North Carolina Archaeology

North Carolina Archaeology Volume 64 2015 North Carolina Archaeology Volume 64 October 2015 CONTENTS The Settlement Ecology of Middle-Range Societies in the Western North Carolina Piedmont, AD 1000–1600 Eric E. Jones ................................................................................................... 1 GIS Cemetery Digitization Efforts at the North Carolina Department of Transportation Paul J. Mohler ................................................................................................ 33 Luminescence Dating Sandhills Ceramics: A Review Joseph M. Herbert and James Feathers . ........................................................ 68 Immunological Analysis of Clovis and Early Archaic Hafted Bifaces from the North Carolina Sandhills Christopher R. Moore, Jeffrey D. Irwin, Margaret Newman, and Brian P. Kooyman ................................................................................. 104 “Allah” Was Lost by the Public House and Wall: A Penknife with the Islamic Shahadah from Colonial Brunswick Town Thomas E Beaman, Jr. and Jennifer L. Gabriel ........................................... 121 Prehistoric Use of Stillhouse Hollow Cave, Watauga County, North Carolina Thomas R. Whyte .......................................................................................... 135 About the Authors ........................................................................................ 150 North Carolina Archaeology (formerly Southern Indian Studies) Published jointly by The North Carolina Archaeological Society, Inc. and The Research Laboratories of Archaeology University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3120 R. P. Stephen Davis, Jr., Editor Officers of the North Carolina Archaeological Society President: Tom Beaman, 5210 Carr Road, Wilson, NC 27893. Vice President: Hannah Smith, 9 Kings Mount Ct., Durham, NC 27713. Secretary: Linda Carnes-McNaughton, Directorate of Public Works (IMBG-PWE-DR CARNES), 2175 Reilly Road Stop A, Fort Bragg, NC 28310-5000. Treasurer: E. William Conen, 804 Kingswood Dr., Cary, NC 27513. Editor: R. P. Stephen Davis, Jr., Research Laboratories of Archaeology, CB 3120, Alumni Building, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3120. Associate Editor (Newsletter): Lisa-Jean Michienzi, Research Laboratories of Archaeology, CB 3120, Alumni Building, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3120. At-Large Members: David Cranford, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, CB #3115, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3115. J. Eric Deetz, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, CB 3115, Chapel Hill NC 27599-3115. Shane Peterson, Archaeology Group, Human Environment Section, North Carolina Department of Transportation, 1598 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27610-1598. Jon Schleier, 80 Sandy Bend Road, Rocky Point, NC 28457. Alice Wright, Department of Anthropology, Appalachian State University, 322 Anne Belk Hall, Boone, NC 28608. Information for Subscribers North Carolina Archaeology is published once a year in October. Subscription is by membership in the North Carolina Archaeological Society, Inc. Annual dues are $15.00 for regular members, $25.00 for sustaining members, $10.00 for students, $20.00 for families, $250.00 for life members, $250.00 for corporate members, and $25.00 for institutional subscribers. Members also receive two issues of the North Carolina Archaeological Society Newsletter. Membership requests, dues, subscriptions, changes of address, and back issue orders should be directed to: Lisa-Jean Michienzi, Research Laboratories of Archaeology, CB 3120, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3120. Information for Authors North Carolina Archaeology publishes articles on the archaeology of North Carolina and neighboring states. One copy of each manuscript, with accompanying tables, figures, and bibliography, should be submitted to the Editor. Manuscripts should be double spaced with ample margins throughout. Style should conform to guidelines American Antiquity (see http://www.saa.org/AbouttheSociety/Publications/ StyleGuide/tabid/984/Default.aspx). The Editor can assist those wishing to submit a manuscript but who are unfamiliar with American Antiquity style. THE SETTLEMENT ECOLOGY OF MIDDLE-RANGE SOCIETIES IN THE WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA PIEDMONT, AD 1000–1600 by Eric E. Jones Abstract From AD 1000–1600, the western North Carolina Piedmont was home to both hierarchically organized Mississippian societies and egalitarian Piedmont Village Tradition (PVT) societies. Given the spatial proximity of these groups and evidence of interaction between them, this is a prime area for studying the comparative geography and ecology of middle-range societies (traditionally labeled