A Coastal Landscape of Change: Late Holocene Sea-Level Fluctuations and Estuarine Resource Availability during the Early Woodland Period at the Creighton Island Shell Ring Site (9MC87), Georgia, U.S.A.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Culture, Climate, and Connections: Eventful Histories of Human-Environment Relations" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Creighton Island shell ring (9MC87) is a crescent-shaped shell midden, approximately 40 m in diameter, that was constructed by Native Americans participating in multi-seasonal, cooperative and sustainable shell-fish mass capture and fishing techniques during the Late Archaic period (3000–1000 B.C.). Recent archaeological investigations revealed that there were two discrete occupations at this site: the first was during the Late Archaic when people constructed the shell ring, and a second occupation, during the Early Woodland period, when people significantly modified the site by depositing a thick lens of shell midden material over the interior portion of the site. Radiocarbon dating and ceramic chronologies help characterize the reoccupation of the site and articulate it to changing sea-levels and availability of estuarine resources throughout the late Holocene. The results of this research suggest that although the tradition of shell midden building had largely ended elsewhere in this region due to lowered sea-levels and limited availability of marsh resources such as oyster beds, people continued this practice on Creighton Island, demonstrating the resiliency of these cultural traditions during times of environmental change.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Culture, Climate, and Connections: Eventful Histories of Human-Environment Relations

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51150