long interacted with a particular landscape—and its non-human occupants—that is local to those communities. Usually we think of cultures as societies with particular customs and shared beliefs that are passed along from generation to generation. It stands to reason that cultures would have a grounding in their local habitats. Indeed, understanding this kind of human-environment linkage is fundamental to modern archaeological research and theory-building.

Do you think so many people find archaeology interesting because of the potential for discovery that Nabhan outlines? Is there a link between archaeological research and understanding and a knowledge of natural history as Nabhan describes? Or do you mostly disagree with Nabhan?

Elsewhere in this volume, Nabhan argues that people are not natural stewards of the environment. Do you agree?

Quick: where in the world is the largest concentration of Bronze Age graves?

Read on….

Bahrain is a large island in a shallow bay on the west side of the Persian Gulf called the Gulf of Bahrain. Bahrain’s modern residents can cross a series of causeways that link the island to Saudia Arabia to the west. Most of the island is relatively low-lying, flat, and arid.

Due to the petroleum industry, the country of Bahrain has had a booming economy over the last generation or so. The country also has a strong banking sector. Accompanying population growth has meant the expansion of suburban neighborhoods westward from the capital of Manama, in the northeast part of Bahrain.

New York Times photograph by Shawn Baldwin, captioned “Hundreds of burial mounds near the village of A’ali in Bahrain. The country has the world’s heaviest concentration of graves dating from the Bronze Age.”

This expansion and development threatens a landscape peppered with Bronze Age burial mounds. In fact, in an article published by the New York Times on September 17, 2009, author Michael Slackman says this is “the heaviest concentration of graves dating from the Bronze Age found anywhere in the world.” At present, some 35 areas are set aside to preserve clusters of mounds. Slackman writes:

Most of the graves contain a death chamber shaped like a boot on its side. The body was placed in the fetal position while personal items, ceramic pots, personal seals and knives were stored in the toe. The value of the graves is not, necessarily, in what they contain but in what they tell about the lives, values and funerary practices of an ancient civilization.

Google Earth screen grab of one of A’ali’s larger mound fields, now split by a divided highway.

The community of A’ali (also spelled Aali and Ali) is currently favored by middle-class families building new homes on the outskirts of suburban Manama. In UNESCO World Heritage materials online:

The Ali mound field is a large mound field of primarily Late Type divided into two parts by a north-south running highway. At the north end of the burial mound field is a group of huge mounds, called “Royal Mounds”, which have during the growth of the village become part of its urban fabric, so that the immediate neighbourhood of these mounds has been utilized for habitation and small industries, e.g. pottery and lime production.

Historically, Bahrain “is believed to have been the capital of Dilmun, which lay along a trade route linking the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia,” Slackman writes. In fact, Dilmun’s capital may have been what is now the modern community of A’ali, southwest of Manama. Certainly, long-distance trading networks developed early and were extensive throughout this region. Archaeological finds from many locations along the Persian Gulf coast indicate the ongoing presence of Bronze Age merchant ships.

Preservationists have been working with UNESCO to make the mound fields a World Heritage Site, so far without success. Online UNESCO materials note:

The Burial Ensembles of Dilmun and Tylos are the expression of funerary practices of these civilizations which flourished in Bahrain from the mid 3rd millennium B.C. till the mid 1st millennium A.D. and which played essential roles in the organization of trade between Mesopotamia, South Arabia and the Indian subcontinent.

Bahrain’s Gulf Daily News published an article dated August 23, 2009, by Mohammed al A’ Ali. He reported on the clash between the forces for development and those pushing for preservation:

Historic burial mounds in a Bahraini village, which the government hoped to have recognised as a World Heritage Site, will be bulldozed to make way for a new road, houses and a public park. Councillors have successfully argued that 62 mounds in Buri, which date back as far as 4,000 years, were standing in the way of development. However, heritage chiefs are insisting on excavating the area, near Hamad Town, before allowing the bulldozers in.

That’s the story from a distant part of the world.

How about your area? What archaeological remains are threatened near your house or neighborhood? What preservation efforts are underway, if any? Comments?

The prehistoric tool called a hand axe is large, and has a sharpened edge all the way around it. The sharpening is on both sides, so it’s a biface. It is found in the Old World and not in the New World.

The Acheulean is a stone tool industry characterized by a particular style of tool-making. Acheulean-style tools are known from across Africa and much of West Asia, and date from approximately 1.65 million years ago to as recent as about 100,000 years ago. The earliest dates for Acheulean tools are from Kenya, in West Africa. The earliest dates for Acheulean artifacts and sites in Europe are much later than the African and Asian dates.

However, Gary R. Scott and Luis Gibert of the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California report paleomagnetic dates for two sites with Acheulean artifacts in southeast Spain are much earlier than previously known. A New York Times article by Henry Fountain dated 2 September 2009 reports that these researchers obtained dates of about 760,000 and 900,000 years old for the sites of Solano del Zamborino and Estrecho del Quípar, in Spain. Samples from the layers with the artifacts and those above and below the artifacts indicates that the artifacts date approximately to the time of the last geomagnetic reversal. That reversal has been dated to approximately 780,000 years ago.

Spain is, of course, on the Iberian Peninsula, which today is separated from northern Africa by the Strait of Gibraltar, a narrow body of water that is just under nine miles wide.

So, the question becomes: did the makers of Acheulean tools enter the Iberian Peninsula from the south—that is, from Africa directly—or from the east, following the northern Mediterranean coastline? Fountain writes:

“The question is, which route did they follow?” he said. Rather than coming through the Middle East and then westward, Dr. Gibert said he is convinced they came across at Gibraltar. “We think the Gibraltar straits were a permeable barrier,” he said. “It’s a provocative interpretation, but I think there is enough information to support it.”

What do you think?

