Recent Considerations of Coastal Subsistence Practices in the Southeastern USA
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)
The American Southeast boasts thousands of miles of crenulated shoreline that has been home to coastal dwellers for millennia. As such, the rich traditions of maritime adaptations and lifeways have been the focus of archaeological research in the Southeast for decades. Specifically, subsistence research in the region has revealed the antiquity and diversity of southeastern coastal subsistence strategies and contributed to global understandings of resource seasonality, habitat use, and human mobility and settlement. This symposium builds on these foundations by focusing on the recursive relationships inherent to human-environment practices, including resource procurement, subsistence strategies, and sociocultural interactions.
The diversification of method and theory in the past few decades has inspired researchers to engage a broad range of topics of anthropological interest. Issues of labor, technology, knowledge, tradition, place, identity, gender, religion, and ritual are being addressed with subsistence data. The papers in this symposium focus on these research themes in a turn from strictly ecological interpretations of subsistence data. This session aims to highlight the diversity and complexity of southeastern subsistence practices in order to encourage discussion both across and outside the region.
Other Keywords
Zooarchaeology •
Subsistence •
Seasonality •
Fishing •
Bone Tools •
Ritual •
Social Status •
Experimental Archaeology •
Community •
Vertebrate Fauna
Geographic Keywords
North America - Southeast
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-15 of 15)
- Documents (15)
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Assessment of past subsistence strategy and environmental impacts using novel geochemical analyses of mollusk shells (2016)
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Archaeologists are beginning to apply two new analytical techniques to estuarine mollusk shells: inferring paleo-salinity from sclerochronological oxygen isotope profiles and assessing anthropogenic waste loading from mollusk nitrogen isotope measurements. These related approaches may offer insight into subsistence priorities and environmental alteration, but data from each should be interpreted with caution until these proxies are more completely validated. Potential uses and limitations of...
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Charleston, South Carolina (USA): A Case Study in Using Fish as Evidence of Social Status (2016)
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Charleston (South Carolina, USA) was founded in A.D. 1670 on the southeastern Atlantic coast of North America. The city’s archaeological record can be divided into four periods: 1710-1750, 1750-1820, 1820-1850, and 1850-1900. Fishes were used by all social strata in Charleston. The minimum number of fish individuals fluctuates between 22% and 30% of the non-commensal individuals and the number of taxa ranges from 44% to 49%. A core group of estuarine fishes was used throughout the city’s history...
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Eat local, Think Global? The Intersections of Knowledge, Culture, and Subsistence at Woodland Coastal Sites in the Southeastern USA. (2016)
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Along the northern parts of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of Florida and southern Georgia, coastal sites of the Deptford and Swift Creek archaeological cultures (circa A.D. 1 to 600) map onto the distinctive estuarine and salt marsh ecological zones of the region. Beyond their similar environments, inhabitants within this region seem to have been united by a cultural milieu characterized by commonalities in village life, material culture, ritual practices, and ostensibly, patterns of subsistence....
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Fishing Practices and Effective Seasons: An Evaluation of Zooarchaeological-Based Seasonality Studies in the Lower Suwannee Region of Florida (2016)
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This paper critically evaluates the concept of seasons as utilized in zooarchaeological studies of coastal settlements. The project aims to show that "seasons," as a matter of perception, emerge from interplay between natural processes and human practices. Because processes and practices vary geographically and historically, effective seasons are contingent on local circumstances and histories. This paper presents methods for utilizing data on present-day fish populations in the Lower Suwannee...
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From Pots to Pits: Ritual Use of Waterbirds on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida (2016)
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The archaeological record of Hopewell cultures of the Eastern Woodlands demonstrates the ritual importance of birds in the form of effigy pipes, copper and mica cutouts, and mortuary vessels. Bird motifs continue to be prevalent beyond the Hopewell period in peninsular Florida, during Weeden Island times (A.D. 200-900), when representations of waterbirds, among other avian taxa, appear on pottery, often in the form of effigy vessels. Because of their ability to traverse worlds—air, land, and...
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Making Mounds Out of Midden: A Behavioural Analysis (2016)
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The contents of shell-bearing sites are routinely used to make inferences regarding resource availability, subsistence practices, technology, and as proxies for past environments. Variability in the genesis of shell matrix within an archaeological site and the cultural context of its use and reuse can introduce bias into these interpretations. The authors previously developed a model of shell matrices inferred as midden, mound, and feasting deposits based on visual characteristics, artifact...
