Birds of Summer Solstice: World-Renewal Rituality on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida

Abstract

Prevalent as bird imagery is in the ritual traditions of eastern North America, the bony remains of birds are relatively sparse in archaeological deposits and when present are typically viewed as subsistence remains. A first-millennium ad civic-ceremonial centre on the northern Gulf Coast of Florida contains large pits with bird bones amid abundant fish bone and other taxa. The avian remains are dominated by elements of juvenile white ibises, birds that were taken from offshore rookeries at the time of summer solstices. The pits into which they were deposited were emplaced on a relict dune with solstice orientations. The timing and siting of solstice feasts at this particular centre invites discussion of world-renewal rituality and the significance of birds in not only the timing of these events but also possibly as agents of balance and rejuvenation.

Maritime Ritual Economies of Cosmic Synchronicity: Summer Solstice Events at a Civic-Ceremonial Center on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida

“…Insofar as the timing and siting of these events were a matter of cosmological precedent—as opposed to ecological or economic potential—proximate, nearshore food resources may not have been sufficient to provision these feasts. We do not know whether the procurement of offshore resources was a matter of necessity or preference, although we doubt that juvenile ibises were merely an abundant, albeit distant, food for feasting (Goodwin et al 2019). No matter, the construction of a fish trap to harvest mullet at the time of year when they were the least abundant in nearshore locations underscores the economic demands of ritual whose timing and siting were not determined by abundance or the ease of resource collecting.…”

“…The bones of at least two and as many as 12 white ibises ( Eudocimus albus ) per pit are dominated by elements whose immature level of development indicates capture in early summer. Details of this evidence are presented by Goodwin (2017; Goodwin et al 2019), who also delves into the symbolic import of birds and bird imagery in the cultural milieu of Middle Woodland rituality. Without repeating these details, it bears mentioning that the strength of this inference is predicated on a longitudinal study of the breeding ecology of white ibises in an offshore rookery 12 km from Shell Mound (Rudegeair 1975).…”

“…Reported here for the first time, these pit assemblages provide unusually specific seasonal indicators for feasting events. Among the bones of these assemblages are elements of avian species that were taken in mid- to late June (Goodwin 2017; Goodwin et al 2019). The remains of many other taxa support the summer timing of the events.…”

Invisible Things Forgotten: A Multi-Proxy Study of Wetland Plant Use at a Precolumbian Village on the Gulf Coast of Florida

“…In recent investigations at Crystal River, Robert's Island, and several other Woodland-period (ca. 1000 BC–AD 1000) mound centers on Florida's north-peninsular Gulf Coast, archaeologists have reconstructed traditions of faunal estuarine resource intensification tied to ceremonial feasting, mound-building, mortuary interment, and world-renewal (Duke et al 2020; Goodwin et al 2019; Sampson 2015; Sassaman et al 2020; Wallis and McFadden 2020). While these studies emphasize mass-captured faunal resources, namely oyster and small estuarine fishes, the evidence reported here justifies further archaeological consideration of wetland geophytes as important risk-reducing subsistence resources.…”

“…We note that cool-season aggregations would have also been timed appropriately to harvest wapato, as well as other rhizomatic wetland herbs. The close ecological associations between wetland geophytes and migratory waterfowl should also not be overlooked by Gulf Coast archaeologists, particularly given the prominence of wading birds in Woodland-period mortuary iconography (e.g., Donop 2017; Spivey-Faulkner 2018) and the incorporation of waterfowl remains within ritual pit features at north peninsular Gulf Coast mound centers (Goodwin et al 2019).…”