Hi everybody! This is Maureen, a student here at Fort St.
Joseph, writing again to give you all a recap of our most recent lecture in our
series hosted at the Niles District Library.
Those of you who visited our open house last weekend probably noticed
that our 2016 theme was “Rivers and Waterways.” Our speaker, Dr. Kenneth
Sassaman, an archaeologist from the University of Florida, had plenty to relate
to this topic as his specialty is studying the hunter-gather groups along the
St. Johns River in North-East Florida. This river differs from the St. Joseph River
in that is it slow-moving and low gradient (carrying virtually no sediment). Yet,
we can understand the ancient humans of the past in both areas by studying the
environment.
From 9,000-7,000 years ago, the
Indigenous peoples of the St. Johns area buried their dead in freshwater ponds and
staked the bodies down to keep them fully submerged. To this day, the peat has
preserved the ancient bodies so well that their brains are still intact. During
this period, the shoreline extended much more into the Gulf of Mexico. As time
wore on, the native peoples had their home transformed as the Clovis period
dwindled and the shoreline shrank dramatically. In response, shell mounds were
created 7,000 years ago.
These mounds are made up of shell,
varied in shape (conical, loaf, ridges, etc.) and size (one was even as large
as 3 football fields). The layers of shell vary by taxa and occasionally
include artifacts as well as human remains. Not all shell mounds were used for
burials, other proposed purposes include being used as a place of elevation or used as ritual gathering areas. Layers of pond muck were used in some shell mounds, as
would have been a very difficult process, Dr. Sassaman believes that this task
was done deliberately.
We
also learned that groups who lived in the St. Johns area expanded their social
connections from 5,500 - 4,500 years ago. Shell beads from the area were
manufactured for more than just local consumption and actually began showing up
in Tennessee burials. In addition, two
individuals from this time period examined from the burial shell mounds at the
St. Johns site were found (after having tested their molars) to have originated from
Virginia.
Jumping ahead to more recent history,
the shell mounds faced a sadder fate in the 1920’s-70’s as many were decimated
through mining. Luckily in 2001, Dr. Sassaman began working through the
University of Florida at the St. Johns River site and later moved to the Silver Glen site in 2007. He plans to continue
his work in the area for many years to come.
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| Dr. Sassaman Describes the Calm Waters of the St. Johns River (Photo Credit: Genna Perry) |
That’s all for now, stay tuned for
updates as the 2016 field season comes to a close.
