Apalachicola Valley Archaeology

Synthesizes the archaeology of the Apalachicola-lower Chattahoochee Valley region of northwest Florida, southeast Alabama, and southwest Georgia, from 1,300 years ago to recent times

"Apalachicola Valley Archaeology is a major holistic synthesis of the archaeological record and what is known or speculated about the ancient Apalachicola and lower Chattahoochee Valley region of northwest Florida, southeast Alabama, and southwest Georgia. Volume 1 coverage spans from the time of the first human settlement, around 14,000 years ago, to the Middle Woodland period, ending about AD 700. Author Nancy Marie White had devoted her career to this archaeologically neglected region, and she notes that it is environmentally and culturally different from better-known regions nearby. Early chapters relate the individual ecosystems and the types of typical and unusual material culture, including stone, ceramic, bone, shell, soils, and plants. Other chapters are devoted to the archaeological Paleoindian, Archaic, Woodland periods. Topics include migration/settlement, sites, artifacts and material culture, subsistence and lifeways, culture and society, economics, warfare, and rituals. White's prodigious work reveals that Paleoindian habitation was more extensive than once assumed. Archaic sites were widespread, and those societies persisted through the first global warming when the Ice Age ended. Besides new stone technologies, pottery appeared in the Late Archaic period. Extensive inland and coastal settlement is documented. Development of elaborate religious or ritual systems is suggested by Early Woodland times when the first burial mounds appear. Succeeding Middle Woodland societies expanded this mortuary ceremony in about forty mounds. In the Middle Woodland, the complex pottery of the concurrent Swift Creek and the early Weeden Island ceramic series as well as the imported exotic objects show an increased fascination with the ornate and unusual. Native American lifeways continued with gathering-fishing-hunting subsistence systems similar to those of their ancestors. The usefulness of the information to modern society to understand human impacts on environments and vice versa caps the volume"--

This research describes a large, newly-recorded archaeological site in the Upper Apalachicola River valley, northwest Florida, and a private collection of artifacts from it, as well as test excavations, three-dimensional modeling, clay/pottery sourcing through chemical analysis, and direct radiocarbon dating of ceramics to relate the site with regional archaeological chronologies and settlement patterns. A University of South Florida (USF) 2013 field school conducted excavations at the multicomponent midden on the western floodplain of the Apalachicola River called the McKinnie site (8JA1869). Students collaborated with a local collector and family members to learn about the site's history. Data from the collection and excavations show that the site was inhabited through four thousand years of prehistory, serving as a rich seasonal resource base for local people in the area starting in the Middle Archaic Period, and as a small place of occupation during the Woodland Period, until people moved out into the river valley to live in farming villages. We also investigated a series of fascinating features, stored in the private collection and excavated by USF, which may have been intentionally buried at the site up to 5500 years ago. They may be evidence of some ancient ochre processing to obtain pigments, or some other special activity.

This book is a synthesis of research spanning archaeology, geology, geography, history, ecology, and ethnography. It follows the history of the Apalachicola people who contributed to the culture that was later called the Creek Indians in the Southeastern United States. Apalachicola is the origin story of the Creek Indians and how they adapted to a changing environment and shows that specific institutions, subsistence strategies, and social organizations developed as a risk management strategy and a form of resilience. It is unique in its comprehensive and long-term study of a community. It identifies and demonstrates a new way of understanding the development of political institutions and regime change. Incorporating the role of social groups that are under discussed by archaeological studies, the book offers a new and novel understanding of the development of complex societies in the Southeastern United States. It also includes a holistic view of the entire social and economic organizations rather than just an aspect of the economy or politics and shows how this culture developed a society that dealt with an unpredictable environment by distributing risks, knowledge, and authority throughout the society. The social and political organization of these Native American peoples was adapted to a particular environment that was altered when Europeans immigrated to the Americas. The book is relevant to scholars interested in Southeastern North American archaeology and history, ecological resilience, political change, colonialism, gender studies, ecology, and more.

200, a time marked by initial mound construction and the first intense village occupation at the site, which was preceded only by a very small, pre-Fort Walton, Swift Creek occupation there around A.D. 320. Probable antecedent events at a nearby Fort Walton mound center, Cayson (8Ca3), as well as contact with Rood Mississippian groups to the north are hypothesized as influencing Yon's Middle Fort Walton development and florescence. Evidence indicates that this initial Middle Fort Walton occupation was followed by an occupation of Lamar groups. Regional data and radiocarbon evidence from Yon suggest that this Lamar component likely began during protohistoric times (circa A.D. 1600) and continued into the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries. It is hypothesized that this Lamar occupation was the result of Lamar groups migrating down the lower Chattahoochee-Apalachicola River in the wake of European contact. As a whole, this study represents the most complete documentation of the occupational history of any Fort Walton mound center to date. As such, it can provide an important foundation for future studies of Fort Walton mound centers and sites in the Apalachicola-lower Chattahoochee River region.