Sourcing Interaction Networks of the American Southeast: Neutron Activation Analysis of Swift Creek Complicated Stamped Pottery

Abstract

In the lower American Southeast, regional scale social interactions burgeoned alongside the growth of nucleated villages, widespread mound-building projects, and conspicuous mortuary ceremonialism during the Middle and Late Woodland periods (ca. A.D. 100–800). A premier material for understanding the scale and significance of social interactions across the southern landscape comes from Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery, a ubiquitous class of material culture that provides direct evidence of connections between specific sites at a multitude of scales and in myriad contexts. By combining design data and determinations of vessel provenance through Neutron Activation Analysis of a total of 825 sherds and 130 clay samples, this research ascertains types of social interaction and their predominant directions and levels of intensity across multiple ecological, social, and cultural contexts. The results indicate two main patterns: first, that vessels were frequently transported from habitation sites and civic-ceremonial centers to distant burial mounds; and second, that people traveled to ceremonial centers from outlying villages for events that included the exchange of wooden paddles. These patterns reveal a high level of social coordination within integrated networks that were inextricable from the region-wide trends toward population aggregation and heightened monumentality and rituality.

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

“…A circuit of movement separating rituals of the winter and summer solstices in place comports with a distinction between mortuary (winter) and world-renewal (summer) ceremonialism (e.g., Hall 1997; Knight 2001). It may also explain the geographic displacement of mortuary pottery that is well documented by geochemical sourcing (e.g., Wallis et al 2016).…”

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

“…A ritual circuit that sited winter solstice (mortuary) and summer solstice (world renewal) events at different locations not only reinforces the distinction Knight (2001) notes for Middle Woodland rituality, but also accounts for the geographical displacement of mortuary pottery that is well documented by geochemical sourcing (e.g. Wallis 2011; Wallis et al 2016). Summer solstice feasts at Shell Mound are perhaps only part of a differentiated but integrated ritual circuit (e.g.…”

A New History of Community Formation and Change at Kolomoki (9er1)

“…The timing of this change in relation to settlement shifts at mound sites to the south suggests a broader shift in the social construction of communities in favor of the inclusivity of the imagined, with Kolomoki indexing (sensu Peirce 1955) this region-wide integration. The more seasonal, less intensive habitation of the southern arc of the outer village relative to the north is intriguing given that many visitors might have come from this direction based on settlement trends (Pluckhahn 2003:40–44), ceramic sourcing studies (Pluckhahn and Cordell 2011; Wallis, Pluckhahn, and Glascock 2016), and lithic raw material distributions (Menz 2015:79–83). Coupled with the bilateral north-south symmetry of the community plan, it calls to mind the directional associations of moieties and their migrations to pueblos in the Southwest (Fowles 2005; Ortman 2008, 2012).…”