NOTE: Scott and Gibert published their original report in Nature. The article is not free, but here’s the abstract:

Stone tools are durable reminders of the activities, skills and customs of early humans, and have distinctive morphologies that reflect the development of technological skills during the Pleistocene epoch. In Africa, large cutting tools (hand-axes and bifacial chopping tools) became part of Palaeolithic technology during the Early Pleistocene (1.5 Myr ago). However, in Europe this change had not been documented until the Middle Pleistocene (<0.5 Myr ago). Here we report dates for two western Mediterranean hand-axe sites that are nearly twice the age of the supposed earliest Acheulian in western Europe. Palaeomagnetic analysis of these two sites in southeastern Spain found reverse polarity magnetozones, showing that hand-axes were already in Europe as early as 0.9 Myr ago. This expanded antiquity for European hand-axe culture supports a wide geographic distribution of Palaeolithic bifacial technology outside of Africa during the Early Pleistocene.

Satellite view of the Poverty Point site, from Google Earth. North is to the right in this screen grab.

Poverty Point is a famous prehistoric mound and village site in far northeast Louisiana, along a terrace adjacent to a tributary of the Mississippi River now called Bayou Marçon. The most dramatic earthen structures are a series of broken concentric arcs; however, several more traditionally shaped circular/rectangular mounds predate the arc-shaped earthworks. The arcs “face” east, or toward the rising sun. In the photo above, east is to the bottom of the image.

This summer (2009), the site, a State Park, hosted a research team lead by Diana Greenlee, of the Department of Geosciences at University of Louisiana at Monroe. According to the online news website thenewstar.com of Monroe, Greenlee and ULM students undertook excavations in the central plaza area to enable them to better understand buried circular features. Greenlee says that they can now date each of the four circles they tested. “We were able to establish that the different magnetic characteristics of the circles in the plaza correspond to different kinds of constructions,” she said, according to thenewstar.com article.

The Poverty Point are dated to the Terminal Archaic, approximately 1650–700 BC. Artifacts from the site include stone tools and other objects that came from afar, so the occupants of the site had access to a long-distance trading network, or traveled far themselves to bring these special objects back home.

The Louisiana park website for Poverty Point includes the text of a 1996 (second edition) volume on the site called “Poverty Point: A Terminal Archaic Culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley” by Jon L. Gibson. The text has been divided for easier loading and reading:

Overhead satellite view of Herodion/Herodium in screen grab from Google Earth, a free program available via the Internet.

Archaeology abounds in mysteries, a few solved and many, many unsolved.

One of the latter has been the location of Biblical King Herod’s tomb. Historical records introduce details that we would not know if all we had were archaeological data, and thus records—for example, manuscripts, diaries and bureaucratic archives—indicate real events and places that also become archaeological mysteries when we seek to substantiate them.

The cover story of the July 2009 issue of Smithsonian magazine discusses the search for Herod’s tomb, assumed from records to be in or around Herod’s fortified mountain-top palace, known variously as Herodion, Herodium, and Jabal al-Fraidees (the latter in Arabic). Barbara Krieger, author of the Smithsonian article, notes:

Ongoing excavations…reveal the impressive variety of facilities that Herod built at his desert retreat, including a royal theater that accommodated some 450 spectators.

In May 2007, an archaeological team headed by Professor Ehud Netzer of Hebrew University “discovered hundreds of red limestone fragments buried in the mountainside”—not in the palace at the top of the mountain.

Reassembling some of the pieces, Netzer concluded they were all that remained of a sarcophagus more than eight feet long with a gabled cover. The high quality of the craftsmanship suggested the sarcophagus was fit for a king. Plus, the extent of the fragmentation suggested that people had deliberately smashed it—a plausible outcome for the hated monarch’s resting place. Based on coins and other items found nearby, Netzer surmises that the desecration occurred during the first Jewish revolt against the Romans, from A.D. 66 to 73.

Read the Smithsonian article by clicking here.

Click here to read the May 2007 article announcing the find by ScienceDaily.

Read the Wikipedia entry on this dramatic hilltop archaeological site by clicking here.

You may not know that PDFs of back issues of the Society for American Archaeology’s magazine The SAA Archaeological Record are available for free, except for the latest issue. Volume 8, number 5, dated November 2008, is a topical issue, discussing the “New Archaic.” The seven articles were edited by Ken Sassaman, who also provides an excellent introduction. They examine data from different regions of North America, including two on patterns observed in the coastal Southeast.

Sassaman’s introduction, “The New Archaic, It Ain’t What It Used To Be,” discusses how the old idea that the Archaic was the time before agriculture and extended village life is now discredited. Indeed, archaeological research now shows that the Archaic period encompassed regional variation and considerable diversity. Sassaman notes:

One of the most striking discoveries of late are the monuments made of earth and shell by mobile hunter-gatherer populations as early as 7,000 years ago. Showcased in this issue are early mounds of the Southeast. This region boasts the most varied, dispersed, and ancient record of monument construction on the continent, and archaeologists are puzzling over the implications of these novel data for issues of broad anthropological relevance. [pg. 6]

He goes on:

In addition to the more ancient mounds of northeast Louisiana, the Southeast holds evidence for other types of monumental architecture that predate Poverty Point. Generally consisting of shell, the mounds, ridges, and rings of the South Atlantic and Gulf coast have survived the nineteenth-century bias of being considered natural phenomena, and the twentieth-century bias of being merely accumulated food refuse. [pg. 6–7]

In sum, if you are interested in reading brief but detailed syntheses of recent recent research on Archaic-period peoples, you might enjoy reading this issue, downloadable here.

Archaeologists working twenty or fifty years ago were serious and innovative researchers, however their understanding of the Archaic period differed considerably from the picture presented by the articles in this magazine. Is this difference due only to the substantial data that has been assembled in the interim? What other variables are there?

These are modern high-bush blueberries. The fruit are still green; the photo was taken in Atlanta in early May.

You may be hearing more about BlackBerries (the smartphones) these days, but blueberries are worth a Ponder. Blueberries are in the news because they have lots of anthocyanins and other wonderful chemicals that are extremely beneficial nutrients in the human diet.

Blueberries (Vaccinium spp.) are native to North America. Blueberries were used by Native Americans to make pemmican. Pemmican is a dried meat-fat mixture that was a nutritious storable foodstuff. Sometimes the meat was pounded together with fruits, like blueberries, choke cherries, or currants, which made a mixture vaguely like a modern fruit leather.

Wild blueberry bushes in Georgia probably commonly grew in the forest subcanopy and understory. Blueberries have been identified by ethnobotanists in floral remains from archaeological sites across eastern North America.

