Without thinking about it too hard, it seems like a disproportionate amount of my work on the early hunting-gathering societies of the Eastern Woodlands has been done in the company of sick children. Today's update on the Kirk Project comes to you from a crowded chair, with my typing arms constrained by the presence of a 3-year-old in pajamas watching Fireman Sam. For the full effect, play this in the background while you read this post.

I have four updates, one of which includes an apology.

I've loaded a pdf version of my 2016 SEAC presentation "Social Implications of Large-Scale Demographic Change During the Early Archaic Period in the Southeast" onto my Academia.edu page (you can also access a copy here). Other than a few minor alterations to complete the citations and adjust the slides to get rid of the animations, it's what I presented at the meetings last Friday. I tend to use slides as prompts for speaking, so some of the information that I tried to convey isn't directly represented on the slides. There's enough there that you can get a pretty good idea, I hope, of what I was going for.

Archaeological conferences serve several purposes. For me, there are three main attractions, all selfish: (1) meeting people; (2) learning about things I didn't know that I didn't know about; and (3) clarifying and catalyzing my own research. Conferences are fun, but they're also a bit mercenary -- I want something from them.

This year's Southeastern Archaeological Conference (SEAC) is in Athens, Georgia, which I hear is very nice. I put together a small symposium titled "Hunter-Gatherer Societies of the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Southeast" (session 35 in the program). I originally wrote about the idea last April. We ended up with papers by seven presenters: Al Goodyear, Doug Sain, David Thulman and Maile Neel, Kara Bridgman Sweeney, Joe Wilkinson, Sarah Gilleland, and me. Here is the symposium abstract:

"Societies are groups of people defined by persistent social interaction.  While the characteristics of the late Pleistocene and early Holocene hunter-gatherer societies of the Southeast certainly varied, archaeological data generally suggest that these societies were often geographically extensive and structurally complex.  Patterns of artifact variability and transport, for example, demonstrate that small-scale elements (e.g., individuals, families, and foraging groups) were situated within much larger social fabrics. This session aims to explore the size, structure, and characteristics of early Southeastern hunter-gatherer societies, asking how patterns of face-to-face interactions at human scales “map up” to and are affected by larger social spheres." 

I decided to use my contribution to think about the issue of a possible abandonment of the deep south during the later portion of the Early Archaic period. Here is the abstract for my presentation, titled "Social Implications of Large-Scale Demographic Change during the Early Archaic Period in the Southeast:"
 
"Previous studies of radiocarbon and projectile point distribution data have suggested the possibility of a significant shift in the distribution and/or behaviors of human populations during the later portion of the Early Archaic period (i.e., post-9000 RCYBP). This paper considers the evidence for an “abandonment” of large portions of the Southeast following the Kirk Corner Notched Horizon and explores (1) possible explanations for large-scale changes in the distribution of population in the Early Holocene and (2) how those demographic changes, if they occurred, might have articulated with social changes at the level of the family, foraging group, and larger societies."  

I first became interested in the Early Archaic abandonment issue while reading Ken Sassaman's (2010) book Eastern Archaic, Historicized. Working on this presentation was fun because it forced me to try to think through some of the issues about how we would recognize a large-scale abandonment, what the abandonment process actually would have been like, and what the social ramifications might have been for the people and societies involved in that process. I'll tweak the presentation before I give it, but it's pretty close to done.

​The first question is to ask is whether or not there was a large-scale abandonment of parts of the Southeast. On the surface (at least), I think the case is fairly compelling. Following the example of Faught and Waggoner's (2012) paper about Florida, I started compiling radiocarbon data from across the Eastern Woodlands to evaluate the idea. At 9,500 dates and counting, the radiocarbon database that I'm working on clearly supports the idea that there are far fewer than expected dates from 9000-7000 radiocarbon years before present (RCYBP) in the deep south:

A chi square easily defeats the null hypothesis: there just aren't as many radiocarbon dates from 9000-7000 RCYBP below the southern corner of South Carolina as you'd expect by chance. The pattern holds when you consider the number of dates during that period in the entire Atlantic Plain vs. the other major physiographic regions of the eastern United States (the Appalachian Highlands and the Interior Plains). 

The idea of a large-scale abandonment is also consistent with the distribution of post-Kirk lobed/bifurcate projectile points, which (unlike Kirk), does not extend into Louisiana, Florida, and southern Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.

