Elemental and Isotopic Geochemistry to Source Shell-Tempered Ceramics – Late Woodland and Mississippian Contexts in the Yazoo Basin

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Sourcing shell-tempered ceramics using compositional analyses has revealed to be challenging, if not impossible in some contexts. Recent pilot studies have shown that freshwater mussel shells from archaeological sites located in different drainages in Eastern and Southeastern United States display different elemental compositions. The present research further investigates and evaluates the potential of elemental and isotopic geochemistry to trace the origin and circulation of shell-temper ceramics within a single basin. We analyzed the elemental chemistry of both whole shells and shell-temper extracted from plain wares. These samples are selected to represent the local signature of multiple sites, from Late Woodland and/or Mississippian contexts, located in the Yazoo Basin (Mississippi). In addition, we are exploring the possibility of using the strontium isotopic composition of freshwater mussel shells as a complementary tracer. These results provide a geochemical database for the Yazoo Basin that is then used to differentiate between local and imported ceramics in a case-study conducted on material from Lake George (Mississippian period).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24168