Abstract
Evidence of a pile-dwelling community and seral environmental conditions during the late Mid-Holocene (ca 4,000–3,000 years b.p.) is explored through archaeological data and paleoecological information from the Bilbo Site at the mouth of the Savannah River along the Georgia coast, U.S.A. It is argued that pile dwellings were a central feature of the cultural adaptive system, allowing settlements to be located in wetlands that provided optimal access to the evolving food resources of multiple, dynamic environments. It also is suggested that the adaptive strategy included residential stability and a more complex organizational structure than that exhibited by modern hunter-gatherers living in marginal environments.
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Acknowledgements
Sincere thanks are extended to Beth Reiter, Michael Brown, and Peter Shonka of the City of Savannah for permission to conduct research at the Bilbo Site and for their logistical help. The support of Rowe Bowen and Bob Entorf of the Georgia Department of Transportation also is greatly appreciated. Betsy Sheldon graciously contributed her expertise with analysis of botanical samples. The contributions of Sarah Mistak, Siska Williams, Jennifer Warhop, and Rachel Whetstone as undergraduate research assistants also are acknowledged with gratitude. Special thanks are extended to the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for Human Ecology. Each comment and thoughtful criticism improved the quality of the published article.
The artifacts and records from the 2001 investigation at the Bilbo Site are curated as a held-in-trust collection (Accession Number 59) at the Antonio J. Waring, Jr. Archaeological Laboratory of the University of West Georgia.
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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10745-006-9110-5
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Crook, M.R. Prehistoric Pile Dwellers within an Emergent Ecosystem: An Archaeological Case of Hunters and Gatherers at the Mouth of the Savannah River during the Mid-Holocene. Hum Ecol 35, 223–237 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-006-9050-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-006-9050-0