Prehistoric Indians of the Southeast: Archaeology of Alabama and the Middle South

Region

Preface

The project that culminated in this volume was originally suggested by Christopher Peebles and James B. Griffin in August 1974. At that time I was visiting Ann Arbor and, over lunch, the subject was casually discussed. As a newly appointed faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Alabama, I was in the process of planning courses on Alabama and Southeastern archaeology and had become aware of the massive amounts of published and unpublished data produced by over fifty years of archaeological investigation in the region.

Other than the now classic 1952 summary of Alabama archaeology by David DeJarnette, there were no other area syntheses available to aid in my compilation of lecture notes. Griffin and Peebles suggested that a new summary of Alabama archaeology would be useful and furthermore, that I was now in a position to write one. Being both young and naive I heartily agreed to meet the challenge. Two years later I found myself older, somewhat less naive, and in possession of a manuscript, which I hoped represented the type and quality of synthesis discussed in Ann Arbor.

It is appropriate for this volume to be dedicated to David L. DeJarnette, who, for almost half a century, has been the guiding force behind Alabama archaeology. While it was a coincidence that the initial draft of the study was completed at the time of DeJarnette's retirement from The University of Alabama in May 1976, it is nonetheless significant since this book essentially reports the contributions of the DeJarnette Phase of archaeological investigations within the state. If the reader is uninitiated and therefore excusably unaware of DeJarnette's impact on the archaeology of the state, one need only to refer to any chapter in the succeeding pages. DeJarnette is cited, quoted, or referred to numerous times in each of these sections. His efforts have been fruitful both in the quantity and quality of data they produced and in the generation of students to whom he taught an appreciation of prehistory.

Many people provided aid and encouragement during the time I was preparing the manuscript. I have attempted to justify their confidence, and if I have failed the fault is entirely my own. James B. Griffin, Charles Faulkner, Roy Dickens, Christopher Peebles, Jefferson Chapman, Bennie Keel, Ned Jenkins, Ben Coblentz, and Eugene Futato read draft versions and offered their valuable comments. Dr. Griffin was especially helpful and I benefited greatly from his detailed comments and expertise. Timely encouragement was frequently provided by Paul Nesbitt and Margaret Searcy. Ann Clark typed the original draft and contributed much of her own time to the production of the manuscript.

Many members of the Alabama Archaeological Society shared their data and knowledge of local sites and prehistory. The members of this organization should be extremely proud of their efforts. The Alabama Archaeological Society is proof of the valuable contribution that avocational archaeologists may provide in preserving our national heritage.

I also owe a great deal of gratitude to my wife, Nina. I began to write this volume during our first year of marriage and her understanding and patience were magnificent. She not only had to adjust to a new husband and a sometime writer, but, perhaps most difficult of all, to life with an archaeologist. Her success in this endeavor is a tribute to human adaptation.

1: Discovering the Past

This book deals with the prehistory of the region encompassed by the present state of Alabama and spans a period of some eleven thousand years, from 9000 B.C. and the earliest documented appearance of human beings in the area to A.D. 1750, when the early European settlements were well established. Forty years ago such a study could not have been undertaken. Only within the past four decades have remains of these prehistoric peoples been scientifically investigated.

Based upon information gathered by archaeologists working in the field and in the laboratory, it is now possible to divide this prehistoric cultural sequence into five developmental stages: Paleo-Indian, Archaic, Gulf Formational, Woodland, and Mississippian. The Paleo-Indian stage began with the migration into the state of the first bands of late Pleistocene hunters and gatherers. They armed themselves with spears tipped with specialized stone points, and their economy was based on hunting and scavenging now extinct gregarious mammals.

The Archaic stage began with the onset of modern climatic conditions. Archaic peoples also hunted with stone-tipped spears, but they added to its effectiveness by employing an atlatl, or spear-thrower, to increase the force and range of the projectiles. Modern game, especially deer, appear to have constituted their major source of protein. Archaic populations readily adapted to the diverse environments of Alabama, and their cultural remains are found in every area of the state. In some areas where the environment was particularly favorable, Archaic peoples developed specialized economies based upon a few high-yield natural foods, especially hickory nuts, shellfish, and deer. This specialization led to a more sedentary life and opened the way for the Gulf Formational stage.