If we presume that a post-Kirk abandonment/marginalization of the Atlantic Plain did occur, we can move on to the "why" and "how" questions. Regarding the "why" question: the limited environmental data I've looked at (e.g., the 1980 pollen core from White Pond, South Carolina) suggest that the period 9000-7000 RCYBP was one of significant change.  Oak and hickory decreased and pine increased. In simplest terms, this shift may have been related to a decrease in mast production, perhaps affecting the density of white-tailed deer (probably the primary game species for early Holocene hunter-gatherers in the Eastern Woodlands).

But how would an abandonment actually take place? I can think of several ways that populations could shift out of an area. My gut is that an abandonment of the Atlantic Plain during the late Early Archaic would have most probably involved a contraction of populations into the Appalachian Highlands and Interior Plains. One of my favorite of Lew Binford's papers is his (1983) discussion of how hunter-gatherers often make extensive use of the landscape. Keeping his examples in mind, it's easy to imagine how "abandonment" could actually be the end result of a long-term process involving segments of the population getting "pulled in" to better quality environments in the course of normal decisions about movement.

Assuming population size stayed constant, this shift would have necessarily involved changes in mobility. If (based on Midwestern data) we assume that Kirk "bands" had a group mobility radius of about 200 km, there would have been room for about 18 such "bands" in the Eastern Woodlands. If you took that same population and crammed them into an area 33% smaller (i.e., the Eastern Woodlands minus the Atlantic Plain), the scale of group mobility would have to be reduced by 17% (mobility radius of 165 km) to keep everything else the same.

That level of population contraction would have almost certainly had ramifications up and down the levels of those post-Kirk societies. Residential moves would have decreased in frequency and/or distance, there may have been shifts in logistical vs. foraging strategies, and the lowered "cost" of maintaining extra-local inter-personal relationships may have de-emphasized gift exchange and inter-group marriage as mechanism for creating and maintaining distant social ties. 

It's possible to develop a suite of hypotheses and archaeological expectations to evaluate the idea of a large scale abandonment. 

Make no mistake: these are long-term propositions.  My entire dissertation, for example, was focused on using a combination of modeling and archaeological data to try to understand how changes in patterns of variability in material culture were related to changes in the characteristics and properties of social networks. It's not trivia, and it's not easy. 

For me, this presentation was a machine for thinking. I can't "prove" anything, but going through the process of committing to an idea and preparing a presentation has forced me to attempt to think through some complex, interesting issues. I'm hoping I'll get some good feedback on my ideas ("interesting" and/or "you're full of it"), which obviously involve an extensive geographic area that I make no claim to have mastered. 

I also hope to take full advantage of my hotel and at least quadruple my supply of ink pens. Every little bit helps.

We're now into the fourth week of the semester here at the University of South Carolina. As usual I've been writing for this blog less than I'd like (I have several unfinished draft posts and ideas for several more, and there's currently a backlog of Fake Hercules Swords). A good chunk of my time/energy is going into the Forbidden Archaeology class (you can follow along on the course website if you like -- I've been writing short synopses, and student-produced content will begin to appear a few weeks from now). Much of the remainder has gone into pushing forward the inter-locking components of my research agenda. This is a brief update about those pieces.

Small-Scale Archaeological Data

At the beginning of the summer I spent a little time in the field doing some preliminary excavation work at a site that contains (minimally) an intact Archaic component buried about 1.9 meters below the surface (see this quick summary).  Based on the general pattern here in the Carolina Piedmont and a couple of projectile points recovered from the slump at the base of the profile, my guess is that buried cultural zone dates to the Middle Archaic period (i.e., about 8000-5000 years ago).​

My daughter washed some of the artifacts from the site over the summer, and I've now got an undergraduate student working on finishing up the washing before moving on to cataloging and labeling. Once the lithics are labeled we'll be able to spread everything out and start fitting the quartz chipping debris back together. Because I piece-plotted the large majority of the lithic debris, fitting it back together will help us understand how the deposit was created. I'm hoping we can get some good insights into the very small-scale behaviors that created the lithic deposit (i.e.,perhaps the excavated portion of the deposit was created by just one or two people over the course of less than an hour).

