The Swift Creek Gift: Vessel Exchange on the Atlantic Coast

By Neill J. Wallis

Assesses Woodland Period interactions using technofunctional, mineralogical, and chemical data derived from Swift Creek Complicated Stamped sherds

A unique dataset for studying past social interactions comes from Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery that linked sites throughout much of the Eastern Woodlands but that was primarily distributed over the lower Southeast. Although connections have been demonstrated, their significance has remained enigmatic. How and why were apparently utilitarian vessels, or the wooden tools used to make them, distributed widely across the landscape?

This book assesses Woodland Period interactions using technofunctional, mineralogical, and chemical data derived from Swift Creek Complicated Stamped sherds whose provenience is fully documented from both mortuary mounds and village middens along the Atlantic coast. Together, these data demonstrate formal and functional differences between mortuary and village assemblages along with the nearly exclusive occurrence of foreign-made cooking pots in mortuary contexts. The Swift Creek Gift provides insight into the unique workings of gift exchanges to transform seemingly mundane materials like cooking pots into powerful tools of commemoration, affiliation, and ownership.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Mar 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9780817384845

Book preview

A DAN JOSSELYN MEMORIAL PUBLICATION

THE SWIFT CREEK GIFT

Vessel Exchange on the Atlantic Coast

NEILL J. WALLIS

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa

Copyright © 2011

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Typeface: Bembo

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wallis, Neill J.

  The Swift Creek gift : vessel exchange on the Atlantic Coast / Neill J. Wallis.

     p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-8173-1717-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8173-5629-3 (paper : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8173-8484-5 (electronic) 1. Swift Creek Site (Ga.) 2. Woodland culture—Atlantic Coast (South Atlantic States) 3. Indians of North America—Atlantic Coast (South Atlantic States)—Antiquities. 4. Indian pottery—Atlantic Coast (South Atlantic States)—Analysis. 5. Ceremonial exchange—Atlantic Coast (South Atlantic States)—History. 6. Social interaction—Atlantic Coast (South Atlantic States) 7. Social archaeology—Atlantic Coast (South Atlantic States) 8. Excavations (Archaeology)—Atlantic Coast (South Atlantic States) 9. Atlantic Coast (Ga.)—Antiquities. 10. Atlantic Coast (Fla.)—Antiquities. I. Title.

  E78.G3W25 2011

  975.8′225—dc22

                                       2010031952

For Michelle

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. What Is a Gift?

2. The Swift Creek Cultures

3. Cultural History and Archaeological Overview

4. Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis: Patterns of Swift Creek Interaction

5. Petrographic Analysis: Patterns of Swift Creek Interaction

6. The Form, Technology, and Function of Swift Creek Pottery

7. The Swift Creek Gift

References

Index

Illustrations

FIGURES

1.1. Primary distribution of Swift Creek pottery and sites mentioned in the text

2.1. Swift Creek design attributes characteristic of split representation

2.2. Split representation of birds in a Swift Creek design and a Haida design

3.1. Distribution of recorded Deptford and St. Johns I sites at their intersection on the Atlantic coast

3.2. Sites with Late Swift Creek pottery along the Atlantic coast

3.3. Swift Creek sites with paddle matches

3.4. Reconstructed design 34 and select paddle matches

3.5. Reconstructed design 36 and select paddle matches

3.6. Reconstructed design 38 and select paddle matches

3.7. Unnumbered design and select paddle matches

3.8. Reconstructed design 291 and paddle matches

3.9. Reconstructed design 151, sherds bearing this design from 9JD8, and a nearly identical design from 8DU43

4.1. Distribution of sites with assemblages used in the INAA study

4.2. Distribution of clay samples in the INAA study

4.3. Bivariate plot of chromium and calcium in assemblages from shell-bearing and shell-devoid sites

4.4. Inverse distance weighted (IDW) interpolation of calcium concentrations in both natural and archaeological clay samples

4.5. Biplot of the first two principal components along with the relative influence of each of the elemental variables

4.6. Bivariate plot of principal component 2 and principal component 4 for the clay samples

4.7. Bivariate plot of principal component 2 and principal component 4 for pottery group members and clay samples

4.8. Bivariate plot of chromium and cobalt showing separation of pottery groups and tentative clay groups

4.9. Inverse distance weighted (IDW) interpolation based on clay samples for cobalt and chromium

4.10. Bivariate plot of chromium and cobalt for unassigned samples

4.11. Bivariate plot of chromium and cobalt with paddle-matching samples plotted

4.12. Percentage of chemical group assignments, excluding charcoal-tempered vessels, from mound and midden sites on the Lower St. Johns River

