Putting the Ogeechee in its Place

PUTTING THE OGEECHEE IN ITS PLACE

Kenneth E. Sassaman, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology

Kristin J. Wilson, Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina

Frankie Snow, South Georgia College

The Ogeechee River valley of Georgia marks the western boundary of the distribution of Late Archaic shell-midden sites in the interior coastal plain of the South Atlantic slope (Figure 1). Little is known about its numerous shell middens or its other archaeological resources. As a scenic set-aside of Georgia, the Ogeechee River valley has witnessed only limited development, and hence, only limited cultural resource studies. Nor has the Ogeechee attracted much professional attention outside of cultural resource management (CRM), despite the alleged richness of its shell middens and the presumed importance of such sites to knowledge of Late Archaic cultural boundaries. Ogeechee River sites are truly a "black box" of prehistory in the greater Stallings culture area.

But while professional archaeologists lack knowledge about Ogeechee River shell middens, looters are familiar with the material rewards shell middens offer (Sassaman 1993a). Carved bone pins from Ogeechee River sites (Roshto 1985) are said to bring as much as $lOOO on the antiquities market. In digging for pins, looters of course destroy the contexts that will help to situate the Ogeechee River sites in the larger time-space matrix of Stallings culture. Short of salvaging subsurface contexts of these sites, surface collections of materials discarded by looters may provide our only data on chronology, function, and sociocultural affiliations.

The subjects of this study are collections of Stallings pottery sherds from the surfaces of two looted shell middens on the Ogeechee River. The Chew Mill Swamp and Strange sites were visited by Frankie Snow in 1985 (Snow 1985). Chew Mill is located on the north bank of the Ogeechee River about 10 miles east of Midville, Georgia; the Strange site lies some three miles east of

r Late Archaic Ogeechee

Atlantic Ocean

kilcmeters 100

Figure 1. Late Archaic shell-midden sites in the Georgia-Carolina area with locations of Chew Mill, Strange, and other sites mentioned in text.

Chew Mill. Snow collected hundreds of Late Archaic pottery sherds from the backdirt piles of both sites, along with some faunal material, lithic tools, and shellfish remains. The sherd samples are among the largest ever collected from Late Archaic sites in the area, and provide valuable comparative data for ongoing studies of Late Archaic culture history and process.

Before describing the methods and results of our analysis of these pottery samples, some interpretive context is warranted. Late Archaic pottery of the Savannah River valley area and the GeorgiaCarolina coast is among the oldest pottery of North America, appearing locally at about 4500 years ago, and spreading into other

21

Sassaman, Wilson, and Snow

locales over the 1500 years of its existence (Sassaman 1993b). Fiber-tempered pottery of the Stallings series is renowned as the hallmark of Savannah River Late Archaic, but accompanying it after 4000 B.P. (before present) is sand-tempered pottery ofthe Thorn's Creek series (Trinkley 1980). Decorated surfaces of both wares are dominated by punctate designs that include random, linear, and "drag and jab" arrangements. Fiber-tempered pottery of the Georgia coast is attributed to the St. Simons series (DePraUer 1979a) because of its prevalent stylistic attributes that include incising and grooving, relatively high frequency of plain surfaces, and nearabsence of aplastic tempering agents. Region-wide variation in the decoration and technology of these wares has been useful not only for chronology-building, but for identifying possible ethnic differences among constituent groups. Late Archaic pottery has been the chief source of data on culture history, group boundaries, and processes that caused cultural variation in time and space.

The picture that has been built from studies of the Stallings record is one of considerable complexity. When Stallings. pottery appeared in the area at about 4500 B.P., regional populations appear to have been split into two: one centered in the coastal plain, where shellfishing and early pottery-making were initiated, and another centered in the Piedmont province, where shellfish and pottery were ignored. The coastal plain groups appear to have maintained relatively extensive ranges, moving from the fall line to the coast on a regular basis and thus leaving behind a dispersed, fine-grained archaeological record, albeit one marked with functional variation related to seasonal preferences in site and food resource selection. A pattern of aggregation and dispersal has not been documented for the early centuries of this period, and we presume that group interaction was facilitated through coresident flexibility and open networks (see Benson's article in this issue).