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Midden among the mounds: An Ongoing Study of Faunal Remains from a Platform Mound and Adjacent Midden at the Garden Patch Site (8DI4) (2016)
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This paper presents the faunal composition of a platform mound and adjacent village midden as a means of understanding subsistence, feasting, and ceremony at the pre-Columbian Garden Patch site, a Middle Woodland (ca. AD 100 to 500) multi-mound center located on the northwest gulf coast of Florida. The vertebrate faunal remains from the dense midden of Area X are compared to those of adjacent Mound II, a platform mound constructed of alternating lenses of shell midden and sand. The results of...
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Oyster Mariculture on Florida’s Northern Gulf Coast: The Intensification of a Ritual Economy (2016)
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Subsistence intensification among small-scale societies results from myriad circumstances, some of which involve demands that go beyond the scale of household production and consumption. The creation and use of ritual facilities, for instance, often entail large gatherings of persons that require provisioning. On the northern Gulf Coast of Florida, civic-ceremonial centers with elaborate mortuary facilities were established at about A.D. 200. A well-established subsistence economy of fish,...
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Reconsidering Mass-Capture Fishing Practices: Methodological and Theoretical Implications (2016)
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The term “mass-capture” is widely used in archaeological and zooarchaeological discourse to connote any form of capture that results in the simultaneous collection of multiple organisms. However, mass-capture as an umbrella term obscures critical variation among diverse techniques that have implications for anthropological interpretation. Nowhere does this limitation have more of an impact than in coastal settings, where fishes and shellfishes constitute the majority of subsistence prey items. ...
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Site Structure, Community Organization, and the Interpretation of Subsistence Remains (2016)
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Subsistence strategies shape mobility and site use practices. These relationships can be investigated at a regional scale, but they also appear at the level of daily domestic activities. The interpretation of subsistence remains is enhanced by assessing how specific deposits and activity areas across a site fit into broader strategies and relate to community organization. At many coastal and riverine sites of the American Southeast, mollusk shell is prevalent and well-preserved in midden...
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Subsistence Strategies and Small Island Adaptations: New Evidence from the Florida Keys (2016)
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Archaeological research on prehistoric settlements in the Florida Keys has been largely sporadic and diffuse. To help improve our understanding of when the Keys were settled and their relationship to Calusa and other groups regionally, we revisited the well-known site of 8MO17 on Upper Matecumbe Key in the central Florida Keys and conducted preliminary subsurface investigation. Preliminary results from the newly established Matecumbe Chiefdom Project have revealed dense, stratified midden...
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Subsistence, Landscape, and Identity as Explored through Archaeofaunal Remains from Northwestern Florida (2016)
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This paper explores relationships among subsistence, landscape, and identity on the northern Gulf Coast of Florida. Zooarchaeological assemblages from three Woodland-period shell midden sites (8BY1347, 8BY1355, 8BY1359), all located on a small (150 km2) peninsula in Bay County, Florida, differ in molluscan species composition reflecting proximity to varied marine and estuarine habitats. Coastal dwellers had flexible subsistence regimens, targeting local habitats rather than specific resources....
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Vertebrate Fauna from the Grand Mound Shell Ring site (8Du1), Florida (2016)
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The Grand Mound Shell Ring (8Du1) is a Mississippi-period site on the southern end of Big Talbot Island in Duval County, Florida. The site consists of an annular shell midden, composed primarily of oyster, with a sand burial mound deposited over the western ring arc. Excavations by faculty of the University of North Florida recovered a large vertebrate faunal sample marked by the presence of numerous avian species, some of which today are extinct. This paper presents the vertebrate faunal data...
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A WEIRd Tale: 2,500 Years of Fishing in an Everglades Slough (2016)
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In 1968, a dredging project alongside the Anhinga Trail in Taylor Slough, Florida unearthed an unusually large collection of worked bone objects. Peat deposits in the slough afforded excellent preservation conditions – some of the bone tools still contain wooden shafts and pitch. Sometime after its discovery, the collection was split between different institutions and lost. This important collection has recently been relocated and rejoined and is described in this paper. The assemblage consists...
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Zooarchaeological Findings and the Importance of Seascape at Weeden Island Archaeological Site (8PI1) (2016)
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Many indigenous and non-indigenous communities throughout the world depend on coastal and riverine environments for their livelihood and subsistence. The seascape is a setting of daily activities, and these communities have a detailed knowledge of their surrounding environment, the tides, and the seasons, all of which influence their decisions for catchment locations of habitat-specific faunal assemblages. For this paper, ethnographic research, zooarchaeology, biological salinity tolerances, GIS...