Mound Builders of Georgia (USA) part 1

Ancient Civilizations and Mound Builders of Georgia

Historical drawing of the Lower Creek Indians

  

  When I think of mound building civilizations, the state of Georgia does not usually come to mind, but it should! I have learned in the past month, there are many mounds left from ancient civilizations that can be found in the state of Georgia, in the American south. This was all spurred on by taking a few walks at a nature park near where I had been staying. The place has a distinctive name Euchee Creek, which turns out to be the name (with a revised spelling) (Yuchi, Uuchee) for one of the groups of the Creek Confederacy of native peoples who lived by the Savannah River area near Augusta, Georgia.

William Bartram was a naturalist who traveled around the southeastern area of the USA, he visited a main village of the Euchee people and wrote about it in his journals. He notes that this culture had some distinct differences and differing language from their Creek neighbors, they were aligned with them but kept to themselves and did not mix with them. Spanish missionaries in the later 1600's encountered them and tried to get them to convert to their religion. Their efforts to try to subdue these people led to the destruction of some of their towns and the Euchee wound up moving their settlements as a result.  

All this led to me reading about Stallings Island, a 16 acre National Historic Landmark, near Augusta. I wanted to visit the island but found out it is a protected site and cannot be visited. In the past much looting of historical artifacts has taken place there and in 1997 the Archeological Conservancy acquired it and it is shut off from the public, being an island it is also only accessible by boat. Presently there are some kayak trips that will let you go near the place but you are not allowed on the land. Donkeys were imported to the island to keep down the brush by eating it.

Excavations on Stallings island have been carried out by the Harvard, and University of Florida archeology teams. Skeletons, artifacts, and other such detritus of settlements have been found there, but one thing that makes it a significant site is the fact that the oldest documented pottery in North America has been found on the island. This represents a culture that has been estimated to be 4000 years old! The other amazing thing is a two acre pile of shellfish remains (over 10 feet thick in some places) from this ancient hunter-gatherer society.

A book about this ancient civilization.

Oldest documented pottery shards found at Stallings Island.

 

If you wish to delve more into this subject, here are some resources:

William H. Claflin Jr., "The Stallings Island Mound, Columbia County, Georgia," Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology Papers, no. 14 (1932).

Charles H. Fairbanks, "The Taxonomic Position of Stallings Island, Georgia," American Antiquity 7 (1942):223-31.

Kenneth E. Sassaman, Early Pottery in the Southeast: Tradition and Innovation in Cooking Technology (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993).