First Season at Palachacolas Town

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Scholar Commons - Institutional Repository of the University of South Carolina University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Faculty & Staff Publications Archaeology and Anthropology, South Carolina Institute of 8-2009 First Season at Palachacolas Town Charles R. Cobb University of South Carolina - Columbia, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/sciaa_staffpub Part of the Anthropology Commons Publication Info Published in Legacy, Volume 13, Issue 2, 2009, pages 10-11. http://www.cas.sc.edu/sciaa/ © 2009 by The South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology This Article is brought to you by the Archaeology and Anthropology, South Carolina Institute of at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty & Staff Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Research Chester DePratter, Jim Legg, and myself on the dig, which took place on the Webb Wildlife Center, where the Department of Natural Resources served as gracious hosts for our stay. By Charles Cobb To set the stage for our work prior Charleston and elsewhere along the coast. to the field school, Jim Legg and Steve In AD 1689, the colony of Spanish Florida This project was made possible through Smith provided a metal detector survey in erected a small fort on the western bank funding by a National Science Foundation a locality that had been identified in the of the Chattahoochee River in present-day grant (BCS-0852686) to Charles Cobb, 1990s as one likely occupation (probably a Alabama. This outpost was an attempt Chester DePratter, and Chris Gillam. small farmstead) associated with the larger to exert influence north of western Our goals are to document the dispersed town of Palachacolas. This work Florida, where Spaniards and Indians location and ethnic affiliation of the many yielded a large number of metal artifacts were concentrated at Mission San Luis towns that formed along the Savannah that pointed to a colonial occupation—lead (in what is now Tallahassee, Florida) drainage, and to evaluate the impacts shot, musket parts, buckles and buttons, and a number of outlying missions and of migration and colonial trade on the and a sea of nails. Metal detecting assisted settlements. The new fort was built in the diverse Indian societies who moved in the placement of five excavation blocks middle of Apalachicola Indian Territory, there. In addition to the Apalachicola, across the area. and its effects were opposite of what the Over the course of three weeks, our Spanish intended. Rather than moving the other known groups who relocated to the Savannah, include (but are not necessarily investigations yielded a number of exciting imperial frontier northward while gaining features and artifacts new Indian allies, the as our motivated presence of the garrison students dug over touched off a wholesale 60 1 X 1 meter exodus of Native units. Our analyses American groups from of these materials the lower Chattachoochee indicate that after drainage. Many moved the Apalachicola left in a northeasterly Palachacolas Town direction with the hopes in 1715 as a result of of engaging in lucrative the Yamasee War, this trading partnerships spot was probably with the growing English re-occupied soon after colony of Carolina. by an English colonial Historical records farmstead. For indicate that one group example, we have a of Apalachicola Indians line of very deep post settled on the South impressions we think Carolina side of the was associated with Savannah River around an earthfast structure, 1707. They may have a colonial house type lived around Macon, characterized by Georgia after the 1689 Fig. 1: Keely Lewis and Grant Hamilton take a breather while taking soil cores. (SCIAA photo) widely spaced vertical migration for a period limited to) the Chickasaw, Shawnee, Yuchi, posts set in the ground. These served of time before arriving in what would Apalachee, and Westo. as the primary-framing members of the become known as Palachacolas Town in The field school at Palachacolas construction. Hampton County, South Carolina. This Town was organized as a “Maymester” If our interpretation of this set past May, SCIAA scholars conducted an class. This is a period between the close of of post features is correct, it confirms archeological field school at Palachacolas the regular spring semester and the start evidence from elsewhere in the Southeast Town, initiating a long-term project of the summer sessions, where students that colonial settlers were quick to take aimed at examining the wide movement can take an intensive three-week course for advantage of land cleared by Indians after of Indian peoples to the Savannah River full credit. Seven students and a number they had vacated. So an interesting aspect in the early colonial era, as they hoped to of volunteers joined SCIAA archaeologists of our research is that we may be able to take advantage of the English presence in First Season at Palachacolas Town 10 Legacy, Vol. 13, No. 2, August 2009 Fig. 2: A pit that was filled with glass bottles. (SCIAA photo) identify both the final Native American group and the first European colonial group to occupy this locality. But it also makes our job a bit more difficult in that these different residents used many of the same kinds of material culture, ranging from glass bottles to ceramic pots to muskets. Unraveling this mixture will be one of our major challenges. Nevertheless, we still have a lot to go on. Our Maymester excavations uncovered a number of pit features, large and small. Many of these may have served food storage or processing functions. Dr. Gail Wagner in the Department of Anthropology at USC will be conducting the botanical analyses of samples from these features, while Dr. Barnet PavaoZuckerman with the Arizona State Museum will carry out studies of animal bone. Together, they should be able to give us a sense of the diet and how foodways changed as multiple cultures came together along the frontier. Dr. Wagner tells us that her first glance at a soil sample from a hearth has found a pit from a peach, one of the first imported foods widely adopted by Native Americans. We have moved enough dirt to find a number of postmolds, but not enough yet to determine whether these may be associated with Native American houses. One of our most interesting discoveries Legacy, Vol. 13, No. 2, August 2009 was an area where people were digging about one meter down to hit a layer of clay, which was then mined, presumably for purposes such as making pottery, coating the exterior of houses, and similar uses. This was a common practice among Indians throughout the Southeast, but European colonials were also known to take advantage of clay deposits for similar reasons. So we will have more work to do to determine the nature of the clay mining. As with most first-season projects, we are facing many more questions than answers. But our ongoing laboratory work emphasizes how rich this site is. We have a large amount of native pottery, complemented by a wide variety of English ceramics, and even the occasional sherd from Spanish olive jars. As expected for this time period, the Indian reliance on stone tools had declined a great deal, but we are still getting a small number of scrapers and projectiles made from chert. Much of the broken bottle glass shows evidence of working, presumably as Native Americans converted shards to uses formerly carried out with stone tools. After iron nails, fragments of kaolin pipes are probably our most common artifact type. There are a small number of glass beads, which were avidly sought by Native Americans as ornaments for clothing and jewelry. Even cufflinks have shown up in our work. We do not know if these are associated with either the Indian or European occupation, but they—along with the beads—emphasize that trying to determine what people wore may be just as important as what they did, as we attempt to address the complex intersection of lives and cultures along the Savannah frontier. We eagerly look forward to returning next year to explore these important issues. Fig. 3: Evidence of digging out clay for pottery manufacture and house construction. (SCIAA photo) 11