The Gulf Formational stage began with the appearance of fiber-tempered and, later, sand-tempered ceramic complexes, mainly found in river valleys and along the coast, where semisedentary Archaic populations were established. The genesis of the Gulf Formational cultures apparently is not the result of major population movements or replacement. Rather, they appear to have diffused into Alabama through trade and culture contact with ethnic groups in surrounding regions.

The succeeding Woodland stage was primarily northern in origin. Major characteristics include cord- or fabric-impressed pottery, burial mounds, and cultivation of certain native plants as well as the tropical domesticated plants maize and squash. The bow and arrow were introduced into eastern forests during this time.

The earliest Woodland pottery comes from the northeastern United States and may ultimately have come from Old World sources, as the custom of constructing burial mounds. The earliest mounds are found in the Midwest and date to around 1000 B.C. The diffusion of these practices into the Southeast, which may in certain instances have involved actual population migration, occurred around the beginning of the first millennium A.D. These traits were integrated into local cultural systems and developed into many distinctive regional variations.

The culmination of Woodland development, combined with new traits derived from Mesoamerica, produced the apex of prehistoric culture in the Southeast, the Mississippian stage. The Mississippian is characterized by effective food production combined with age-old hunting and gathering practices, the construction of earthen pyramids supporting structures of timber and thatch, the rise of complex religious systems, and the development of chiefdoms. The earliest of these cultures date to A.D. 700 in the central Mississippi Valley region and were at their height from A.D. 1200 to A.D. 1400. After 1400, prior to the first European explorations in the area, the Mississippian cultures of the Southeast underwent a rapid demise, the causes of which remain an archaeological mystery. After A.D. 1540, European exploration and settlement in the Southeast caused rapid acculturation among aboriginal tribal cultures until, by 1800, there was little left of traditional customs and lifeways.

Three generations of southeastern archaeologists have tried to illuminate this complex prehistory. This endeavor dates back to the 1930s to the Tennessee Valley, where the first stratified sites were discovered. With this discovery came the realization that human beings had arrived in the Southeast at some unknown time in the distant past prior to the introduction of pottery and agriculture. This realization led to the formulation of what is now called the Archaic stage.

The recognition of an Archaic stage of cultural development in Alabama and the eastern United States was one of the major contributions of archaeologists working four decades ago. The initial recognition of the Archaic as a major cultural unit is attributed to William Ritchie (1932), based upon his archaeological investigations of aboriginal sites in New York State. In Ritchie's preliminary definition of the Archaic, two major negative characteristics were stressed: The culture (Lamoka) he placed into this integrative unit was separated from previously established cultural units by a lack of both pottery and agriculture. Ritchie's concept of the Archaic was further substantiated by archaeological investigations that were beginning in Alabama during the same year that his volume on the New York sites was published.

In the summer of 1932, Walter B. Jones and David L. DeJarnette of the Alabama Museum of Natural History began an archaeological survey of the Tennessee River Valley. Some 237 sites were located and mapped during this initial survey. The following year the Tennessee Valley Authority announced that it would begin construction of three major hydroelectric dams that would flood considerable areas of bottomland in the Alabama portion of the valley. Professor William S. Webb of the University of Kentucky was called upon to direct archaeological salvage operations in the Tennessee Valley in both Tennessee and Alabama. Thomas M. N. Lewis and DeJarnette were selected to direct the field operations in Tennessee and Alabama respectively. Utilizing depression-era Civil Works Administration and, later, Works Progress Administration labor, excavations were begun in December 1933 in the area of northern Alabama to be inundated by the construction of Wheeler Dam.

