Ocmulgee National Monument 4

Ocmulgee National Monument 4

This new item in the household inventory was probably one of the most

significant advances which ever took place in the life of the American

Indian, and second in importance only to the later introduction of

agriculture. With it, the awkward and tedious routine of stone boiling

came to an end, and soups and stews enlarged the menu and became at once

the easiest prepared and one of the most appetizing of the foods used.

Pottery, too, marks a big change in the work of the archeologist when it

appears in the cultures which he is studying. Types of projectile points

and other stone artifacts have a way of continuing in use for long

periods without change. Clay vessels, however, seem to have been

constantly changing in form or decoration or construction, possibly

because the potter's clay is so plastic and responsive to any fancy it

is desired to express, and there are many different ways of producing

similar results. For this reason, it forms a sensitive indicator of the

passage of time and is one of our best clues to relationships between

sites and the cultures of their inhabitants.

 

[Illustration: Fiber-tempered pottery might be only a crude beginning of

the potter's art, but even these vessels were large and strong enough to

be highly useful. Width, 15 inches.]

 

No sizable shell mounds of these Archaic peoples, as they are known to

the archeologist, have been found in the central-Georgia area. Numerous

sites occur here, however, which contain no pottery but are littered

with scraps of worked flint and where large numbers of the heavy Archaic

projectile points are plowed up annually. At other sites, including

those on the Macon Plateau, these points are found with a considerable

quantity of the distinctive fiber-tempered pottery. It appears,

therefore, that the Shellfish Eaters proper were a limited portion of

the population of that era and that others with just about the same

material equipment followed the old hunting and gathering life in

temporary camps. The shell heaps themselves were occupied for rather

brief periods by single groups of people. Possibly the large shell

mounds represent an annual camping spot for numerous groups who used

them successively and at other times of the year lived chiefly on game

or along the smaller rivers where shellfish were available but not in

such vast quantities. This would account for the smaller accumulations

of shells in some areas; and it could be that recent changes in the

courses of such rivers as the Ocmulgee and the Oconee, brought about by

industrial activity and flood control measures, have resulted in the

obliteration of small heaps of this sort.

 

In any case, it appears that the Macon Plateau had again demonstrated

its advantages as a habitation site, and that a people with a material

culture similar to that of the Shellfish Eaters dwelt here at intervals

during the period 2000 B. C. to 100 B. C. Their residence was not

continuous for very long at any one time, however, since their lives

depended on hunting. Instead they probably moved about over a fairly

large area, returning every so often to the familiar banks of the

Ocmulgee to set up their village again and to hunt the surrounding

region until the game once more became scarce.

 

[Illustration: Simple stumping, as in this Mossy Oak jar, often appears

like crude scratching. Height, 10 inches.]

 

[Illustration: The woven basketry fabric which produced these

impressions is among the earliest recorded in eastern North America.]

 

 

 

 

Potmaking Becomes an Art

 

 

The next period which can be clearly identified on the Macon Plateau is

the one whose inhabitants we have called _Early Farmers_. It lasted for

roughly 1,000 years and naturally witnessed considerable change; yet the

evidence for this change in middle Georgia is tantalizingly slender.

There are more and larger sites, and the increase of population

reflected in these might be thought to signify an increased food supply

such as the beginnings of planting and tending a few crops could

produce. Direct evidence for the introduction of such hoe cultivation,

however, is lacking; and we can only say that a number of different

lines of reasoning lead us to believe that some plants--possibly

pumpkins, beans, sunflowers, and tobacco--probably were being cultivated

before the period ended. Through the provision of increased leisure and

stability, an assured food supply may well have been one of the factors

permitting an enrichment of Indian life at this time. Since this cannot

yet be demonstrated, however, we must turn to what we do know. Perhaps

the reader will not be too surprised to learn that we shall again be

talking about pottery, since we have already mentioned it as one of the

archeologist's most unfailing sources of information.

 

Like most archeological field work the excavations at Ocmulgee did not

result in an independent body of information which could be added

unchanged to the total fund of our archeological knowledge. We know in

detail what was found; but we must turn to work in nearby and more

distant areas for assistance in its correct interpretation. In the

present case, four main types of pottery occurred more or less

intermixed at almost the deepest levels excavated on the plateau. The

first of these was the fiber-tempered ware described in the previous

section. The other three are tempered with sand or with "grit" (finely

crushed stone) in varying amounts. Like the fiber-tempered pottery these

three types are important time markers in the Southeast. It would be

tedious to go in detail through all the steps involved in placing them

in their proper position in the time scale; but some idea of the nature

of the problem might help us to gain an understanding of its

complexities. It could help us, too, to realize what a jigsaw puzzle an

archeological reconstruction is likely to be.