Blueberries are an important modern commercial crop in Georgia, especially in the southeastern part of the state. In 2005, Georgia’s blueberry crop became more valuable than our peach crop. Our blueberry crop brought in $75 million in 2008. Read about the development of commercial blueberry horticulture in Georgia in the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

One problem Native Americans had to solve was how to store food. They had to deal with predatory insects, rodents, and other creatures that might get into their stores. They also had to process foods so that they would keep for a time. Dried food, like pemmican, was one way to do this.

How else might have prehistoric Native Americans stored food? Remember, they had no refrigerators or freezers.

The title of this Ponder playfully refers to a well-known book named “Blueberries for Sal” by Robert McCloskey. It’s about a girl named Sal who goes out with her Mom to pick blueberries and has a grand adventure.

Humans are humans; we tend to like some of the same places on the landscape no matter who we are and when we are alive. This means that some of the same places were occupied over and over. The view from Lookout Mountain must have been as compelling to prehistoric Native Americans as it is to us today.

What makes a location more—or less—attractive to human visitors or inhabitants?

When a scientist analyzes data, sometimes the values are more similar—except for one or a few values or characteristics or whatever. These different values are called outliers, meaning they lie outside the pattern of most of the values (or of the sample of values). Thus, outliers are rare within that data set. In the set of imaginary data points in the plot above, the outlier plots way in the upper right. The question of how to deal with outliers haunts many scientists, and is a point of analysis for some statisticians.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a mathematical researcher, has published a book he titled The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007, Random House). A “black swan,” to Taleb, refers to a rare event that is difficult to predict yet has an outsize impact, beyond normal expectations. Thus, there’s an element of randomness and an element of uncertainty in the outlier.

The name Taleb chose for the book, “Black Swan,” refers to the assumption by Europeans that all swans are white, since all wild swans Europeans were familiar with for centuries were indeed white. The term “black swan” thus was a metaphor for an impossibility. No one (in their world) had seen a black swan, so for them black swans did not exist. Then, in 1697, a Dutch explorer in Australia found black swans, and the Europeans had a bit of a shock. Thus, they altered the term to mean something assumed to be impossible that actually happened.

To Taleb, a Black Swan event is a surprise and has a major impact. Although he applies this concept to financial investment patterns, archaeologists can learn from consideration of Black Swan events and outliers.

First, you have to think about the data set that produced the Black Swan outlier. Perhaps the data may be just a small sample, so that the apparent outlier is really part of a normal distribution of data—it’s just that some data points are missing. You also need to make sure that the way the data were measured is sufficiently accurate and precise that the outlier does not result from some form of mismeasure.

If the data set seems complete, or to be a complete representation of the data set, so that the outlier is “real,” then how to explain it?

Archaeologists sometimes encounter statistical outliers in, for example, a set of radiocarbon dates. Sometimes, the “bad” date may result from inaccuracies in the sample, thus skewing its date. Sometimes, the “bad” date means something that is actually real, but doesn’t match with previous interpretations—for example, that some particular artifact type was actually used earlier or later than previous data and dates suggest.

Sometimes, because the “real world” doesn’t always make sense at a given time, it is hard to determine, based on field and laboratory methodology, why a particular outlier date is “bad.” If we assume it is not “bad,” and that it measures a real data point that is beyond expectations based on other reliable data, then we have far different concerns when we try to explain what that outlier means.

I am not a statistician, and this is by no means a complete disquisition on this subject. Instead, my intention is to raise the issue of interpreting outliers, and perhaps add a new twist to it for some. The Edge Foundation website has a long article by Taleb that you might be interested in reading, which elaborates on the Black Swan outliers, and, ultimately, on human behavior. Click here to read that article, posted in September 2008.

Long time SGA member and primitive technology researcher Scott Jones has just published a book that is a compilation of his articles from the past decade related to primitive technology and experimental archaeology. Scott has practiced primitive technology for two decades and now makes a living presenting the subject to the general public (always with lots of examples and demonstrations) and by conducting experimental archaeology with CRM firms. He is a long time board member of the Society for Primitive Technology and is currently its president. He lives with his wife and son in rural (i.e., primitive) Oglethorpe County.

The book, entitled A View to the Past: Experience and Experiment in Primitive Technology, is a 277-page, soft bound collection of about 40 articles, most of which were originally published in the Bulletin of Primitive Technology. The articles are illustrated with numerous photographs and a few drawings and charts. They are organized into six chapters: foundation skills, making things fly, shelter, stone tools, regional perspectives in experimental archaeology and other musings. While there is a good bit of “how to” in many of the articles, Scott also addresses the “why” and “what does it mean” aspects of experimental work. The fact that Scott has an anthropology degree (UGA) and works with professional archeologists allows him to make a great many more anthropological observations from his work than most primitive technologists. Thus, while the articles on building a shelter, making a long bow, and fire starting will appeal to the general public, and especially young readers, these and most every article have important messages for the working archaeologist who is trying to interpret the anthropology of artifact assemblages. This is a very readable, interesting, and entertaining book that will appeal to a wide audience.

A View to the Past by Scott Jones is available from Createspace.

Wiley Publishing has just issued Archaeology for Dummies ($21.95) by SGA member Nancy White. The book tells how archaeology is detective work and traces over 2 million years of prehistoric human cultures. It demonstrates how archaeology uncovers things about historic times that history can’t, and shows how archaeological knowledge is useful for modern issues like global warming, environmental depletion, genocide or disaster victims, and recovering a people’s lost heritage. Included in the book are also some of White’s (awful) jokes and stories from fieldwork in northwest Florida, south Georgia and south Alabama. This book is useful for professional and avocational archaeologists as well as lay readers who want to learn about the breadth of the field and how to get involved. It’s available in many bookstores and at online outlets such as amazon.com.

Many of the archeological phase names currently used for northwest Georgia are directly attributable to the work of Joseph Caldwell in Allatoona Reservoir more than fifty years ago (Caldwell 1950, 1957). While terminology has changed over the years, most of the designations used by Caldwell remain in use today. For instance, the old term “Kellogg focus” is now referred to as Kellogg phase and “Cartersville focus” is now referred to as Cartersville phase (Garrow 2002:2). This change to modern terminology has been gradual and there have been relatively recent cases where an author considered it “advisable to retain the older terminological structure to avoid potential confusion” (Cable et al. 1991:80).

