The Center and the Plain: Results from an Analysis of Absorbed Residues from Mississippian and Fort Ancient Pottery from the Guard Site

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Guard site (12D29) has a mixture of non-local Mississippi Plain and local Fort Ancient pottery types. Mississippi Plain pottery is more concentrated in the central plaza whereas the Fort Ancient pottery is more common in residential areas. Here we report on an absorbed pottery residue analysis from a small sample for each of these pottery types to better understand spatial and functional differences. The most notable distinction was a spatial one in terms of the chemical signature distinguishing C3 (probably EAC in this case) and C4 plants (probably maize in this case), with the sherds with residues for C3 being more concentrated in the plaza whereas sherds with residues for C4 were more common in residential areas. There was no distinction between these characteristics for pottery type. In addition, conifer biomarkers were present in most of the residues in varying amounts suggesting that perhaps a coating was used to seal the pottery, perhaps to make vessels watertight.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53304