Coastal shell middens dating from 4200 B.P. add to the archaeological record of the Late Archaic. They apparently document increasing residential permanence on the coast, and ethnic differentiation as interior coastal plain. groups made increasing use of fall line localities 175-200 krn away. The histories of coastal and interior groups from this point forward diverged, though this is not to say that these groups were isolated from each other. In the ensuing centuries, groups in the middle Savannah valley intensively occupied large riverine sites such as Stallings Island and Lake Spring. The archaeological manifestations of these occupations-massive accumulations of shell, human burials, and

22 ,

I

I

Late Archaic Ogeecbee

fiber-tempered pottery-are the hallmarks of Stallings culture. The extent and diversity of Stallings sites in the middle Savannah River valley is well documented, and investigators have argued for a pattern of seasonal aggregation and dispersal (e.g., Anderson and Joseph 1988; Sassaman et al. 1990; White 1982). Irrespective of the specific size and complexity of groups involved in large riverine occupations, there is ample evidence to suggest that cultural integration peaked at about 3800-3700 B.P.

About two centuries later, Stallings Island and other riverine sites in the middle Savannah River valley were abandoned. More dispersed and seemingly less integrated settlement ensued, as the area witnessed increased diversity in material culture and the complete cessation of shellfishing. Stallings fiber-tempered pottery and its sand-tempered counterparts persisted for several more centuries, and were replaced by Early Woodland wares by 3000 B.P. Coastal shellfishing continued during this time, but in increasingly dispersed and more northerly locations. As in the interior, consolidated settlement on the coast was on the wane.

The role of Ogeechee River sites in the creation and demise of Stallings culture is unknown. We know that shellfish and fibertempered pottery were a part of Ogeechee River life, but there is little extant information that would help us to put the Ogeechee in its place in the dynamic history of Stallings culture. Were Ogeechee sites occupied during the early centuries when coastal plain groups were widely distributed and only loosely integrated? Were Ogeechee sites coeval with major occupations in the middle Savannah River valley, and if so did they represent seasonal aspects of Stallings settlement, or perhaps a social fringe to a multifaceted population? Might Ogeechee sites embody elements of the dissolution of Stallings society, perhaps the relocated segments of groups striving to maintain a riverine economy? These are important questions not only to local prehistory, but to our general understanding of hunter-gatherer organization. The analysis of pottery reported here is the first opportunity to explore these issues.

MEfHODS OF ANALYSIS

The analysis of sherds from Chew Mill and Strange proceeded with methods developed by Sassaman (1993b) for a comparison of Late Archaic pottery from over two dozen sites in the Savannah River region. A vessel unit of analysis began by sorting rim sherds from the samples of hundreds of sherds, and attempting to match

23


like sherds using criteria of morphology, surface treatment, and paste. Body sherds with decorated surfaces were added to the inventory of vessels when it was certain that a rim sherd for these vessels was not present. Plain vessels were identified on the basis of rims only, a limitation that biases the entire sample towards decorated vessels. We warn that our results cannot be compared to tabulations based on sherds counts alone.

A minimum of 452 vessels are represented by sherds in the Strange assemblage, and 190 in Chew Mill's collection (Table 1).

Table 1. Inventory of the Vessels Represented by Sherds from Surface Collections from Strange and Chew Mill.

