Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T02:35:05.168Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Birds of Summer Solstice: World-Renewal Rituality on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2019

Joshua M. Goodwin Open the ORCID record for Joshua M. Goodwin [Opens in a new window] ,
Kenneth E. Sassaman Open the ORCID record for Kenneth E. Sassaman [Opens in a new window] ,
Meggan E. Blessing  and
David W. Steadman
Joshua M. Goodwin
Affiliation:
Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research, 1001 De Soto Park Drive, Tallahassee, FL32301, USA Email: Joshua.Goodwin@dos.myflorida.com
Kenneth E. Sassaman
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, 1112 Turlington Hall, P.O. Box 117305, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL32611-7305, USA Email: sassaman@ufl.edu
Meggan E. Blessing
Affiliation:
Florida Museum of Natural History, 1659 Museum Road, Gainesville, FL32611, USA Email: mblessng@ufl.edu
David W. Steadman
Affiliation:
Florida Museum of Natural History, 1659 Museum Road, Gainesville, FL32611, USA Email: dws@flmnh.ufl.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Prevalent as bird imagery is in the ritual traditions of eastern North America, the bony remains of birds are relatively sparse in archaeological deposits and when present are typically viewed as subsistence remains. A first-millennium ad civic-ceremonial centre on the northern Gulf Coast of Florida contains large pits with bird bones amid abundant fish bone and other taxa. The avian remains are dominated by elements of juvenile white ibises, birds that were taken from offshore rookeries at the time of summer solstices. The pits into which they were deposited were emplaced on a relict dune with solstice orientations. The timing and siting of solstice feasts at this particular centre invites discussion of world-renewal rituality and the significance of birds in not only the timing of these events but also possibly as agents of balance and rejuvenation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , May 2020 , pp. 275 - 293
Copyright
Copyright © McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, D.G. & Sassaman, K.E., 2012. Recent Developments in Southeastern Archaeology: From colonization to complexity. Washington (DC): Society for American Archaeology Press.Google Scholar
Antas, P.T.Z., Roth, P. & Morrison, R.I.G., 1990. Status and conservation of the scarlet ibis in Brazil, in The Scarlet Ibis (Eudocimus ruber): Status, conservation, and research, eds Frederick, P.C., Gonzalo Morales, L., Spaans, A.L. & Luthin, C.S.. (IWRB Special Publication 11.) Slimbridge: International Waterfowl and Wetlands Research Bureau, 130–36.Google Scholar
Avery, G. & Underhill, L.G., 1986. Seasonal exploitation of seabirds by Late Holocene coastal foragers: analysis of modern and archaeological data from the Western Cape, South Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science 13, 339–60.Google Scholar
Bartram, W., [1791] 1996. Travels and Other Writings. New York (NY): Library Classics of the United States.Google Scholar
Bernardini, W., 2004. Hopewell geometric earthworks: a case study in the referential and experiential meaning of monuments. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23, 331–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernardini, W. & Carr, C., 2004. Hopewellian copper celts from eastern North America: their social and symbolic significance, in Gathering Hopewell: Society, ritual, and ritual interaction, eds Carr, C. & Case, D.T.. New York (NY): Springer, 624–47.Google Scholar
Bildstein, K.L., 1993. White Ibis: Wetland wanderer. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Bovy, K.M., Moss, M.L., Watson, J.E., White, F.J., Jones, T.T., Ulrich, H.A. & Parrish, J.K., 2019. Evaluating Native American bird use and bird assemblage variability along the Oregon coast. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 14(3), 301–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, J.A., 1997. The archaeology of ancient religion in the Eastern Woodlands. Annual Review of Anthropology 26, 465–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, J.A., 2006. The shamanic element in Hopewellian period ritual, in Recreating Hopewell, eds Charles, D.K. & Buikstra, J.E.. Gainesville (FL): University Press of Florida, 476–88.Google Scholar