During this project nineteen sites were excavated. Among these was a large shell mound designated Lu°86, which produced the first documented evidence of prepottery Archaic cultures in the Middle South. Webb (1939) noted that this site was stratified and that only the upper levels contained pottery. The lower levels contained large numbers of broad-stemmed projectile points, stone tools, and bone implements. He reported, From a careful investigation of the occurrence of these flint spear points and their associations, the author is convinced that a spear-throwing, hunting, and fishing people who made no pottery and used no bows and arrows laid down the great shell midden at the base of mound Site Lu°86 (1939:180).

The term Archaic was first applied to the preceramic levels in the Alabama shell mounds during the Pickwick Basin survey that followed. This project began in May 1936 and was halted due to flooding in February 1938. All of the nine shell mounds excavated during this time were found to contain shallow, upper, pottery-bearing zones, and deep, lower, prepottery strata. Lists of selected traits were compiled and generalized mound profiles were constructed to facilitate comparison between these sites. The trait lists compiled for the Pickwick Basin shell mounds were then compared to those constructed for the shell middens of the Green River in Kentucky and many similarities were noted. Based upon this study, a cultural classification of these shell-mound dwellers was constructed in keeping with the Midwestern Taxonomic System then in vogue (Webb and DeJarnette 1942:319):

Pattern: Archaic

       Aspect: Pickwick

               Focus:  Lauderdale (Alabama)

                            Components:   Long Branch, site Lu°67

                                                   Bluff Creek, site Lu°59

                                                   Perry, site Lu°25

                                                   Mulberry Creek, site Ct°27

               Focus:  Indian Knoll (Kentucky)

                            Components:    Chiggerville, site Oh1

                                                    Indian Knoll, site Oh2

                                                    Ward, site McL11

In reports of the excavations of these shell mounds, Webb and his colleagues noted that, although the cultural materials recovered from the pre-pottery levels in these sites were highly homogeneous, culture change was apparent. Studies of the stratigraphic distribution of these materials revealed that, through time, new traits were added to the cultural inventory of these peoples while other traits disappeared. Based upon these observations a relative chronology was devised for these shell-mound occupations (Webb and DeJarnette 1948a). The prepottery occupations of these sites were divided into three broad periods: Archaic 1, 2, and 3. These periods were segregated on the basis of presence or absence of single attributes. For example, Archaic 3 began with the appearance of stone vessels and ended with the appearance of ceramics, which began the first of three pottery periods.

The major flaw in this system was its general nature. Diagnostic cultural assemblages were not recognized during investigation of the shell mounds, and intrasite comparison was founded upon single traits, some of which had great time depth and were attributes of several distinct assemblages. Thus, the Archaic occupations of these sites have been relegated to a single homogenous cultural unit, Lauderdale, which has been called a focus, phase, or culture by different archaeologists writing at various times. Only in the last few years has the nature of culture change displayed in the shell-mound strata begun to emerge. Even now, the outline is incomplete and a second monumental effort is needed to clarify this development.

By the end of the 1930s the Archaic was synonymous with Shell Mound Archaic. James Ford and Gordon Willey (1941:332) in their synthesis of the prehistory of the eastern United States remarked, It appears to be justifiable to apply the name ‘archaic’ to the earliest known cultural horizon in the East. The cultures of this period were ‘archaic’ in the true sense, horticulture was lacking, pottery is either absent or makes its appearance late in the stage, and the abundance, variety, and quality of artifacts do not compare with the more complex later developments…. A common feature of nearly all these sites is the fact that they are located at points where an abundant supply of shellfish was available and the occupation areas are marked by large accumulations of discarded shells.

Development of radiocarbon dating was the major scientific contribution during the late 1940s to the ongoing elucidation of the evolution of pre-ceramic cultures in the East. Although several previous attempts had been made to devise absolute dating techniques for archaeological materials in this area, none proved satisfactory. Some archaeologists attempted to guess their way out of this dilemma. Thus Ford and Willey in their 1941 synthesis attempted to estimate absolute dates for the relative chronological sequence that had been established for the prehistoric cultures of the East on the basis of stratigraphy and seriation. Their chronology was brief. All of the known prehistoric manifestations in the East were placed into a 2,000-year span. The oldest stage, the Archaic, ended around A.D. 800 with the introduction of fiber-tempered pottery. When radiocarbon dates for shell-mound materials began to be announced, the Ford and Willey chronology proved to be much too condensed.