Surface Strange Chew Mill Treatment Num. % Num. -%

Plain 59 13.1 23 12.1 Separate Punctate 137 30.3 31 16.3 Drag and Jab Punctate 177 39.2 99 52.1 Punctation over Incised 22 4.9 7 3.7 Incised-Bold 4 0.9 0 0 Incised-Fine 1 0.2 2 1.1 Simple Stamped 2 0.4 1 0.5 Multiple 48 10.6 24 12.6 Unidentifiable 2 0.4 3 1.6

Total 452 100 190 100

Each vessel was coded for temper, lip form, rim form, lip and wall thickness, surface condition, oxidation, and surface treatment variables that included design motif, location, orientation, and punctation stylus type. The largest rim sherds were also profiled, and each was examined for macroscopic evidence of sooting.

RESULTS

Two properties of the Strange and Chew Mill assemblages are particularly outstanding: 1) the high proportion of decorated vessels

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,--

Late Archaic Ogeechee

(Figures 2-5), and 2) the extremely thick vessel walls (Figure 6). (All figures and the table for this section are grouped together on pages 28-36) Vessels with decorated surfaces comprise about 88% of each assemblage_ A similar level of consistency is seen in vessel wall thickness, which averages 12.1 mm for the Strange vessels and 11.8 mm for the Chew Mill vessels. In addition, the assemblages contain few vessels with abundant fiber in the paste, including instead a large fractions of vessels with sandy or gritty pastes, about half of each lacking fiber altogether. Technically, those lacking fiber would be classified as Thorn's Creek, but of course the relevance of this distinction lies not in what it is called but what it means in cultural terms_

Overall, the Chew Mill and Strange assemblages are very similar. Some subtle differences are noteworthy, however. In terms of surface treatment, the Chew Mill assemblage has a higher proportion of drag and jab punctate (52%) than Strange (39%), and reciprocally, a lower fraction of separate punctate (16%) than Strange (30%) (Figure 7). Otherwise, proportions of surface treatment types are nearly identical. Regarding temper, the-Strange assemblage includes more vessels with abundant (5%) or minor fiber (52%) than does Chew Mill (0% and 40%, respectively) (Figure 8). Both of these variables have chronological significance in the regional sequence. In the middle Savannah River area, drag and jab punctation increase in frequency through time at the expense of separate punctation and plain surface treatments. Simultaneously, the incidence of fiber diminishes as pastes become sandier. The evidence at hand suggests that the Strange occupation predated Chew Mill, that is, if the Stallings typology applies.

Problems with the application of the Stallings typology arise when we consider the plain vessels from the Ogeechee sites. The typology developed by Sassaman begins with the lip attributes of plain vessels (Figure 9). Excavations at the Bilbo site in Savannah showed that thickened or flanged lips on plain vessels were common in the deepest strata; region-wide comparisons have since shown that this trait is a good diagnostic marker of the first few centuries of the Stallings era. Also, Sassaman proposed a division between assemblages with thickened or flanged lips on more than 20% of plain vessels, and those with values 20% or less. Values for decorated surface treatments in these two groups sorted out consistently in the more than two dozen assemblages examined.

Thickened or flanged lips are present on plain Ogeechee vessels at the rate of27% for Strange, and 13% for Chew Mill. The larger fraction for this trait at Strange puts it in the category of

25


Group I assemblages, but the supporting criteria do not hold. Although Strange has a high incidence of separate punctation (30%), it is not nearly large enough to match other Group I sites. Moreover, the incidence of multiple designs (i.e, combinations of separate and drag and jab punctate or incised) among decorated vessels from Strange is appreciable (11 %), and these are completely absent in Group I assemblages elsewhere.

This inconsistency in the application of Stallings typology to the Strange assemblage may suggest that the Ogeechee sites do not conform to Stallings trends, or that the basic dividing criterionthickened and flanged lips-has greater time-space variation than the typology represents. This latter scenario appears most likely. Plain vessels with thickened or flanged lips from Strange bear little resemblance to other Group I samples, such as those from Rabbit Mount, Fennel Hill, or Rae's Creek, all in the Savannah River valley. The most conspicuous difference is the limited amount of fiber in the paste of Strange site vessels. Group I assemblages from other sites consistently have abundant fiber, and little aplastic temper. If we were to add this criterion to the existing typology, Strange would be classified as a Group II assemblage, as would Chew Mill. This implies a date range of about 3800-3400 B.P.

