Collaborative Research: Examination of Sites on the Georgia Bight Coastline

合作研究：乔治亚湾海岸线遗址考察

• 批准号: 1748290
• 负责人: Matthew Sanger
• 金额: $ 5.82万
• 依托单位: SUNY at Binghamton
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-08-15 至 2023-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1748290&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Examination; Sites; Georgia

More than fifty shell rings - large circular deposits of shellfish, artifacts, and other food remains surrounding broad, open plazas - can be found along the southeastern U.S. coast. Dating to the Late Archaic (circa 5,000 - 3,500 cal B.P.), these sites appear across roughly 2,500 km of shoreline between South Carolina and Mississippi and contain exceptionally well-preserved evidence of the first large-scale settlements in the region, though they are now gravely threatened by rising sea levels. With support from the National Science Foundation, Drs. Matt Sanger of Binghamton University, Victor Thompson of the University of Georgia, and Thad Bissett of Northern Kentucky University will investigate these sites by focusing on how previously mobile Late Archaic peoples adapted to a changing landscape (e.g., fluctuating sea levels) and built larger, more complex, and increasingly diverse societies. In seeking to settle long-standing disagreements over the function of shell rings, this project will generate new data and new models that will be of interest a broad range of archaeologists, anthropologists, and other researchers studying the earliest stages of large-scale human settlement, both in the U.S. and in other parts of the world. Comparative analysis across the thirteen sites selected for this study will help resolve a decades-long debate over whether shell rings were ritual gathering points, year-round villages, or a mix of the two. Likewise, this work will also look at factors behind the development of such large Late Archaic communities - namely, whether they were driven by incipient sedentism, religious communality, expansive exchange systems, localized adaptations, or shared encounters on a daily or intermittent basis. Few shell rings have been studied systematically using comparable standards and methods, which has made it impossible to create dependable models for how or why the Late Archaic ring builders developed larger and more expansive societies in these places. This project seeks to create a robust, dependable corpus of data on shell rings by establishing shared standards of fieldwork and laboratory analysis that will be applied across all shell ring sites. The collaborative team will conduct geophysical surveys, excavations, and radiometric and isotopic analyses at thirteen key sites along the Georgia Bight. In addition to testing, refining, and disseminating best practices for current and future archaeologists interested in studying shell rings, this work will create a comparative dataset capable of answering critical questions about how the function of these sites may have varied over time and across space.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

沿着美国东南部海岸，可以发现50多个贝壳环--围绕着宽阔开阔的广场的贝壳、人工制品和其他食物遗迹的大型圆形沉积物。可追溯到晚白垩世（约5,000 - 3,500 cal B. P.），这些遗址出现在南卡罗来纳州和密西西比之间大约2，500公里的海岸线上，保存着该地区第一批大规模定居点的证据，尽管它们现在受到海平面上升的严重威胁。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，宾厄姆顿大学的马特桑格博士、格鲁吉亚大学的维克托汤普森博士和北方肯塔基州大学的萨德比塞特博士将通过关注以前移动的晚期游牧民族如何适应不断变化的景观（例如，海平面波动），并建立了更大，更复杂，越来越多样化的社会。在寻求解决长期存在的关于壳环功能的分歧时，该项目将产生新的数据和新的模型，这些数据和模型将引起美国和世界其他地区考古学家，人类学家和其他研究大规模人类定居最早阶段的研究人员的兴趣。对本研究所选的13个地点进行比较分析，将有助于解决长达数十年的争论，即贝壳环是仪式聚集点，全年村庄，还是两者的混合。同样，这项工作也将着眼于这些大型的晚白垩世社区发展背后的因素-即，他们是否受到早期sedentism，宗教社区，广泛的交换系统，本地化的适应，或每天或间歇性的共同遭遇的驱动。很少有贝壳环被系统地研究，使用可比的标准和方法，这使得它不可能创建可靠的模型，如何或为什么晚白垩世环建设者发展更大，更广泛的社会在这些地方。该项目旨在建立一个强大的，可靠的数据库壳环通过建立共同的标准，实地工作和实验室分析，将适用于所有壳环网站。该合作小组将在格鲁吉亚湾沿着的13个关键地点进行地球物理调查、挖掘、放射性和同位素分析。除了为当前和未来对研究贝壳环感兴趣的考古学家测试、改进和传播最佳实践外，这项工作将创建一个比较数据集，能够回答这些站点的功能如何随着时间和空间的变化而变化的关键问题。这个奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并被认为值得通过利用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的评估来支持影响审查标准。

项目成果

Revelatory locales: The ritual reuse of a Late Archaic shell ring in South Carolina

具有启示意义的地点：南卡罗来纳州晚期古代贝壳环的仪式再利用

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jaa.2021.101356
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
• 影响因子: 1.8
• 作者: Sanger, Matthew C.;Seeber, Katherine;Bourcy, Samuel;Galdun, Jaclyn;Troutman, Michele;Mahar, Ginessa;Pietras, Jeffrey T.;Kelly, Caleb
• 通讯作者: Kelly, Caleb