Shell-mound occupations from several areas were dated to between 2000 and 3000 B.C., and radiocarbon dating soon indicated that the initial occupation of some of these sites dated as far back as 5000 B.C. A single radiocarbon date was obtained on materials gathered during the depression-era salvage operations conducted on the shell mounds of Alabama. Deer antler from the 3.5- and 4-foot levels of the Perry site at Lauderdale proved to be 4,764 years old (± 250). This would date them between 3064 and 2564 B.C.

By 1950, the oldest documented prehistoric manifestation in Alabama was the shell-mound Archaic culture, which had been dated to some four or five thousand years ago. However, hints of even earlier occupations had already been noted. DeJarnette, in is 1952 summary of Alabama archaeology, devoted a brief but revealing passage to these materials. He related that three fluted projectile-point fragments similar in form to the Clovis and Folsom points, then being dated to between ten and twelve thousand years ago in the Great Plains, were recovered during WPA-TVA salvage operations in the 1930s. DeJarnette's discussion of these finds signaled the beginning of an intensive search for more. Remarkable results were obtained in later years in the form of substantial Paleo-Indian habitation sites in the Tennessee Valley.

The early finds of fluted points did not produce an immediate announcement of the existence of early man in Alabama. First, the salvage operations of the 1930s were limited to bottomlands that would be inundated by flood waters confined by dam construction. Time was an essential factor and excavations at more than one site were abruptly halted by early flooding. Only the more substantial sites—shell mounds, temple mounds, and burial mounds—were thoroughly investigated. Small archaeological sites in the valley floor that might have produced fluted points were not excavated. It must be noted also that all major Paleo-Indian sites that were later discovered in the Tennessee Valley were above the basin areas on upper terraces; there are some climatic indications that suggest increased rainfall during the late Pleistocene and cast doubt on the existence of Paleo-Indian campsites in the bottomlands.

Second, the three fluted points found during these salvage operations were discovered in perplexing context. Two fluted projectile point fragments were encountered in two widely separated Copena burial mounds, Lu°54 and Lu°63 (Webb and DeJarnette 1942:Plate 132.2), while a third was found at a small village site, Luv65, which was also thought to be associated with the Copena manifestation (Webb and DeJarnette 1942:Plate 207.1). This provenance and the fact that Copena blades, while unfluted, were similar in form to these fluted points added to the confusion. For a while, it seemed possible that fluted points in the Tennessee Valley were late in time and were made by the builders of the Copena burial mounds. Fluted points were added to the Copena trait list and were even used by one archaeologist as a diagnostic trait in demonstrating the existence of Copena peoples in the Nashville Basin (Jennings 1946).

In sum, the small quantity of fluted points discovered during the salvage operations of the 1930s, their fragmentary nature, and the problems raised by their context produced understandable conservative and even skeptical attitudes about their significance. It was not until much later that it was demonstrated that these fluted projectile points were diagnostic of an early period in eastern North American prehistory and that extensive Paleo-Indian habitation sites existed in that area. We now recognize these fluted fragments found during the WPA-TVA investigations as a type of projectile point called Cumberland. Their presence at the Copena sites appears to have been only a chance occurrence. Even as such, they served as a base for DeJarnette's recognition of the possibility that prehistoric man was in Alabama much earlier than had previously been recognized.

A significant step in the discovery of more Paleo-Indian materials in northern Alabama was taken in 1944 with the organization of the Tennessee Archaeological Society under the guidance of T. M. N. Lewis and Madeline Kneberg. Lewis and Kneberg were very interested in the scattered discoveries of fluted points in Tennessee and Alabama, and at the December 1950 meeting of the Tennessee Archaeological Society they called for help from among the amateur ranks in documenting finds made in the Tennessee Valley. This study aroused considerable enthusiasm among local professional and amateur archaeologists and led directly to the discovery and reporting of the first Paleo-Indian habitation sites in Alabama and the Southeast. During the following seven years three major Paleo-Indian habitation sites in the Tennessee Valley of Alabama and many additional finds of fluted points were reported in the Tennessee Archaeological Society publication, the Tennessee Archaeologist. These reports convincingly demonstrated the existence of a Paleo-Indian stage in Alabama prehistory.