To further situate the Ogeechee samples in the space-time matrix of Stallings culture, we tum now to comparisons with key assemblages in the region. As we noted at the onset, data on Ogeechee sites are virtually nonexistent, although limited data are provided by a small assemblage of 28 vessels from the Rocky Ford site some 35 km down river from Chew Mill. Despite its small size, the Rocky Ford assemblage is important because it is fully consistent with the earliest Stallings assemblages from the Savannah River valley. The high proportion of plain vessels at Rocky Ford (36%) includes many examples (40%) with thickened and flanged lips, all with abundant fiber. Among decorated vessels, separate punctation dominates over drag and jab punctation, and there are no examples of multiple design elements. Thus, the Rocky Ford assemblage is truly distinct from those at Chew Mill and Strange, and it shows that the Ogeechee was indeed within the geographical limits of early Stallings Culture.

Other comparisons lend support to a Savannah River affiliation for the later Ogeechee sites (Figure 10). Chew Mill and Strange share with Stallings Island and the geographically intermediate Theriault site a high proportion of drag and jab punctation, many made with sub-triangular pointed, crescent, and semicircular wedge

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styluses. These traits collectively distinguish the Ogeechee and . Savannah river assemblages from coastal Georgia assemblages, which consist mostly of plain vessels and vessels punctated with the points of gastropod shells (exemplified in Figure 5 by the assemblages from 9CHIll and 9CHI14). The largely plain coastal assemblages, like their interior counterparts, are from early sites, but we note again that coastal Georgia assemblages are dominated by plain pottery throughout the sequence. One of a few notable exceptions is the Cane Patch site (9CH35) at the mouth of the Ogeechee River (DePratter 1979b). Its assemblage of 130 vessels is dominated by elaborately decorated surfaces. Separate punctations from Cane Patch are made mostly with shell points, but even more distinguishing is the high incidence of incising, which includes deeply incised examples, and extremely wide incisions we refer to as grooved. The distinct traits of the Cane Patch assemblage leave little doubt that coastal Georgia was home to groups stylistically different from Ogeechee neighbors. Chew Mill and Strange pottery instead exhibits enough stylistic similarity to vessels from Stallings Island to argue for a middle Savannah River valley affiliation.

But the similarity with Stallings Island stops short of technology. Although stylistically consistent with middle Savannah assemblages, the technology of Chew Mill and Strange vessels bears little resemblance to Stallings Island or coastal Georgia sites-it is fundamentally distinct. For one, Strange and Chew Mill vessels stand apart from those of other assemblages in the low incidence of fiber (Figure 11). Only Theriault in the nearby Brier Creek drainage begins to approach the proportions seen at Chew Mill and Strange, but even there the incidence of vessels with abundant fiber is nearly 30%. As for vessel wall thickness, we noted above that Chew Mill and Strange vessels are especially thick (Table 2, p. 36). Compared to other assemblages, wall thickness at these Ogeechee sites is at least 2 mm and as much as 4 mm greater. Data on vessel form for Chew Mill and Strange are lacking, but the overall impression from the thick, sandy-paste sherds is a heavy, shallow jar with a wide orifice and rounded base. Only eight of the vessels showed possible traces of soot on exterior walls, so we see little reason to suspect Chew Mill and Strange vessels were routinely used over fire.

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b

o 2in I !

o « ;.; 4 5cm

f

Figure 2. Examples of separate punctate (a,b) and drag and jab punctate sherds (c-t) from Strange site.

28

J 2 ,~ I

o 2 '" ~ SC"':


Figure 3. Examples of punctate over incised (a), zoned punctate (b, c), and multiple or geometric design sherds (d-g) from Strange site.