5.1. Mineral constituents useful for distinguishing clay resource groups

5.2. Group assignments by quartz and chromium, cobalt

5.3. Group assignments by quartz and principal component 1, principal component 2

6.1. Open bowl profiles

6.2. Restricted bowl profiles

6.3. Restricted pot profiles

6.4. Open pot vessel profiles

6.5. Flattened-globular bowl profiles

6.6. Collared jar and collared bowl vessel profiles

6.7. Sooted collared jar with folded rim from Mayport Mound

6.8. Small cup and bowl vessel profiles

6.9. Small jar vessel profiles

6.10. Small jars with incising from Grant Mound E and Grant Mound A

6.11. Boat-shaped bowls from Low Grant, Floral Bluff, Grant, Mayport, and Dent

6.12. Double bowls from Beauclerc, Low Grant, and Point La Vista

6.13. Multi-compartment trays from Point La Vista, Grant E, Mayport, Dent, and Monroe

6.14. Beakers from Low Grant and Mayport

6.15. Double-globed jar from Grant Mound E

6.16. Rim profiles of small cups, bowls, and jars from midden contexts

6.17. Percentage of sooted vessels by orifice diameter

TABLES

3.1. Calibrated radiocarbon assays for Early and Late Swift Creek contexts in northeastern Florida

3.2. Calibrated radiocarbon assays for Early and Late Swift Creek contexts in southern coastal Georgia

4.1. Site and type distribution of INAA pottery samples

4.2. Clay samples in the INAA study

4.3. Mean and standard deviation of elemental concentrations in each composition group

4.4. Pottery chemical group assignments by site

5.1. Site and type distribution of petrographic analysis pottery samples

5.2. Clay samples selected for petrographic analysis

5.3. Summary descriptions of variability in petrographic paste categories

5.4. Summary descriptions of variability in gross temper categories

5.5. Mineralogical paste categories by county and INAA group

5.6. Paddle-matching samples by INAA and petrographic groups

5.7. Percentage of quartz among chemical groups

5.8. R-squared value for the linear regression model and correlation between elements or principal components (PC) and quartz proportion

6.1. Vessel form summary statistics

6.2. Soot and mend hole frequencies in each vessel form

6.3. Frequency of vessel form by surface treatment and pottery type

6.4. Mound assemblage orifice diameter and rim thickness summary statistics

6.5. Midden assemblage orifice diameter and rim thickness summary statistics

6.6. Soot frequency grouped by orifice diameter

6.7. Aplastic constituents of gross paste categories

6.8. Frequency of gross paste groups by site

6.9. Rim thickness summary statistics by gross paste groups

Acknowledgments

I have benefited tremendously from many people in the course of this research. This work was heavily reliant on existing collections, and I simply could not have carried it out without the generosity and helpfulness of all the people and institutions that made loans to me. For my use of these collections I must thank Frankie Snow (who also granted permission to reproduce his reconstructions of Swift Creek designs) at South Georgia College; Mark Williams at the University of Georgia; Ray Crook and Susan Fishman-Armstrong at the University of West Georgia Waring Laboratory; Brent Handley, Greg Hendryx, and Greg Smith at Environmental Services, Inc.; Bob Johnson at Florida Archeological Services; Christy Leonard at the Jacksonville Museum of Science and History; Donna Ruhl at the Florida Museum of Natural History; and Patricia Nietfeld at the National Museum of the American Indian. Travel to the National Museum of the American Indian was made possible by a grant from the Florida Archaeological Council. During my travels to various institutions I stayed with friends and family, including Michelle Amor; Michelle, Tom, Trisha, and Ann Fry; Tanya Peres and John Lemons; Rick, Mary Jane, Jordan, and Julia Taylor; and Jim and Marjorie Waggoner. I thank them all for their warm hospitality.

The use of raw clays was an important part of this research, and I was fortunate to have access to many samples that had already been located and collected. Clay samples were given to me by Vicki Rolland, Carolyn Rock, Brian Floyd, Keith Ashley, and Buzz Thunen. Fred Cook and Bill Stead came with me on an expedition along the Altamaha River to obtain clay samples from sources with which they were familiar. Ken Sassaman graciously offered his boat for this adventure. I thank all of these colleagues for their assistance in obtaining clay samples.