When the archaeology faculty met to discuss the classes we'd be offering in the spring semester, I pitched the idea of running a one-day-per-week field school at the site. Assuming I can get sufficient enrollment numbers, that looks like it's going to happen. The site is within driving distance of Columbia, so we'll be commuting every Friday (leaving campus at 8:00 and returning by 4:00). The course will be listed as ANTH 322/722. It's sand, it's three dimensional, and it's pretty complicated -- it's going to be a fun excavation. I'll be looking to hire a graduate student to assist me on Fridays, and I'll be applying for grant monies to cover the costs of the field assistant's wages, transportation, and other costs associated with putting a crew in the field. 

Large-Scale Archaeological Data

Some parts of my quest to assemble several different large-scale datasets are creeping along, some are moving forward nicely, and some are still on pause.

Complex Systems Theory and Computer Modeling

Complex systems theory is what will make it possible to bridge the small and large scales of data that I'm collecting. Last year, I invested some effort into transferring my latest computer model (FN3_D_V3) into Repast Simphony and getting it working. I also started building a brand new, simpler model to look at equifinality issues associated with interpreting patterns of lithic transport (specifically to address the question of whether or not we can differentiate patterns of transport produced via group mobility, personal mobility between groups, and exchange).  

As it currently sits, the FN3_D_V3 model is mainly demographic, lacking a spatial component. Over the summer I used it to produce data relevant to understanding the minimum viable population (MVP) size of human groups. Those data, which I'm currently in the process of analyzing, suggest to me that the "magic number of 500" is probably much too large: I have yet to find evidence in my data that human populations limited to about 150 people are not demographically viable over spans of several hundred years even under constrained marriage rules. But I've just started the analysis, so we'll see. I submitted a paper on this topic years ago with a much cruder model and didn't have the stomach to attempt to use that model to address the reviewers' comments. I'm hoping to utilize much of the background and structure of that earlier paper and produce a new draft for submission quickly. I also plan to put the FN3_D_V3 code online here and at OpenABM.org once I get it cleaned up a bit. I also discuss this model in a paper in a new edited volume titled Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis in Archaeological Computational Modeling (edited by Marieka Brouwer Burg, Hans Peeters, and William Lovis). 

It will be a relatively simple thing to use the FN3_D_V3 model in its non-spatial configuration to produce new data relevant to the Middle Paleolithic mortality issue I discussed at the SAA meetings a couple of years ago. I'm also going to be working toward putting the guts of the demographic model into a spatial context. That's going to take some time.

Today I'll be giving a short presentation at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Society of South Carolina. Being a new transplant to South Carolina, this will be my first time attending the meeting. I'm looking forward to meeting my new colleagues from around the state and hearing about what they're working on.

I decided to talk about the Kirk Project at today's meeting. Although I've been working on it steadily over the last few weeks, my energies so far have been channeled into prepping the database and streamlining the process for producing 3D models.  So, unfortunately, I don't yet have any coherent data or analysis to present. My presentation is an informal discussion of the question of the Kirk Horizon and what we can do to address it.

Here's a pdf of the slides I'll be talking from today.  Unfortunately I ran out of time to provide complete citations for the parenthetical references.  I'll fill those in and provide a complete version later. 

If you’re like me, there’s always some part of your brain that is thinking about hunter-gatherers.  Sometimes when I’m at work the percentage can get as high as 95 percent.  Most of the time it’s lower, of course, but it never gets down to zero. I’m always on duty.

Yes, I just said that with a straight face. And yet I'm a surprisingly poor poker player.

And not only does this initial "horizon" emerge in the context of what by all appearances are very thinly distributed, highly mobile hunter-gatherer populations, but projectile points styles seem to change in lockstep across this same region of North America for at least some time after.  How can we explain this?  Although lithic raw material data suggest that Kirk groups were highly mobile (e.g., see this paper) the area of the "horizon" is much too large for it to be the product of a single group of people: the hunter-gatherers discarding Kirk points in Ontario are not the same individuals as those discarding Kirk points in Florida.

But that doesn't mean they weren't part of the same society.  We can define a "society" as a population defined by the existence of social ties among and between groups and individuals.  Ethnographic hunter-gatherers have numerous mechanisms for creating and maintaining social ties (e.g., marriage, exchange, group flux, periodic aggregation), and there is no reason to suspect that all of those same behaviors were not utilized to knit together the social fabric of early Holocene hunter-gatherers in the Eastern Woodlands.  Maintaining social ties that extend beyond "over the horizon" may be especially important to high mobility hunter-gatherers operating at low population densities, as such ties allow local populations to gather information about large areas of the landscape.