It is a little known fact that Caldwell also defined a Late Archaic phase for the Allatoona Reservoir that he called the Stamp Creek focus (Caldwell 1957:279). Based on his description, the Stamp Creek focus would be comparable in many respects to the Late Archaic Mill Branch or Black Shoals phases of eastern Georgia (Elliott et al. 1994:371, Stanyard 2003:62). The most diagnostic artifact type associated with each of these is represented by large stemmed projectile points that may be identified as Savannah River Stemmed (Coe 1959:44) or Appalachian Stemmed (Kneberg 1957). While these two point names appear to be regional variants of the same type, the name Appalachian Stemmed tends to be used for points made from quartzite (Cambron and Hulse 1964:6).

Caldwell devoted substantial space in his Allatoona report to the discussion of the Stamp Creek focus, but it would seem that he did not pursue the subject further after that project. A search of the University of Georgia’s Laboratory of Archaeology Manuscript Files produced a single document on the subject. A manuscript entitled “The Stamp Creek Culture: A Prepottery Occupation in the Etowah Area, Georgia” is not dated, but a notation in the text indicates it was written prior to 1955. In reading Trend and Tradition in the Prehistory of the Eastern United States, the Stamp Creek type site is mentioned, but the Stamp Creek focus is not discussed (Caldwell 1958:80). Because the Allatoona Survey report was never published, relatively few archeologists have been made aware of Caldwell’s Late Archaic phase description.

Caldwell’s Stamp Creek focus was intended to represent the final stage of the Archaic period, but his trait list probably includes some artifacts from earlier and later periods. Artifact drawings include large stemmed projectile points, a variety of smaller stemmed points, notched points and soapstone sherds. Figure 1 shows one of Caldwell’s illustrations of projectile points thought to be part of the Stamp Creek focus (the figure also depicts triangular points of the later Kellogg focus). Using the data available at the time, Caldwell felt the Stamp Creek focus assemblage differed in some respects from the closely related Savannah River focus of eastern Georgia (Fairbanks 1942:223-231) and the Lauderdale focus of northern Alabama (Webb and DeJarnette 1942:19).

With respect to the traits used to define the Stamp Creek focus, Caldwell noted that of the various stemmed points found on the sites, the medium to large ‚“simple tang” (stemmed) points were the most characteristic and also showed the closest resemblance to materials from other Southeastern pre-ceramic foci (Caldwell 1957:279, 1958:13). Such points are usually relatively large and heavy, the stem is square, and the shoulders broad and well defined (Caldwell 1957: Figures 8 and 9). Caldwell also included hemispherical steatite bowls and other groundstone artifacts as traits of the focus. Caldwell recognized that perforated steatite tablets, “the so-called net sinkers,” that are so numerous at Stallings Island and other Savannah River Focus sites, were practically absent in the Allatoona area. The excavated Stamp Creek focus sites produced no axes, atlatl weights, bone or shell artifacts (Caldwell 1957:280).

Caldwell noted that at Allatoona, quartzite was usually employed for large simple tang points, but quartz was little used. Flint (chert) was used to produce smaller points that were highly variable in shape and included slight (expanded) tang, simple (straight) tang, bifurcated tang, corner notched, side notched and stemless (Caldwell 1957:9). As previously noted, some of the points would be recognized today as dating to earlier or later time periods.

Figure 1. Examples of projectile points and bifaces associated with Caldwell’s Stamp Creek focus with comparisons to those of the Kellogg focus. The large quartzite points in the center are typical examples (illustration courtesy of the University of Georgia, Laboratory of Archaeology). Click image for much larger version of the figure.

Caldwell’s excavations on the Stamp Creek site produced a number of features and he concluded that 18 pits could be attributed to the Stamp Creek focus occupation. Most appeared to be used for storage of food, but one contained red ochre and some traces of human bone. Most of the pits were similar in appearance, usually with straight sides and flat bottoms. Dimensions ranged from 2.5 to 5 feet in diameter and 1.5 to 3 feet deep. A few were oval or oblong and in two or three instances, sides were sloping. Based on our current understanding of diagnostic artifact types, some of the features identified by Caldwell are probably associated with later occupations (terminal Late Archaic or Woodland). Still, the evidence remains that 9BR139 was an intensively occupied habitation site of the period.

Caldwell regarded the Stamp Creek Focus as a relatively late pre-ceramic culture but he cautioned that the absence of fiber tempered pottery on these sites did not mean that the ceramic type was not being used in the region (Caldwell 1957:280). Caldwell’s report actually illustrates one fiber tempered sherd from the Stamp Creek site and he describes one additional fiber tempered sherd form another survey site, 9CK101, as “Stallings Island Incised and Punctate” (Caldwell 1957:207). At present, we have no means of determining if the fiber tempered sherds were associated with the Stamp Creek focus or a later occupation.

Subsequent to Caldwell’s work in Allatoona Reservoir, other sites have been identified in northwestern Georgia that contain large Savannah River Stemmed or Appalachian Stemmed types that are made quartzite or other equally hard lithic materials (Beasley 1995, Benson et al. 2007, Crook 1984, Webb 1998). The identified site types include intensively occupied habitation sites, short term camps, and quarry-oriented lithic workshops. One recently investigated site, 9GO231, is of particular interest because Savannah River style projectile points made from quartzite and Ridge and Valley chert occur in nearly equal numbers (Benson et al. 2007). 9GO231 is located within the Ridge and Valley Province, while most of the other sites discovered to date lie at the edge of the Piedmont Province. A few radiocarbon dates have been procured in the past decade from northwest Georgia sites that are in line with those of the Mill Branch and Black Shoals phases of eastern Georgia and western South Carolina (Webb 1998, Steve Webb, personal communication 2007). The suggested range of Mill Branch and Black Shoals phases extends from approximately 4200 to 3450 B.P. (Stanyard 2003:62). It would appear that Caldwell’s Stamp Creek focus should fit comfortably within that time period.

