David Hurst Thomas

The Shellfishers of St. Catherines Island: Hardscrabble Foragers or Farming Beachcombers?

ABSTRACT St. Catherines Island (Georgia, USA) was separated from the mainland at about 3000 BC, creating massive estuarine tidal marshes, which aboriginal foragers began exploiting almost immediately. Correlative optimal foraging modeling and four decades of archaeological fieldwork demonstrate how this baseline shellfishing economy evolved and persisted, with some local impacts on estuarine resource patches, but no detectable changes in diet breadth over several millennia. The first St. Catherines islanders were likely tribal-level, egalitarian societies living in economically self-sufficient, virtually sedentary, and politically autonomous villages. They made the earliest pottery in North America. Shortly after AD 800, early Mississippian populations developed into chiefdoms characterized by ranked, inherited social hierarchies, ascribing social status and wealth at birth. This significant shift took place wholly in the context of their long-standing shellfishing economy. In the face of dramatically increasing populations, St. Catherines islanders gradually intensified their shellfishing and, at about AD 1400, they began cultivating maize and other domesticates. Shellfishing offers generally higher return rates than corn farming, so the adoption of a maize-based economy was likely driven by political, social, and perhaps adaptive changes in the Mississippian world rather than strictly provisioning strategies.

Listening to Six Generations of Chumash Women

“I’m haplo D group, which is one of the more ancient . . . . I’m 13,000 years old and you can tell [self-conscious laugh] . . . it’s an honor.” So begins 6 Generations, with Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto’s voice. Her great-great-great-grandmother was born by the river behind the Santa Barbara Mountains in 1769, the very year that Fr. Junipero Serra founded the first Alta California mission (in San Diego, 220 miles to the south). “I’m not a full-blood Chumash. There are none,” she cautions, “but I think of myself as Chumash, first and foremost, even though I do have Hispanic and English in me, and those are not by my choice.” A self-described “living link,” she remembers her great-uncle, the last pure-blood Chumash. “I am their voice.” Thirty years ago, Ms. De Soto ran into John Johnson, working on his doctoral dissertation in the Mission Santa Barbara archive. When she saw the original mission records, Ms. De Soto found herself confronting a very personal family history. Her mother, recently deceased, was the last native speaker of the Chumash language. “This is just stepping back in time, like a time machine . . . more of a puzzle than a mystery, and all the pieces now fit . . . completely.” Years later, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (where John Johnson is now a curator) invited Ms. De Soto to become a model for their diorama on early Chumash lifeways, and she agreed. As their relationship prospered, they eventually teamed up to craft a first-person performance called “Voices from the Indian Orchard: Six Generations of Chumash Women Speak.” In 6 Generations, filmmaker Paul Goldsmith captures this gripping narrative on film as it welds together these multiple ways of knowing the past: a friar’s handwritten mission record, 2 centuries of Chumash oral

Early metal use and crematory practices in the American Southeast

Significance Chemical sourcing of a Late Archaic (ca. 4100–3980 cal B.P.) copper artifact reveals extensive trade networks linking the coastal southeastern United States with the Great Lakes. Found alongside the cremated remains of at least seven individuals and in the direct center of a plaza defined by a circular shell midden, the copper artifact demonstrates the existence of long-distance networks that transmitted both objects and mortuary practices. In contrast with models that assume coastal hunter-gatherer-fishers typically lived in small, simple societies, we propose that trading for and utilizing copper is evidence of emergent hierarchical social organization during the Archaic and the likelihood that power was gained and displayed during large-scale gatherings and ceremonial events. Long-distance exchange of copper objects during the Archaic Period (ca. 8000–3000 cal B.P.) is a bellwether of emergent social complexity in the Eastern Woodlands. Originating from the Great Lakes, the Canadian Maritimes, and the Appalachian Mountains, Archaic-age copper is found in significant amounts as far south as Tennessee and in isolated pockets at major trade centers in Louisiana but is absent from most of the southeastern United States. Here we report the discovery of a copper band found with the cremated remains of at least seven individuals buried in the direct center of a Late Archaic shell ring located in coastal Georgia. Late Archaic shell rings are massive circular middens thought to be constructed, in part, during large-scale ritual gatherings and feasting events. The exotic copper and cremated remains are unique in coastal South Carolina and Georgia where Archaic-age cremations are conspicuously absent and no other Archaic copper objects have been reported. Elemental data produced through laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry shows the copper originated from the Great Lakes, effectively extending Archaic copper exchange almost 1,000 km beyond its traditional boundaries. Similarities in mortuary practices and the presence of copper originating from the Great Lakes reveal the presence of long-distance exchange relations spanning vast portions of the eastern United States and suggest an unexpected level of societal complexity at shell ring localities. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that elite actors solidified their positions through ritual gatherings and the long-distance exchange of exotic objects during the Archaic.

Ethics and the Contemporary Museum of Anthropology

EVERAL PAPERS in this symposium touch upon ethical issues regarding S policies of acquisition, curation, and deaccessioning. Speaking as a representative of the museum establishment, I wish to offer a few remarks from the other side of the fence. My intention is to address briefly some of the ethical problems on the immediate horizon of the contemporary anthropology museum. Over the past decade, museums throughout the country have experienced a flush of interest (both popular and financial). At times, there was almost an embarrassment of riches. While no museum has ever been able to accomplish all of its goals and objectives, the 1970s were a time of almost unparalleled interest in the conservation and preservation of museum anthropological collections. Witness, for instance, the program by the National Science Foundation to finance the rehabilitation of systematic anthropological collections. The boom in governmentsubsidized archaeology (euphemistically known as Cultural Resource Management) provided another spurt of financial support to the anthropological museum. The times have definitely changed. Without pretending to project the financial and political evolution of the 1980s, I think it is abundantly clear that anthropology, archaeology, and museum-related affiliates face a major retrenchment in public support. At this writing, it would appear that federal support of research (particularly archaeological research) will be reduced to such an extent that many of the programs that evolved in the 1970s will be virtually unrecognizable in the coming decade. As a consequence, the preceding and subsequent decades fill the museum world with contradictions. The federal, academic, and public sectors in the past decade have created a rich environment for the anthropological museum. In the training of graduate students, for instance,