While at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR), I gained valuable insights into the methods of instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), along with encouragement and expert guidance for my project from Mike Glascock, Matt Boulanger, Corinne Rosania, and Jeff Ferguson. Funding for this portion of the research came from the National Science Foundation (Grants #0504015 and #0744235). Ann Cordell performed the petrographic analysis at the Florida Museum of Natural History, was very helpful in interpreting mineralogical variation among samples, and shared great pictures of the thin sections. This work was also funded by the National Science Foundation (Grant #0744235).

I must also express my gratitude to many other individuals who helped shape, in various ways, my thoughts during this research, especially Ken Sassaman, Susan Gillespie, John Krigbaum, Jane Southworth, Keith Ashley, Deb Mullins, Asa Randall, and Jamie Waggoner. I also thank Judith Knight and the staff of The University of Alabama Press for their excellent work, and the anonymous reviewers for suggestions in improving this book. Most of all I thank my family, especially Michelle, for unwavering support in every step along the way toward publication.

Introduction

Bronislaw Malinowski (1922) was the first to suggest that non-Western economies could be fundamentally different from Western markets in terms of how exchange systems were organized, how value was determined, and what motivated people to exchange. In his ethnographic work among the societies of the Trobriand Islands, which he perceived to be relatively uninfluenced by Western markets, Malinowski saw a system of giving for the sake of giving seemingly based on generosity rather than self-interest (1922: 175). What Malinowski observed in the Trobriands, the Kula ring, came to be known as the classic example in anthropology of a non-market gift economy that conformed to the rules of reciprocity. Theories of the gift continue to be focused on the perplexing questions of why people give gifts and what it is that obligates a return. The motivations for gift exchange have been variously explained as characteristic of primitive societies, as fundamental to the primeval nature of all humans in all societies, as a social phenomenon that creates important bonds between people, and as a mechanism of both social solidarity and competition (Levi-Strauss 1969; Malinowski 1922; Mauss 1925; Sahlins 1972).

Whatever its origins and many functions, gift exchange is concerned with creating, maintaining, or altering social relationships as much as it is about economic principles. Gifts can create bonds of equality, constitute social difference, or be used to threaten and cajole. Indeed, there can be menacing and destructive gifts (Parry 1986; Raheja 1988). In any case, a gift is never truly free, and although it is given with concern for social relationships, the intentions behind it are often not magnanimous. The organization, logic, and meanings of gift exchange ultimately depend on the specifics of historical and cultural contexts. Yet anthropologists have often interpreted the gift as evidence of a cross-cultural principle of reciprocity that operates mostly in kin-based societies and confounds the logic of self-interest in neoclassical economic theory. Marshall Sahlins's (1972) Stone Age Economics, a manifesto on reciprocity, has had a lasting effect on anthropology, particularly in archaeology. Sahlins (1972) discerned in stone age economies two forms of reciprocity corresponding with the domestic economy and political economy of small-scale, kin-based societies. Generalized reciprocity was understood to operate between kin within the domestic (immediate) economy of the household and was ostensibly altruistic. These gifts included everything from a mother's milk given to her child to the daily sharing of food among coresidents and kin. Alternatively, balanced reciprocity involved people of greater social distance in their attempt to forge social connections. This form of reciprocity constituted the political economies of small-scale societies, characterized by the give and take of gift exchange and attempts to engineer social relations. Following the influence of Malinowski (1922), these two economic domains can be seen as coupled with gendered divisions, with women typically confined to the internal workings of the domestic economy and men operating in the outreaching operations of the political economy (Weiner 1976:11–19).