The three Paleo-Indian sites reported during this time were discovered within a three-mile area on the upper terraces of the Tennessee River north of Decatur. The first reported and best known was the Quad site discovered by Frank J. Soday in 1951 (Soday 1952, 1954). Over a thousand Paleo-Indian artifacts were recovered from this site alone. Comparable amounts of these materials were recovered from two other, nearby sites, the Stone Pipe and Pine Tree sites reported by James W. Cambron (1955, 1956).

Thus by 1955 two preceramic manifestations had been documented in Alabama, an earlier Paleo-Indian culture and a later shell-mound Archaic culture. However, the enormous amount of time thought to separate these cultures, and the heterogeneous nature of their assemblages, indicated a hiatus between these occupations. The recognition of this temporal and cultural gap between these manifestations raised many problems. Did the Paleo-Indians occupy the area and then leave to be replaced much later by culturally distinct shell-mound dwellers, or was there some intervening culture or cultures yet to be discovered that bridged this gap?

Answers were forthcoming. In 1953 members of the Chattanooga chapter of the Tennessee Archaeological Society discovered a cave shelter—Russell Cave—in the uplands above the Tennessee River in Marshall County, Alabama. The cave deposit was tested in 1953 and 1954 and proved to be deeply stratified. The potential of these deposits convinced the National Geographic Society to sponsor excavations at this site. Carl Miller, a Smithsonian archaeologist, summarily began a second phase of excavations at Russell Cave in 1956. Miller's initial investigation produced significant results. The lower strata at Russell Cave did not produce fluted points but did yield projectile points and stone tools that appeared to be related to these earlier assemblages. Radiocarbon testing on charcoal samples from these levels dated to eight thousand years ago (Miller 1956).

The materials from the lower levels of Russell Cave were culturally and temporally intermediate between the known Paleo-Indian and shell-mound Archaic occupations of this region. Only a small amount of data resulting from Miller's investigation was published in the form of two popular articles, and, unfortunately, these brief accounts were not followed by a technical report.

By this time, however, interest in the archaeology of the state had reached a new high with the founding of the Alabama Archaeological Society in 1955. Society members had already contributed much new and significant knowledge to the Paleo-Indian-Archaic problem. During the first years of the founding of their organization, they began to plan, in cooperation with local professional archaeologists, a problem-oriented archaeological research project directed toward expanding and corroborating the discoveries made by Miller at Russell Cave.

One major hurdle—financial support—lay in the path of their plans. Leading members of the society, spurred on by the enthusiasm of Dan Josselyn, one of the society's founding fathers, formed the Archaeological Research Association of Alabama, Inc., to generate financial support for excavations through public subscription. This unprecedented effort was highly successful and led to over a decade of fruitful cooperation between the society and University of Alabama archaeologists directed by David L. DeJarnette.

The archaeological projects sponsored by the society included two seasons of excavation at the now famous Stanfield-Worley bluff shelter (1961-1962) and investigations at rock shelters on Sand Mountain in Marshall and De-Kalb counties (1962-1964), at open-air sites in the Mud Creek drainage area of Colbert and Franklin counties (1961-1962), in Lamar County (1966), and in rock shelters in Franklin county (1967-1968). Most recently the society has provided funding for a study of the late Pleistocene deposits of the Black Belt region of central Alabama, where C. B. Curren has reported possible Early Man finds.

Of all of these projects, the Stanfield-Worley excavation stands alone in importance of the data produced. The deposits at this site yielded early Archaic assemblages dating to over nine thousand years ago, clearly bridging the gap between the Paleo-Indian and later Archaic occupations of Alabama (DeJarnette, Kurjack, and Cambron 1962). This work, combined with the results of earlier investigations, has demonstrated that the Tennessee Valley area of northern Alabama is one of the few regions in the East where cultural continuity can be documented between the Paleo-Indian and Archaic stages. The middle Tennessee Valley of Alabama is thus an extremely important area for the study of Early Man in the New World. It is only in such regions, where cultural continuity can be established, that the nature of man's changing adaptation to his environment can be fully traced.