29

,;I! 111'

ii' '

,,, I


'2

~ .. c=~ .. ~c=~ .. ~2 i ~ 2 3 t. Scm

Figure 4. Examples of separate punctate (a,b) and drag and jab punctate sherds (c-f) from Chew Mill Swamp site.

30

a

·0 ·0

Late Archaic Ogeecbee

-' 5 ::r'

Figure 5. Examples of multiple or geometric design (a-f) and zoned punctate sherds from Chew Mill Swamp site.

31


L...J 1 em

Figure 6. Examples of rim sherd profiles for vessels from Strange (top row) and Chew Mill (bottom row).

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60.0%

50.0% fJD Strange (n_450)

40.0% o Chew Mill (n=187)

30.0%

20.0%

10.0%

0.0% Plain Separate Orag&Jab Punctate Incised Simple Muhiple

Punctate Punctate over Stamped Incision

Figure 7. Relative frequency of vessels in the Strange and Chew Mill assemblages by type of surface treatment.

60.0%

50.0%

40.0%

30.0% 13 Strange (~=452)

o Chew Mill (n=190)

20.0%

10.0%

0.0%

Abundant Fiber Minor Fiber No Fiber

Figure 8. Relative frequency of vessels in the Strange and Chew Mill assemblages by temper class.

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FLANGED AND/OR THICKENED LIP

present absent

>20% $20% present absent

I GRL", I I ~RLIIII I GRoL", I - among decorated vessels, - among decorated vessels - among decorated vessels 2:50% have separate linear at least 25% have drag and the proportions of separate punctation, and S16% have jab punctation andlor linear punctation, drag and drag and jab punctation incising jab punctation, and incising andlor incising. vary widely

- simple stamping nearly - simple stamping not absent - simple stamping not uncommon unCXlmmon

- all assemblages contain - lack of muhiple design examples of muhiple - lack of muttiple design mot~s design motifs mot~s

Figure 9. Classification scheme used by Sassaman (l993b:t06) to sort assemblages of Late Archaic pottery from the Savannah River valley area.

34

r

o kilometers 100


Plain.

Separate Punctate 0 Drag & Jab Punctate ~

Punctatel1ncision •

Incised [I] Grooved [ill Multiple a

Figure to. Relative frequency of vessels by surface treatment for selected sites in the greater Stallings culture area.

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100.0%

90.0%

80.0%

70.0%

60.0%

50.0%

40.0%

30.0%

20.0%

10.0%

0.0%

Strange Chew Rocky Theriault Stallings Cane 9CH111 9CH114 Mill Ford Island Patch

• Abundant Fiber D Minor Fiber Ii!II No Fiber

Figure 11. Relative frequency of vessels from selected site assemblages of the greater Stallings culture area, by temper class.

Table 2. Summary Statistics on Vessel Wall Thickness* for Strange, Chew Mill, and Other Assemblages from the Region

Site Mean St. Dev. Min. Max. N

Strange 12.1 2.1 7.6 19.7 170 Chew Mill 11.8 1.9 7.7 16.9 75

Rocky Ford 9.2 2.2 6.0 12.4 11 Theriault 9.9 1.9 5.8 15.0 112 Stallings Island 8.1 1.6 4.8 12.4 62 Cane Patch 9.1 1.8 4.3 13.1 46 9CH111 9.2 1.8 6.3 11.5 12 9CH114 9.8 1.4 7.4 12.1 10

* mm, measured 3 cm below vessel lip

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DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

From these preliminary comparisons, it appears that Chew Mill and Strange vessels bear strong stylistic but little technological similarity to Stallings Island and other Late Archaic vessels the middle Savannah River valley, and that they are completely distinct from coastal Georgia vessels in both style and technology. So what does this suggest about the place of Ogeechee River sites in the regional milieu of Stallings culture?