These dichotomous ideas have been very influential in archaeological investigations of exchange in past societies without markets or standardized tribute systems. According to these conventional understandings, objects that are produced and consumed within the household tend not to be subject to exchange. This means that utilitarian items such as earthenware vessels, basketry, netting, or stone tools are generally not expected to be items of exchange in a gift economy. In contrast, especially exquisite or ornate examples of utilitarian items or objects that are rare, made of materials from far away, or produced with specialized ritual knowledge are particularly valuable items of exchange; and this is the material from which prestige is acquired in the political context of gift exchange. These two categories of material culture, utilitarian and ceremonial/prestige (i.e., exchangeable items), are therefore imagined as distinct, separate, and unshifting. According to this reasoning, domestic products are not regularly exchanged because they are ubiquitous, easily replaced, and are often the products of women, who are assumed to not be major players in the public political domain. These generalizations might be borne out in some social contexts in which highly valued and access-restricted objects were produced, but there is nothing inherent in an object that determines its value for exchange (contra Hayden 1995, 1998). Rather, objects are exchanged in the context of meanings that are embedded in social practice. Because all material technologies are constituted through culturally informed practices that are embedded with symbolic understandings, any category of object has some potential of becoming caught up in political struggles and systems of exchange, no matter how seemingly mundane and quotidian it appears to the archaeologist (Dobres 2000:116–117).

This book is concerned with one such class of material culture, pottery, that in its utilitarian form is rarely considered to have held any symbolic value, much less exchange value. By convention, long-distance transport and exchange should generally be limited to luxury or ceremonial vessels (e.g., Drennan 1985; Harry 2003; Struever and Houart 1972), while utilitarian vessels might be exchanged between close kin along with other subsistence or maintenance goods (e.g., David and Hennig 1972; Duff 2002; Fie 2000, 2006; Graves 1991). Perhaps explaining the distribution of vessels in some contexts, these unyielding categories of utilitarian and luxury objects, with their inherent measures of value, result in a myopic view of the materiality of exchange. In reality, objects of material culture often get recontextualized through different cultural milieus whereby value and significance shift in complex and unexpected ways (Meskell 2004; Miller 1995a; Thomas 1991). This is especially true of objects that are exchanged because they continually move in and out of different cultural contexts. Archaeologists have often been slow to recognize the potential for multiple and alternative symbolic capacities for individual objects, with some notable exceptions. In the southwestern United States, for example, widespread vessel exchange among Pueblo and ancestral Pueblo populations has been explained in terms of the biographies of vessels and with recognition of the multiple uses of individual vessels in both domestic and public performative contexts (Crown 2007; Duff 2002; Mills 2004, 2007; Walker 1995). However, archaeologists working in the Southwest often continue to use categories such as undecorated and decorated, falling back on the Sahlins (1972) dichotomy to designate the former as low-value utilitarian goods exchanged informally between close kin and the latter as the material of formal interaction among members of different communities (Duff 2002:25–27). While these categories may very well explain Pueblo systems of exchange, by applying these conventions too broadly we risk masking the multiple ways that objects become mobilized through exchange.

Eschewing the presumption that utilitarian pottery carried less symbolic or exchange value than other artifacts, this study begins with the premise that all things have the potential to create bonds between people through exchange. This idea takes inspiration from Marcel Mauss's (1925) The Gift, perhaps the first work to outline how objects come to be entangled in social relationships through inalienable qualities that link them to persons and places in the context of exchange. It was Mauss (1925) who first demonstrated that the exchange value of objects is essentially contextual, often deriving from histories of association that imbue objects with cultural significance. The inherently arbitrary nature of symbolic signification, combined with continually developing social practices, makes for malleable values among objects, potentially exploding the ceremonial (political economic) and quotidian (domestic) analytical divide. Ultimately, even the material of daily practices, such as pottery associated with food preparation and eating, can be seen as linked to particular people, places, or ideas and thus can provide the substance through which social relationships are constructed and personhood is enacted in salient social contexts. For archaeologists, then, the challenge is to outline the everyday material practices of past populations in enough detail as to be able to identify contextual shifts in the use of objects that might indicate symbolic transformations that do not conform to preconceived categories. Based on the history of pottery production and use detailed in this study, along the Woodland period coast of present-day Georgia and Northeast Florida the exchange of utilitarian pottery appears to have been caught up in ceremonial contexts that indicate more than reciprocal exchanges of subsistence goods.