During the 1970s, archeologists began using the term Savannah River phase to cover the entire pre-ceramic Late Archaic period in the northern part of Georgia (DePratter 1975:4) and that phase designation has been used in a few northwestern Georgia reports (Bowen 1989:115, Crook 1984:55). In his recent overview of the Archaic period of northwestern Georgia, Stanyard (2003:58) concluded that a general lack of information impedes our ability to assess the nature of the Late Archaic development in the region and he proposed a provisional category of “undifferentiated phase” for the period of ca 5000 to 3000 B.P. (Stanyard 2003:58). I suggest that Caldwell’s Stamp Creek focus represents a useful tool for the study of a portion of the Late Archaic period. Unfortunately, we cannot simply change the word “focus” to “phase” and was the case for Kellogg and Cartersville. The name Stamp Creek phase was adopted several years ago as a Lamar designation (Hally and Rudolph 1986:64). While Caldwell’s Late Archaic designation has historical precedence, it is unlikely that the Lamar phase name will ever be changed. For the time being, it is perhaps just as well that we continue to use the name “Caldwell’s Stamp Creek focus” in our discussions of the Late Archaic for northwest Georgia.

References Cited

Beasley, Robert K.
1995 Artifacts from the Basin of Pumpkinvine Creek, Georgia. Central States Archaeological Journal 42(3):146-147.

Benson Robert W., Scott Jones, and Andrew Ivester
2007 Phase III Excavations of 9GO231 on Lick and Salacoa Creeks, Gordon County, Georgia. Draft report submitted to the Georgia Department of Transportation by Southeastern Archeological Services, Inc., Athens.

Bowen, William Rowe
1989 An Examination of Subsistence, Settlement, and Chronology During the Early Woodland Kellogg Phase in the Piedmont Physiographic Province of the Eastern United States. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Cable, John S., Leslie E. Raymer, J.H. Raymer, and Charles E. Cantley
1991 Archaeological Test Excavations at The Lake Ackworth Site (9CO45) and the Butler Creek Site (9CO46) Allatoona Lake, Cobb County, Georgia. Report submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Mobile District by New South Associates, Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Caldwell, Joseph R.
1950 A Preliminary Report on Excavations in the Allatoona Reservoir. Early Georgia 1(1):5-21.
1957 Survey and Excavations in the Allatoona Reservoir, Northern Georgia. University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology Manuscript No. 151, Athens.
1958 Trend and Tradition in the Prehistory of the Eastern United States. Memoir No. 88, American Anthropological Association and the Illinois State Museum Scientific Papers, vol. X, Springfield Illinois.

Cambron, James W. and David C. Hulse
1964 Handbook of Alabama Archaeology: Part 1, Point Types. Alabama Archaeological Society, Huntsville.

Coe, Joffre
1964 The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 54(5), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Crook, Morgan R., Jr.
1984 Cagle Site Report, Archaic and Early Woodland Period Manifestations in the North Georgia Piedmont. West Georgia College Occasional Papers in Cultural Resource Management, no. 2. Prepared for Georgia Department of Transportation, Atlanta.

DePratter, Chester B.
1975 The Archaic in Georgia. Early Georgia 3(1):1-16.

Elliott, Daniel T., Jerald Ledbetter and Elizabeth Gordon
1994 Data Recovery at Lovers Lane, Phinizy Swamp and the Old Dike Sites Bobby Jones Expressway Extension Corridor, Augusta, Georgia. Occasional Papers in Cultural Resource Management, no. 7. Georgia Department of Transportation, Atlanta.

Fairbanks, Charles H.
1942 The Taxonomic Position of Stallings Island, Georgia. American Antiquity 7(3):223-231.

Garrow, Patrick H.
2002 The Woodland North of the Fall Line. Paper presented Southeastern Archeological Conference, Macon, Georgia.

Hally, David J. and Teresa Rudolph
1986 Mississippian Period Archaeology of the Georgia Piedmont. Laboratory of Archaeology Series Report, no. 2. University of Georgia, Athens.

Kneberg, Madeline
1957 Chipped Stone Artifacts of the Tennessee Valley Area. Tennessee Archaeologist XIII(1). Tennessee Archaeological Society, Knoxville.

Stanyard, William F.
2003 Archaic Period Archaeology of Northern Georgia. Georgia Archaeological Research Design Paper, no. 13. University of Georgia, Laboratory of Archaeology Report No. 38.

Webb, Robert S.
1998 Archeological Investigations at Three Prehistoric Sites (9DW64, 9DW77 and 9CK713) Cherokee and Dawson Counties, Georgia, Cherokee County Raw Water Supply Reservoir. Prepared for Cherokee County Water and Sewerage Authority, Canton, Georgia by R.S. Webb and Associates, Holly Springs, Georgia.

Webb, William S. And David L. DeJarnette
1942 An Archaeological Survey of the Pickwick Basin in Adjacent Portions of the States of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, no. 129, Washington.

In September 2006, Leake Site Principal Investigators Scot Keith and Dean Wood took a trip to Indiana in order to conduct research into the Mann site, a Middle Woodland Hopewell site located in southwestern Indiana. This site is notable due to the presence (and abundance) of Swift Creek complicated stamped pottery, as well as sand tempered simple stamped wares very similar to Cartersville simple stamped pottery. The site has long been known to contain Swift Creek type pottery, recognized by such archaeologists as James Kellar and Bret Ruby. As the Swift Creek complicated stamped pottery tradition is not endemic to that region, its presence indicates a connection between Swift Creek and the Midwestern Hopewellian peoples. Our research was designed to investigate this connection.

We examined the Mann site collections held at the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology at Indiana University in Bloomington and the private collection owned by Charles Lacer in Evansville. We took with us photographs of numerous selected Swift Creek sherds from Leake in order to search for potential design matches with the examples from Mann. While no exact design matches were found, we did come away with several interesting observations. Many of the complicated stamped design elements are shared between the sites, yet one design common at Leake—the barred oval—is rare at Mann. Furthermore, we noted numerous examples of the zigzagged Crooked River design at Mann, which is common in the Gulf Coastal and southwestern Georgia region, and conversely absent at Leake. An early Swift Creek pottery rim trait—deep and closely spaced rounded notches (often referred to as notched or scalloped)—is very common for the complicated stamped rim sherds from Mann, and this rim form is common at Leake as well.