tribes and chiefdoms). In this work, I analyze regional settlement patterns of and natural landscapes around Mississippian and PVT sites in the Yadkin-Pee Dee and Catawba River valleys using a combination of geographic information systems (GIS) to measure characteristics and discriminant function analysis to compare sites. The goal is to describe and explain the environmental factors that influenced the geographic distribution of sociopolitical complexity in the western North Carolina Piedmont. The site-specific results show clear differences in settlement location choice between Mississippian and PVT settlements. The landscape results show that Mississippian and PVT communities inhabited areas with different resource concentrations, suggesting that ecology played a role in the distribution of complex societies. This work is the first stage of a larger project aimed at understanding why complexity arose and persisted in particular locations throughout the Piedmont Southeast after AD 1000. This research examines the factors that influenced the geographic distribution of Mississippian and Piedmont Village Tradition (PVT) communities in the western North Carolina Piedmont from AD 1000– 1600. The goal is to provide an explanation for why complex sociopolitical organizations were created and persisted where they did. Investigations of why complex Mississippian polities formed where they did are not new. In their individual research into the geography of Cahokia, Milner and Pauketat both presented conclusions that the ecological relationships between people and their natural and cultural environments played a considerable role in the emergence of sociopolitical hierarchies in particular places in the American Bottom. The most desirable places—that is, those areas most intensively occupied during the Emergent Mississippian and subsequent Mississippian periods— 1 NORTH CAROLINA ARCHAEOLOGY [Vol. 64, 2015] had roughly equal amounts of dry ground for crops, permanent lakes and swamps, and frequently inundated low-lying ground. [Milner 1998:167] That Cahokia, for instance, emerged in the middle of a wide patch of Mississippi River floodplain but close to a wedge of upland prairie soils is no accident. [Pauketat 2004:42] The overall “ethnoscape” of the Mississippi Valley at contact was complex, indicating an equally complex history of local developments, migrations, exchanges, and intermittent encounters of peoples along the Mississippi leading up to AD 1050. [Pauketat 2004:44] They are two of a handful of researchers (also Beck and Moore 2002; Meyers 1995) to examine the settlement ecology—the factors that influenced settlement patterns and processes—of a Mississippian polity as a way of exploring the geography of sociopolitical complexity, or why complexity arose where it did. The distribution of hierarchical communities and societies across the Eastern Woodlands had important reflexive relationships with natural resources and culturally constructed landscapes. They arose in particular places for particular reasons, and their placement had subsequent wide-ranging impacts on the environment, landscape, and history of eastern North America, including the modification of landscape (Demel and Hall 1998; Lewis et al. 1998), trade (Johnson 1994), warfare (Milner 1999; Steinen 1992), and interactions with European colonizers (Jones 2014; Milner et al. 2001). While researchers have identified potential factors behind settlement patterns for particular Mississippian polities in the Southeast (Beck and Moore 2002; Meyers 1995), the next necessary step is to empirically test them. The research described here is an early step in using settlement ecology theory and spatial and statistical analyses to accomplish this goal. Settlement ecology is the study of human interaction with surrounding natural and cultural landscapes, and how these relationships influence settlement patterns and processes. The basic assumption is that human settlement is a behavioral reaction to our surroundings. That is, we place ourselves on the landscape strategically with respect to particular resources, places, and other communities and societies. As a result, if we can establish significant spatial correlations between past settlements and various features of the surrounding environment and landscape, we can make conclusions about past human behaviors that created the observed patterns. This is the first stage of a larger research venture. As such, it works with a small sample, does not distinguish different Mississippian traditions, and is synchronic. These are all complexities that will be 2 SETTLEMENT ECOLOGY addressed once a baseline of settlement ecology is established with this work. In this project I comparatively study—using geographic information systems (GIS) to reconstruct past

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