First, the existence of at least one Ogeechee River assemblage distinct from Chew Mill and Strange shows that Ogeechee River sites had more than a passing role in the Late Archaic culture history of the region. Specifically, the Rocky Ford assemblage, being consistent with early Stallings assemblages from the Savannah River valley, reflects continuity in the cultural landscape at a time when Stallings groups maintained vast, seemingly open ranges in the coastal plain. It also helps to secure the chronological position of Strange and Chew Mill as later Stallings sites, i.e. postdating 4000 B.P.

Second, the stylistic similarity between classic Stallings assemblages and these later Ogeechee sites argues for cultural homology. One possible scenario is that occupations at Chew Mill and Strange were the seasonal, dispersed aspects of populations that routinely aggregated at sites like Stallings Island. That these Ogeechee assemblages represent but a range of the stylistic variation documented at Stallings Island cannot be attributed to sampling error, for the Ogeechee samples are the largest we have. Rather, if aggregations at Stallings Island involved groups that maintained some level of cultural distinction through pottery design, the Ogeechee samples represent but a segment of the Stallings culture, one recognized by the prevalence of subtriangular pointed styluses in drag and jab punctate designs. Alternatively, in a related scenario, occupations at Chew Mill and Strange could very well have taken place after aggregations at Stallings Island ceased, that is after about 3500 B.P. In this case, the Ogeechee sites would reflect a dispersed segment of Stallings culture, representing perhaps one of several divergent interest groups that could no longer abide by the conditions of integrated communal life, and hence fissioned.

The distinctive aspects of Strange and Chew Mill technology are the real puzzle in all of this. Lacking the properties of direct-heat cooking technology-which has been shown to have evolved on

37


the coast and then slowly adopted in the interior (Sassaman 1993b)-the Chew Mill and Strange vessels appear as a throwback or hold-over to an earlier time. Previous research suggests that Stallings vessel technology, like its surface treatment, was highly diverse, having time-space variation that cannot be reduced to simple functionalist or diffusionist models. In this spirit, we hypothesize that the Chew Mill and Strange assemblages reflect one aspect of cultural diversity in preferences for making pottery, one that was anchored in a long-standing tradition of indirect-heat cooking with soapstone slabs. We lack the necessary data to determine whether or not soapstone slabs continued to be made and used in the Ogeechee River valley after disappearing in the Savannah, but it is an important piece of the puzzle that we hope can be resolved in future work. Parenthetically, if Ogeechee occupants participated in Stallings Island aggregations, or even reflect an element of fissioning, we find no evidence for them in the technology of Stallings Island vessels. We should be open to the possibility that Ogeechee River groups never occupied Stallings Island and related sites in the middle Savannah River valley, and instead received stylistic influence from other means.

Finally, there is no mistaking the Chew Mill and Strange assemblages for coastal Georgia assemblages, for they are technologically and stylistic distinct. Minor overlap between the two is seen in the use of punctations over incising and multiple designs, but by and large they diverge. This goes double for the technology, underscoring the fact that the development of vessels for use over fire on the coast had little influence in the Ogeechee River valley.

The preliminary comparisons afforded by the large sample of sherds from Chew Mill and Strange open up many issues regarding culture history and process. More contextual data are needed to better situate the evidence we have from these surface collections. Happily, an effort to salvage subsurface materials from Ogeechee River shell middens has been initiated by H. Stephen Hale (1994) of Georgia Southern University. We look forward to the results of this important work and in the meantime encourage others interested in issues of ethnicity, cultural boundaries, and pottery technology to go to the Ogeechee. It contains evidence for cultural expressions unmatched in the region, and we sorely need this evidence to continue efforts at explaining Late Archaic prehistory.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A version of this paper was presented at the 51 st annual meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference in Lexington, Kentucky. Partial support for this research was provided by the United States Department of Energy-Savannah River under contract number DE-FC09-88SRI5199.