As documented by Ruby, the Swift Creek complicated stamped wares from Mann are produced using a grog/clay tempered paste, while the simple stamped wares are sand tempered. Petrographic analysis conducted on the Mann site sherds indicates that the complicated stamped wares are produced locally, while the simple stamped wares are non-local—the materials suggesting a Southeastern origin. While assembling Leake sherds for a petrographic study shortly after returning from this research trip, Mr. Keith noted a complicated stamped notched rim sherd which was extremely similar to the Mann site examples, particularly in terms of paste temper and texture. This sherd was submitted to Dr. James Stoltman for petrographic analysis in order to see if there may be a direct connection between these two significant sites. The results from the petrographic analysis indicate that this sherd probably did derive from the Mann site, as may a small rocker stamped rim sherd we recovered!

Another ceramic variety recovered from the Mann site consisted of diamond shaped checks, each with a raised square or circle within. Examples of this type are also known from Hopewell sites in Ohio (such as Seip, Rockhold, Harness, and Turner), as well as from contemporaneous Southeastern sites having Hopewellian assemblages. Such sherds have been found at the Miner’s Creek site and 9Hy98 near Atlanta, Mandeville in southwest Georgia, and the Yearwood site in southern Tennessee. We feel that this variety may be related to the unidentified decorated type at Leake.

Our road trip demonstrated some very significant long distance connections (450 straight line miles) between the Swift Creek heartland in the central Georgia and southern Indiana as well as connections between the Leake and Mann sites specifically. More details and some illustrations of the connections can be found by clicking here.

Archaeologists seeking to reconstruct past lifeways rely for their interpretations on the timeworn remains of ancient cultures for guidance; here in our humid Georgia climate, we are further disadvantaged since often only the inorganic residues of prehistoric culture remain. The study of stone tools, sherds of pottery, and the scant remnants of organic items and foods have helped to reconstruct much of the detail of aboriginal life since the arrival of people at the end of the Ice Age. But, unlike our counterparts in arid regions who are able to examine directly numerous organic artifacts preserved in dry caves and rock shelters, experimental archaeologists working in the Southeast are not rigidly bound to a list of facts about the material culture of the native peoples; we seek, at best, to present a range of available technological possibilities. These possibilities extend beyond the reconstruction of material archaeological remains; by combining aspects of archaeology, ethnography, and natural history, a world of organic materials normally hidden from the archaeologist’s trowel emerges. Rarely are we fortunate enough to glimpse the artistry of fibercraft, basketry, and woodworking that doubtless flourished in the prehistoric Southeast. Several flooded sites in Florida have yielded substantial organic remains; we believe that similar objects were probably commonly in use in what is now Georgia.

Such interpretive freedom is a mixed blessing since, on the one hand, one may experiment with ideas and adjust perceptions of prehistory; on the other, one must be attentive to the realities of Stone Age life provided by archaeology, and thus rein in unrealistic ideas before they wander too far afield. To the informed student of primitive technology falls the task of responsibly filling in gaps in our knowledge by recognizing, using, and documenting the wealth of possible material resources in our environments.

Starting with the oldest identifiable culture, the following text covers the next 12,000 years, from the long periods of hunting and gathering known as the Paleoindian and Archaic periods, to the early horticulturists of the Woodland period, and the maize-producing agriculturalists of the Mississippian period, ending with the arrival of Europeans in recent times. While some traditional crafts are still practiced by Indians of the Southeast, much of the accumulated knowledge of the past 12,000 years was lost through the unfortunate acts of the Europeans who ultimately came to dominate North America.

Paleoindian: 12,000-10,000 BP

While a growing body of evidence suggests that people inhabited the New World by about 13,500 years ago (often referred to as the Pre-Paleoindian period), the first definable, widespread culture appeared around 12,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age. The dry, windswept landscape was strongly shaped by, but just out of reach of, the massive continental ice sheet that lay a few hundred miles to the north. The coastal lowlands extended far beyond the present coast, because massive amounts of the ocean’s water locked up in polar ice sheets lowered sea levels. In this landscape of boreal forest and grassland, these earliest Americans coexisted briefly with numerous Ice Age mammals that are now extinct. In the Southeast were found wooly mammoth, mastodon, and ancient bison, as well as living species including caribou, elk, and deer.

Paleoindian sites are rare and their distinctive projectile points are scarce, often found in the Southeast only as isolated artifacts. Paleoindians are believed to have migrated across the land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska (a consequence of lower sea levels during glacial times). Their lifestyle was one of hunting and gathering, and the few well preserved kill sites discovered in the Western US indicate an emphasis on large game. This is likewise reflected in their tools: wellmade projectile points, sometimes bearing a characteristic channel flake removed lengthwise from the base (fluted points); long narrow flake blades struck from prepared cores; and unifacial scrapers manufactured by the removal of many small flakes from the edge of a larger flake, thus forming a beveled planing tool. This technology is quite similar to that of the Old World Upper Paleolithic, and attests to the origins of the earliest inhabitants of the New World. Because winters were severe, access to good stone was limited, and the animals these people hunted were often large and dangerous, the stone tools of the Paleoindians were made from the highest quality materials available and were used for as long as possible. To get the most possible use from them, they were often resharpened many times before being discarded.

The specific hunting weapons used by Paleoindians are the topic of speculation; while some projectile points are large enough to be used as tips for heavy thrusting or stabbing spears, most of those found in the Southeast are small enough for use on lighter projectiles thrown with a spear thrower. No direct evidence for spear throwers has been found, and the scarcity of Paleoindian sites does not favor the recovery of an actual spear thrower, yet the Old World flavor of the artifact assemblage favors the presence of this weapon for the pursuit of large, dangerous, and now largely extinct prey.

Archaic: ca. 10,000-3000 BP

Early Archaic: ca. 10,000-8000 BP

At the close of the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, a people who once lived by hunting a variety of large game were forced to alter their way of life in the face of a changing climate. In the Southeast, the extinction of mammoth, mastodon, and the ancient bison, as well as the disappearance from the region of modern species such as elk and caribou, left the whitetail deer as the principal large game animal. Along with deer, the new climate allowed forests with the same species we see today to flourish; they were dominated by oak, hickory, chestnut (now almost gone due to disease), and pine. Focusing on deer, black bear, small game, and mast (nuts) from the mature forests, Early Archaic peoples adopted a generalized hunting and gathering lifestyle with a greater reliance upon plant foods than their Paleoindian ancestors.