 

First let us see what we know about the earliest appearance of pottery

in eastern North America. It has long been thought, and radiocarbon

tests have recently demonstrated, that the earliest pottery known in

this section has come chiefly from the area drained by the Ohio and

Mississippi Rivers from New York State to Illinois and south as far as

north Georgia. This pottery has such close parallels at a like early

period in northeastern Asia that many students believe it may have been

brought here by direct migration, though naturally over a period of

generations. Its chief characteristic is the roughening of its surfaces

with the marks of twisted cords and somewhat later with those made by a

plaited basketry fabric. Here, some believe, must have been the models

which stimulated the shellheap dwellers to their first experiments in

making pottery.

 

[Illustration: Restored eagle effigy of white quartz boulders near

Eatonton, Ga. Length, 102 feet; width, 120 feet.]

 

The two sand-tempered wares in the early Macon Plateau collections

referred to above are Mossy Oak Simple Stamped and Dunlap Fabric Marked.

The name of the first of these combines that of the site with which it

was first principally identified with an indication of its general type,

i. e., exhibiting the straight grooves left by the paddle used in

finishing the pot. The paddle itself may have been carved with simple

straight grooves, or it may have been wrapped with a thong or smooth bit

of plant fiber such as honeysuckle vine. Dunlap, on the other hand, is

the name of a family which had long owned a large part of the Ocmulgee

area, while the type designation refers to the use of a piece of woven

basketry used in finishing the vessel.

 

In order to place these two types of pottery we must examine their

occurrence on the Georgia coast and in north Georgia. Such a study

reveals that the simple stamping follows directly after fiber tempering

on the coast; and that in north Georgia, where the latter is absent, it

lies immediately above a fabric-marked pottery very similar to Dunlap.

It would seem likely, then, that this latter type of pottery might have

worked its way south by the end of the period in which fiber temper was

in vogue. Both types exhibit a kind of finish which, like the early

cordmarking farther north, resulted from techniques that had probably

been found most effective in working the wet clay. Some sort of

implement was needed for thinning and compacting the vessel walls, and

experiment has shown that a paddle with roughened surface is more

efficient for this purpose than a smooth one. No doubt this is caused by

the more tenacious adherence of the wet clay to the latter. In any

event, different ways were found of roughening a flattened stick or

paddle, whether by wrapping various materials about it or carving it

with deep grooves; and some groups may well have rolled up a piece from

an old broken basket or bit of matting and found it equally useful.

Then, if a smooth surface were desired, the marks of any of these

implements could be erased easily by smoothing with a wet hand.

 

[Illustration: Reconstructed pottery stamps. Designs taken from sherds

excavated at the Swift Creek site. Total length of paddle, 9 inches.]

 

[Illustration: Fragments of Swift Creek stamp designs. Scale about

two-fifths.]

 

The time we have been describing belongs to the general period of

eastern United States archeology known as Early Woodland. The Adena

culture, which apparently spread from centers in the Ohio Valley,

belongs to this period and is well known for its elaborate burial mounds

and other distinctive features which are regarded as typical markers

over a wide area. While no burial mounds are known from middle Georgia

at this time, the fabric-marked and simple-stamped pottery does belong

to a general class of wares occurring also in Adena sites. It seems also

to relate Ocmulgee to a pair of eagle effigy mounds of stone near

Eatonton, Ga.; and bird symbolism is likewise a distinctive Adena

feature, though one more fully developed in the following Middle

Woodland stage. So it appears that a few traits have been found to

connect this period quite definitely with some of the broader currents

affecting other areas in the same time span.

 

The fourth pottery type found mixed in the lower levels at Ocmulgee was

Swift Creek Complicated Stamped. Actually this was either grit- or

sand-tempered; but its outstanding characteristic was the complex

patterns with which the paddles were carved. The type is named for the

Swift Creek site only a few miles down the river which was occupied

almost exclusively by the people of this culture. This ware covers a

longer time span than the other two types, and its distinctive influence

was exhibited in some sections even into historic times. In its early

stages, it probably served as the source for a tradition of complicated

stamping which covered most of the Southeast and even spread to some

extent beyond its limits. We don't know just when it began. In northwest

Florida and on the Georgia coast it seems to fall in the Middle Woodland

period. Since the type site, though, is close to its apparent center of

development, its occurrence on the plateau mixed with Mossy Oak and

Dunlap may well represent its true position and thus place its origins

in Early Woodland.