The next stage to be discussed in this study, the Gulf Formational, has only recently been recognized by archaeologists working in the area. Many alterations and changes in interpretation will certainly be made as new data become available. As stated earlier, this stage is marked by the diffusion of ceramics into the Southeast, possibly resulting from cultural contacts with ethnic groups to the south in the Circum-Caribbean region. The Gulf Formational stage developed out of the Archaic and actually represents a type of culture climax based upon earlier achievements. It ends with the appearance of Woodland ceramics and burial mounds, which diffused from northern cultures to the Southeast during the final centuries B.C.

A more complete documentation of the discovery and development of this stage is given in chapter 5. However, it should be noted that, as in the case of the earlier two stages, the major traits of the Gulf Formational stage were discovered during depression-era archaeological projects. Concomitant with the recognition of preceramic cultures in Alabama came the recognition of the earliest pottery, a crude fiber-tempered ware closely followed by a much more sophisticated sand-tempered ceramic complex. The initial study of these early ceramic complexes and the cultures of which they were a part was a major contribution of archaeologists working forty years ago. Based upon these and new discoveries in certain key areas of the state (Walthall and Jenkins 1976), a picture of man's first eight thousand years in Alabama is now emerging.

The last two stages of eastern prehistory, the Woodland and Mississippian, were the first to be recognized in Alabama. By 1930, Woodland burial mounds and Mississippian temple mounds had been reported in all of the major river valleys of the state. The major burial mound complex discovered in Alabama, the Copena manifestation, had been originally reported by C. B. Moore during his turn-of-the-century explorations of the Tennessee Valley. However, it was not until three decades later that William Webb and David DeJarnette formally defined this mound complex and gave it the name Copena. After a decade of intensive study, resulting in the excavation of over thirty structures, investigations of the Copena complex were halted by the outbreak of World War II. With the resumption of archaeological work after the war, research was shifted from the Tennessee Valley to other areas of the state where new dams and reservoirs were to be built. While other burial mound complexes were discovered in these areas, none was as elaborate or as widespread as Copena, which still remained somewhat of a mystery due to the lack of knowledge concerning its temporal position or cultural affiliations. In 1971 John Walthall began an investigation of Copena aimed at solving these two problems. The result of this study, which constituted Walthall's doctoral dissertation at the University of North Carolina, was the association of the Copena mounds with an indigenous Tennessee Valley Woodland culture stimulated by trade contacts with Hopewellian cultures in the Midwest. Radiocarbon dates submitted as part of this study indicate a temporal range extending from A.D. 100 to A.D. 500 for Copena (Walthall 1972, 1973a).

Since the early nineteenth century, temple mounds, later to be considered a hallmark of the Mississippian stage, have been recognized in several areas in Alabama. The largest group of such mounds was discovered near the town of Carthage, later renamed Moundville, on the banks of the Black Warrior River. The site at Moundville was thoroughly explored for the first time in 1905 by C. B. Moore, who dug pits into each of the twenty major structures. He discovered that Moundville had once been a major ceremonial center for a complex culture with a sophisticated art and technology. Scientific examination of the Moundville site was begun in 1929 by Walter B. Jones, David DeJarnette, and other personnel from the Alabama Museum of Natural History. Later, with the aid of a Civilian Conservation Corps work force, large areas of the site were excavated, revealing the remains of a sizable prehistoric town surrounding the mounds. Beginning in 1938, roads were built to the site and a museum was established in order to make Moundville accessible to the public. In recent years, Moundville has been the subject of two doctoral dissertations: Douglas McKenzie (1964) of Harvard University summarized much of the existing data recovered from Moundville; Christopher Peebles (1974), now of the University of Michigan, studied the social organization of the people who had once lived there. Peebles has continued his interest in Moundville, and his ongoing research should shed additional light on the origin and development of this great prehistoric