Although population increased rapidly in the new, temperate environment, Early Archaic peoples still ranged far and wide, often using major river valleys as territorial corridors for foraging and travel between the Coastal Plain and the interior. Following the example set by their Paleoindian ancestors, they sought high-quality material for their stone tools. Well-made, easily maintained tools were a necessity for highly mobile bands of hunter-gatherers; yet their mobility allowed them to choose the best material from within their territory. The bow was unknown to these people; the primary weapon remained the spear-thrower (or atlatl), and the side- and corner-notched stone points they used are not really arrowheads at all. They are, in fact, tips for darts thrown with the atlatl. Using spear throwers to hunt swift game, hunters equipped lightweight darts with detachable foreshafts that allowed the stone points to serve double duty as both knife and projectile point, and also permitted easy replacement of an accidentally broken tip.

Middle Archaic: ca. 8000-5500 BP

By about 8000 years ago, a minor climatic shift (called the Altithermal) imposed its effect upon the increasing human population of the Southeast. Warmer and dryer conditions west of the Appalachians influenced people to concentrate into river valleys, while the wetter climate that prevailed to the east resulted in a general migration into the uplands. Perhaps in response to their growing population as well as climatic change, Middle Archaic peoples increased their reliance upon plant foods. Their preference for locally available stone from which to make their deceptively simple, contracting-stem projectile points indicates that they foraged in smaller territories than their ancestors. Using simple chipped-stone axes to fell modest-sized trees needed for shelter and tools, they continued to forage in much the same way as their Early Archaic predecessors. During the Middle Archaic, stone spear-thrower weights first appear, an innovation that improved the weapon’s performance. Although we suspect spear throwers had been used since the end of the Paleoindian times (and probably before), perforated stone weights provide the best hard evidence for the existence of this weapon in the Southeast.

Late Archaic: ca. 5500-3000 BP

Although many of the trends of the Early and Middle Archaic continued into the Late Archaic, it differed from them in some significant ways. In addition to relatively large stemmed projectile points, the Late Archaic was characterized by the first fired clay ceramics in North America. Plant fiber added to the raw clay strengthened (tempered) the unfired vessel. The fiber burned during the firing process, yielding a sturdy vessel bearing the impressions of plant fibers. Fiber-tempered pottery appears around 4500 BP in the Coastal Plain of Georgia and South Carolina.

More commonly found in the southern Appalachians and piedmont of northern Georgia and adjacent states are fragments of soapstone bowls. Contrary to popular belief, these carved stone bowls actually appear after the invention of ceramic pottery, about 3500 BP. The appearance of ceramic and stone vessels signaled the beginning of the end of the 8500 year-old hunting and gathering way of life that had endured since the earliest humans arrived in North America. The invention of pottery indicates a more sedentary lifestyle that included an early form of horticulture for cultivating squash (Cucurbita pepo) and gourds (Lagenaria siceraria). For in-depth information about fibertempered ceramics, soapstone bowls, and other Late Archaic cooking technology, see Kenneth E. Sassaman’s Early Pottery in the Southeast: Tradition and Innovation in Cooking Technology (1993).

The transition from hunting and gathering to sedentism is further evidenced by intensive gathering of shellfish for food along many of the rivers in the Southeast. This practice left immense piles of discarded shell, which sometimes extend for hundreds of meters along creeks and estuarine margins. Increased sedentism likewise brought about changes in axe technology. The simple chipped stone axes that well-served the needs of earlier peoples were refined to suit the rigors of house construction and limited land clearing. While hafting of Late Archaic grooved axes was apparently similar to earlier flaked stone types (a flexible twig or splint wrapped around a groove or constriction), greater durability and maintainability were accomplished by pecking and grinding the surface, and polishing the edge.

Woodland: ca. 3000-1100 BP

By about 3000 years ago, the horticulture experiments begun by Late Archaic peoples became a way of life for people of the Woodland period. Despite the name, Woodland peoples were perhaps less dependent upon the forest environments of the Southeast than their predecessors. Taking the refinements of stone axe technology a step further, the grooved axes of an earlier time gave way to a polished tapered form called a celt. Instead of fastening a flexible sapling around a groove to form a handle, the blade was fitted into a hole in the end of a club-like handle. With friction holding the celt blade securely in its haft, the club-like handle provided additional weight and momentum. This allowed Woodland farmers to clear yet larger areas of land for villages and fields.

During the early part of the Woodland period, corn (maize) had been introduced from its Mesoamerican homeland, but food production based almost entirely on native cultigens—mainly lamb’s quarters (Chenopodium berlandieri), marsh elder (Iva annua), sunflowers (Helianthus annuus), maygrass (Phalaris caroliniana), knotweed (Polygonum sp.), as well as squash and gourds. Although Woodland peoples probably retained some of the hunting and gathering mobility of their ancestors, large-scale production of native seed plants provided a margin of security against food shortages during the lean months of late winter and early spring. Starchier than most wild plant foods, cultivated foods require longer cooking times. As dependence on these foods increased, so too did the demands placed upon pottery. Heavy fiber-tempered pottery gradually was replaced by thinner, more refined sand- and grittempered wares that made a lighter, sturdier vessel.

As they struggled with the new challenges of sedentism, food production, and territoriality, Woodland peoples experimented with ways of adapting their weapons to new circumstances. Surplus food afforded the luxury of remaining longer in one place, and as villages grew, competition for arable land and other resources was inevitable. Also, ambush hunting in food plots became a practical alternative to long-distance hunting forays, while serving to protect increasingly valuable food crops from animals. The venerable spear thrower—an Ice Age legacy of hunters and gatherers in nearly every part of the world— became obsolete in the face of the need for efficiency, stealth, and increased rate of fire. Although requiring a greater initial labor investment than the spear thrower, the bow—one of the most recognizable symbols of native ingenuity—became the weapon of choice for hunting and warfare. And sedentism—the practice of living more or less permanently in one place—allowed adequate storage and seasoning of bowstaves, a cumbersome commodity requiring shelter.