Swift Creek Complicated Stamped Pottery and Social Interaction

During the second half of the Woodland period (ca. AD 100 to AD 850), Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery gained widespread popularity across much of the lower southeastern United States, eventually becoming common in assemblages throughout present-day Georgia and major portions of adjacent states. As with many archaeological types of pottery that are ubiquitous across the landscape, the historical reasons for the extensive adoption of complicated stamped pottery are poorly understood. However, unlike other types, Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery preserves tantalizing evidence of the social interactions that may have fueled its growth in popularity. Today, complicated stamped vessels and sherds yield definitive evidence of social interaction at an unparalleled level of detail, owing to distinctive vestiges of the manufacturing process (Snow 1998). To make the characteristic pottery, wooden paddles were carved with various motifs, some representing animals, plants, and faces, and were subsequently impressed into earthenware vessels before firing. The indelible impressions of the wooden paddles preserved inimitable signatures or fingerprints, such as wooden cracks or asymmetrical design flaws These unique signatures allow archaeologists to identify paddle matches, that is, vessels sometimes hundreds of miles apart that were stamped with the same paddle. Hundreds of these paddle matches have been identified; therefore, either pots or the paddles that were used to stamp them were frequently carried across the landscape (Snow 1975, 1998; Snow and Stephenson 1998; Stephenson et al. 2002; Stoltman and Snow 1998).

Swift Creek pottery might also be unequaled in giving archaeologists a glimpse of Middle and Late Woodland symbolic representation in contexts where little else but pottery is preserved (Snow 1998, 2007). Indeed, well over 400 unique designs have been recorded pertaining to a variety of themes, and this is sure to represent only a small fraction of the immense corpus of designs. Although preserving the impressions of exquisite woodcarvings and coming in a variety of vessel forms, most Swift Creek pottery can be considered utilitarian. Made for cooking or storing food and, when broken, swept into village garbage middens, complicated stamped pottery is ubiquitous at many Swift Creek sites. Some therefore warn archaeologists to beware of mistakenly elevating the social importance of these everyday humdrum artifacts (Williams and Elliott 1998:10). Along these lines, evidence for the movement of both paddles and pots has received cursory explanation, mostly as the byproduct of social practices in which other objects were more important: marriage alliances in which mates were exchanged and economic transactions in which vessel contents were exchanged (Stephenson et al. 2002; Stoltman and Snow 1998).

In contrast, I submit that archaeologists must be attuned to the contextual details of pottery production, use, distribution, and deposition before discounting vessels as mere utilitarian tools with little symbolic value. Swift Creek Complicated Stamped vessels were made and used by populations that manifested a huge array of social diversity across a wide expanse of the southeastern landscape. In terms of cultural attributes, what constitutes Swift Creek in one area is not the same in another locale (Ashley and Wallis 2006); therefore, the ways in which complicated stamped pottery was embedded in social life certainly varied as well. Indeed, the social significance of complicated stamped vessels and the ways that individual designs were disseminated via pots or paddles may have been as variable as the Swift Creek social landscape itself, making multiple scales of analysis indispensable to studies of Swift Creek interaction. To understand Swift Creek culture on a global scale, we must venture to understand it on a local scale. This understanding is best pursued by detailing the range of variation within and between many assemblages from different kinds of sites in a region.

This book focuses on the material practices of pottery production, distribution, and use during the proliferation of complicated stamping on the Atlantic coast of present-day Florida and Georgia (Figure I.1). Swift Creek pottery came to the Atlantic seaboard through specific historical circumstances, adopted first along the Lower St. Johns River, Florida, around AD 200 and along the Altamaha River, Georgia, and intervening areas three centuries later (Ashley and Wallis 2006; Ashley et al. 2007). Swift Creek influences, whether due to migration, assimilation, or other social interactions, derived from different geographical areas in each river valley, from the Gulf Coast of Florida to the Lower St. Johns River and from central and south-central Georgia to the Altamaha River and Georgia coast. Perhaps as a consequence, cultural differences are observed between the two regions in the spatial structure of the built landscape of burial mounds and villages, in the modes of burial, and in the technological style of pottery. After AD 500, when complicated stamped pottery was being produced all along the coast from the mouth of the St. Johns River to the Altamaha River, paddle matches between sites became more abundant, not just between proximate sites but between river drainages separated by well over 100 kilometers. These contexts on the Atlantic coast therefore offer the potential to understand Swift Creek interaction as a historical process at the intersection of multiple temporal and spatial scales. Based on paddle matches, pottery was obviously involved in social interactions of some kind. In this research I attempt to determine more precisely how pottery was embedded in social practice and interaction by outlining a genealogy of the material practices of pottery production, use, distribution, and deposition along the Atlantic coast.

By using the term genealogy, I am referring to a record of temporal and spatial variation in earthenware vessel attributes that can be used to trace historical connections and disjunctures in material