From Pots to Pits: Ritual Use of Waterbirds on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida

Summary

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 sea—waterbirds may have been accorded special significance in Weeden Island cosmology. In this paper I consider the extent to which cosmology goes beyond material representations of birds to involve ritual protocols for the handling and deposition of the skeletal remains of waterbirds. Recent excavations at Shell Mound (8LV42), on the northern Gulf Coast of Florida, yielded hundreds of skeletal elements identified to several species of waterbirds from a single silo-shaped pit feature. Given the spatial and temporal relationship of Shell Mound with a Weeden Island mortuary facility (Palmetto Mound) and the relationship of the faunal contents with recurring iconographic characters of this time period, this paper proposes that the presence of waterbird elements in the context of such pit features represents ritualized deposition.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Recent Considerations of Coastal Subsistence Practices in the Southeastern USA

Keywords

Spatial Coverage