As with many technological innovations, the core idea of string-and-wood propelled projectiles did not spring suddenly onto the stage of prehistory; indeed, the bow was merely a technological refinement of flexible spear-thrower technology. During the developmental phase of the technology, simple, light draw-weight bows could be constructed easily from readily available materials and used for fishing or hunting small game. While a mobile hunter/gatherer could easily carry additional twofoot long wooden blanks from which to produce atlatls, the same wanderer, in seeking to make a more substantial weapon, could scarcely afford to travel about the countryside with a five-foot long nonfunctional bowstave; nor could he leave it behind to be potentially exposed to the destructive elements of the humid Eastern US. In other words, archaeologists think Woodland peoples had to stay in one place long enough for the bowstave to season, before they could finish the bow.

As in other parts of the world, the advent of agriculture and sedentism, along with necessity, resulted in the development of the bow-and-arrow, the ultimate Neolithic weapon. During the transition from spear-thrower to bow, a profusion of projectile point designs were tested as hunters sought lighter, faster projectiles. Dominated by a variety of small stemmed types and relatively large triangular points, the triangular style ultimately succeeded all others in the Southeast. By the end of the Woodland period, triangular projectile points had become much smaller. Although often called “bird points” in the mistaken belief that only small game could be taken with such a small projectile point, these tips are among the few types that may be confidently called arrowheads. Attached to rivercane arrows launched from powerful bows by skilled archers, the tiny arrow points proved fatal to the largest creatures of the Eastern Woodlands, whether deer, bear, or human.

The Woodland Period also signals the beginning of the construction of earthen mounds. Sedentism brought with it the necessity for greater social organization, and also permitted the accumulation of material goods. From this came the concept of status, and by Middle Woodland times some individuals were interred in conical earthen mounds, often with elaborate funerary items and trade goods acquired from great distances.

Mississippian: ca. AD 900-1540

Corn—or more correctly, maize—is known only sporadically in the preceding Woodland period, and certainly not until late Woodland times is it present in sufficient quantity to qualify as a significant food source across the Southeast. Yet by the time new varieties of maize as well as new ideas arrived from Mexico around AD 900, the cultural mechanisms for large-scale food production initiated in the Woodland period were firmly in place. With nearly 2000 years of horticulture experience, maize claimed a central place in Southeastern Native American culture, alongside beans, squash, sunflowers, jerusalem artichokes, gourds, and tobacco.

The Mississippian period, so called because of the extensively cultivated bottomlands of the Mississippi River, represents the most complex political organization and extensive social stratification the Woodland tradition of tribe- or clan-based villages, the Mississippi River drainage and much of the Southeast was dominated by an array of polities (or political units) known as chiefdoms. Though much of our knowledge about the geographical size of chiefdoms is lost, it is believed that some (such as Coosa, in northwestern Georgia) were quite large. Each chiefdom consisted of several villages, each of which was answerable to a central (paramount) chief or leader believed to have god-like powers, who resided on the flat-topped earthen mound, often with one or two other influential leaders living atop lesser mounds in the village compound. The head man exacted agricultural tribute from his subjects, and, during lean times he oversaw the redistribution of food and other goods to his subjects. In return, the people were required to provide labor to the chief. They constructed his house upon the spot where his predecessors had lived; upon his death, his subjects often buried him beneath the dirt floor of his mound-summit residence. Then, in accordance with custom, the house was often burned. In preparation for the new heir, a new mantle of earth was added to the mound, and a new house constructed. Thus were the great mounds of the Mississippian Indians constructed.

In addition to the chiefly mounds, the village compound often included residential houses with walls constructed of upright posts interwoven with cane or twigs, and covered with clay, roofed with thatch or bark; a council house, which occasionally took the form of a semi-subterranean earthlodge; and a central plaza, which served as a gathering place and game court. In the plaza, the men played chunkey, a game wherein spears or sticks are thrown at a rolling, wheel-like stone (a chunkey stone), often accompanied by copious gambling. The plaza was also used as a ball court for the ball game, the southern equivalent of lacrosse. A rough (and occasionally fatal) enterprise, the ball game was known as “little brother of war,” and was used to settle disputes between hostile groups as a way of avoiding outright warfare.

The chiefdom was a formidable political and military force, and Mississippian towns, enclosed in their palisades of sharpened, upright timbers, often contained populations numbering in the thousands. Equipped with powerful bows, their arrows tipped with tiny triangular stone points, garfish scales, antler, or often just sharpened cane alone, warriors defended their towns and villages. But they were entirely unprepared for that which was to come.

Historic: ca. AD 1540-1840

With the entrance of Hernando De Soto into the interior of the Southeast in 1539, the region’s history was forever changed (Hudson 1997). De Soto’s initial exploration was followed by more expeditions, first by other Spaniards (Hudson 1990), and then by the English and French (Hudson and Tesser 1994). Iron tools and other trade goods, diseases to which the natives were not immune, and the inherent disadvantages faced by Indians who survived European diseases and depredations all contributed to the devastation of Indian culture. Some groups, like the Muskogee-speaking Creeks further south, maintained considerable cultural identity, although still dependent upon European trade goods. The Cherokees of northern Georgia, however, attempted a different strategy. By the late 1700s their material culture differed little from that of their Euroamerican neighbors. Even with log houses, farms, orchards, slaves, porcelain, and a written language, they suffered much the same fate as their native kinsmen. Throughout the 1830’s they were removed to the Oklahoma Territory by decree of US President Andrew Jackson, and their homes and land were seized by white settlers. The rest is literally “history.”

References Cited

Bense, Judith A.
1994 Archaeology of the Southeastern United States: Paleoindian to World War I. Academic Press, San Diego.

Hudson, Charles
1976 Southeastern Indians. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.
1990 The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Exploration of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.
1997 Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South’s Ancient Chiefdoms. University of Georgia Press, Athens.

Hudson, Charles, and Carmen Chaves Tesser (editors)
1994 The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South, 1521-1704. University of Georgia Press, Athens.

Sassaman, Kenneth E.
1993 Early Pottery in the Southeast: Tradition and Innovation in Cooking Technology. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.