REFERENCES CITED

Anderson, David G., and J. W. Joseph 1988 Prehistory and History Along the Upper Savannah River:

Technical Synthesis of Cultural Resource Investigations, Richard B. Russell Multiple Resource Area. Russell Papers, Interagency Archaeological Services Division, National Park Service, Atlanta.

DePratter, Chester B. 1979a Ceramics. In The Anthropology of St. Catherine's

Island: The Refuge-Deptford Mortuary Complex, edited by D.H. Thomas and C.S. Larsen, pp. 109-132. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 56( 1).

1979b Shellmound Archaic on the Georgia Coast. South Carolina Antiquities 11 (2): 1-69.

Hale, H. Stephen 1994 Salvage Archaeology and Survey of the Ogeechee River in

Southeast Georgia. Paper presented at the 51 st Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Lexington, Kentucky.

Roshto. James 1985 Ogeechee River Bodkins. Central States Archaeological

Joumal32.

Sassaman, Kenneth E. 1993a The Second· Fall of the Stallings Culture: Shell Midden

Looting in South Carolina and Georgia. In Site Destruction in Georgia and the Carolinas, edited by D. G. Anderson and V. Horak, pp. 26-31. Readings in Archaeological Resource Protection 2. Interagency Archaeological Services, National Park Service, Atlanta.

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1993b Early Pottery in the Southeast: Tradition and Innovation in Cooking Technology. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

Sassaman, Kenneth E., Mark J. Brooks, Glen T. Hanson, and David G. Anderson 1990 Native American Prehistory and History in the Middle

Savannah River Valley: Synthesis of Archaeological Investigations on the Savannah River Site, Aiken and Barnwell Counties, South Carolina. Savannah River Archaeological Research Papers 1. South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

Snow, Frankie 1985 Two Stallings Island Shell Middens on the Ogeechee

River. Paper presented at the Annual Fall Meeting of the Society for Georgia Archaeology, Savannah.

Trinldey, Michael B. 1980 A Typology of Thorn's Creek Pottery for the South

Carolina Coast. South Carolina Antiquities 12: 1-35.

White, John W. 1982 An Integration of Late Archaic Settlement Patterns for the

South Carolina Piedmont. Master's thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

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ARCHAEOLOGICAL TESTING AT THE BRASSELL SITE (9GL6), GLASCOCK

COUNTY, GEORGIA

Kenneth E. Sassaman South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and

Anthropology

Glascock County is among the smallest counties in Georgia. The amount of knowledge of its prehistory is equally small. This is especially unfortunate because Glascock occupies a position on the fall line at the headwaters of the Ogeechee River. The fall line separates the hard rock geology of the piedmont from the unconsolidated sands of the coastal plain. As such it forms an ecotone-a zone of mixed vegetational communities and geological resources. Fall line locales across the Southeast are noted for the density and diversity of their prehistoric remains. Early Holocene populations favored fall line sites for repeated, large-scale occupations, perhaps as points of aggregation in the seasonal round of mobile bands (Anderson and Hanson 1988). Societies of the Late Archaic favored the fall line in the middle Savannah River valley for shellfish and other aquatic resources, and perhaps because shoals afforded opportunities for crossing into neighboring territories. Many large Mississippian mound sites, such as Macon Plateau, Hollywood, and Mulberry, were at fall line locations to take advantage of productive floodplain and to control the flows of personnel and resources in the major river valleys (Ferguson and Green 1984). Fall line locations were important in the regional landscape, and Glascock County should be no exception.

Its position at the headwaters of the Ogeechee River makes Glascock County doubly important. Archaeological resources of the Ogeechee River are among the most poorly documented for the state. The lack of documentation is partly to blame on a lack of federal development in the basin, and hence, a lack of cultural resource management activity. The Ogeechee is one of Georgia's Scenic Rivers, and most of its adjoining land is owned by timber

Putting the Ogeechee in its Place

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