"Social Implications of Large-Scale Demographic Change During the Early Archaic Period in the Southeast"

11/1/2016

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.

11 Comments

Greg Little

11/2/2016 03:07:01 pm

I went through the slides carefully, but of course didn't hear the explanations and context. It's a strong case for abandonment. But, "why" those areas were abandoned is a relevant and important question. Do you have possible conclusions or answers to that question?

Greg Little

11/2/2016 04:27:50 pm

I suppose I should have added that I see the changes in environment. But that doesn't seem sufficient, at least for coastlines.

Andy White

11/3/2016 05:35:32 am

I think looking at a possible environmental component to an abandonment scenario is a logical first step. Environment isn't everything, of course, but it is fundamentally important to all human societies and critical to understanding how hunter-gatherer societies situate themselves and interact with the landscape. So it makes sense to look at it and develop some understanding of the environmental framework within which an abandonment process would have unfolded.

All I've done so far in that regard is scratch the surface. The pollen data from White Pond, SC, suggest a substantial shift in tree species after 9500 RCYBP. If oak and hickory decline, the kinds and distributions of game animals available would have also changed. So that's a start, but it's only one data point. There are many more recent datasets relevant to reconstructing early Holocene environments and understanding what changed.

I wouldn't be so sure that a decline in white tailed deer in the coastal plane wouldn't have had a significant impact on Early Archaic foragers in inland areas. There is a general conception (perhaps not as well-tested as it should be) that these highly mobile peoples were essentially "skimming" environments as they moved across them. They were using residential mobility to position and re-position themselves where activities like deer hunting were the most efficient. After the deer population was "skimmed" in one area, they would simply move on to the next. That's an informal model, of course, but one that's consistent with why we see Kirk points in all parts of the landscape and indications of high scales and frequencies of mobility. If that's an accurate model, it may not take much of a dip in deer density to encourage a shift in the way the landscape is used.

E.P. Grondine

11/3/2016 08:47:30 am

Hi Andy -

Nice paper. I'll assume the data is good.

Since I am used to dealing with discontinuities,please allow me let me take a few fqily sharp razors from the bag of my apparat and apply them to this situation.

First off, given that most of the coastal data for this period lies underwater the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, we still have open the possibility of a shift to a better environment.

Yes, we do not know the climatic conditions. Besides the melt waters from Holocene Start Impact Events, we also have"normal" climate variability due to changes in the Sun's activity, and how they
affect different regions. All pretty much unknown...

Your deer will usually migrate seasonally, north to south and back again, but if there is a change in climate...
Or would coastal people just wait for the deer to visit them?

You can also have the introduction of pathogens into a human population.

Or asteroid or comet impact - a mid size one is perfectly capable of de-populatiing an area the size of your study area. Even though we now know that these occurred much more frequently than earlier predictions forecast, this possibility should only be considered after all other explanations have been exhausted, unless geological evidence suddenly appears.

Boas and Levi Strauss provide material for bar chatter - Anthony Bourdain has shared his notes on how to avoid hangovers.

E.P. Grondine

11/3/2016 09:14:36 am

I need to add that in the southern Atlantic coastal plain deer will migrate from the mountains to the coast and back again annually.
West- east-west.

Andy White

11/3/2016 09:32:00 am

And what's your source for that? Everything I've seen about white tailed deer suggests relatively small seasonal movements (say, usually less than 25 km). That won't necessarily get you out of Charleston County, let alone to the mountains.

E.P. Grondine

11/3/2016 04:53:02 pm

Hi Andy -

I used to live along the Rappahannock River migration corridor.
While the modern landscape has different crops for food, if you look at the site distribution you can see the ancient deer migration corridor pretty well defined.

Andy White

11/8/2016 06:55:02 am

"I used to live by a migration corridor" is not exactly what I had in mind when I asked for a source.

I don't doubt that modern agricultural land use practices have changed the distribution and density of deer populations, but you seem to be asserting that they behaved completely differently in the past (i.e, migrating seasonally in large groups from one part of the environment to another). I don't see any support for that.

E.P. Grondine

11/11/2016 07:01:32 am

You misunderstand.

I am positing that the deer had the same behavior in the past as they do now:summer in the mountains, winter by the Bay.

My guess is that further south along the Atlantic coast, the deer's pattern would have been summer in the mountains, winter by the Sound.

Andy White

11/11/2016 12:03:24 pm

But that's not the pattern now. The deer are everywhere here, and they don't move that far. Hunting season in South Carolina doesn't exist only on the coast - it's everywhere.

If you can supply any data suggesting long distance deer migration I'll be happy to take a look, because I know of none.

Bill Wagner

9/13/2017 04:51:22 pm

Yes, Kirk does show the skimming pattern (thin density, wide expanse). But you also have climatic disruptions like droughts figuring into it. Case in point being Bolen, which is only found in areas with year-round springs, and tied to them (source = collector experience).

"Social Implications of Large-Scale Demographic Change During the Early Archaic Period in the Southeast"

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