Brown, J.A. & Rogers, J. D., 1989. Linking Spiro's artistic styles: the copper connection. Southeastern Archaeology 8, 1–8.Google Scholar
Buono, A.J., 2007. Feathered Identities and Plumed Performances: Tupinambá Interculture in Early Modern Brazil and Europe. PhD dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara.Google Scholar
Carr, C., 2004. Rethinking interregional Hopewellian ‘interaction’, in Gathering Hopewell: Society, ritual, and ritual interaction, eds Carr, C. & Case, D.T.. New York (NY): Springer, 575–623.Google Scholar
Carr, C., & Case, D.T., 2004. The nature of leadership in Ohio Hopewellian societies: role segregation and the transformation from shamanism, in Gathering Hopewell: Society, ritual, and ritual interaction, eds Carr, C. & Case, D.T.. New York (NY): Springer, 177–237.Google Scholar
Claassen, C., 2010. Feasting with Shellfish in the Southern Ohio Valley: Archaic sacred sites and rituals. Knoxville (TN): University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Claassen, C., 2015. Beliefs and Rituals in Archaic Eastern North America: An interpretive guide. Tuscaloosa (AL): University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Cobb, C.R. & King, A., 2005. Re-inventing Mississippian tradition at Etowah, Georgia. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 12(3), 167–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, J., 2003. Archaic Effigy Beads: A New Look at Some Old Beads. Master's thesis, University of Mississippi.Google Scholar
Crown, P., 2016. Just macaws: a review for the U.S. Southwest/Mexican Northwest. Kiva 82(4), 331–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, J.E., 2017. The Gulf: The making of an American sea. New York (NY): Liveright.Google Scholar
Donop, M.C., 2017. Bundled Ancestor: The Palmetto Mound (8LV2) on the Florida Gulf Coast. PhD dissertation, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Dujardin, J.-L., 1990. Status and conservation of the scarlet ibis in French Guiana, in The Scarlet Ibis (Eudocimus ruber): Status, conservation, and research, eds Frederick, P.C., Gonzalo Morales, L., Spaans, A.L. & Luthin, C.S.. (IWRB Special Publication 11.) Slimbridge: International Waterfowl and Wetlands Research Bureau, 107–14.Google Scholar
Fishel, R.L., 1997. Medicine birds and Mill Creek-Middle Mississippian interaction: the contents of Feature 8 at the Phipps Site (13CK21). American Antiquity 62(3), 538–53.Google Scholar
Frederick, P.C. & Ogden, J.C., 1997. Philopatry and nomadism: contrasting long-term movement behavior and population dynamics of white ibises and wood storks. Colonial Waterbirds 20(2), 316–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frederick, P.C., Bildstein, K.L., Fleury, B. & Ogden, J., 1996. Conservation of large, nomadic populations of white ibises (Eudocimus albus) in the United States. Conservation Biology 10(1), 203–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, J.L., 2001. The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point: Place of rings. Gainesville (FL): University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
Goodwin, J.M., 2017. When the Ocean Meets the Sky: An Analysis of Avian Remains from a Civic-Ceremonial Center on the Florida Gulf Coast. Master's thesis, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Gotfredsen, A.B., 1997. Seabird exploitation on coastal Inuit sites, west and southeast Greenland. (Special Issue: Subsistence and Symbol. Papers from the International Council for Archaeozoology Bird Group Meeting, 1995.) International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 7(4), 271–86.3.0.CO;2-3>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, R.L., 1997. An Archaeology of the Soul: North American Indian belief and ritual. Urbana (IL): University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Hall, R.L., 2006. The enigmatic copper cutout from Bedford Mound 8, in Recreating Hopewell, eds Charles, D.K. & Buikstra, J.E.. Gainesville (FL): University Press of Florida, 464–74.Google Scholar
Howey, M. & O'Shea, J., 2006. Bear's journey and the study of ritual in archaeology. American Antiquity 71, 261–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, C., 1976. The Southeastern Indians. Knoxville (TN): University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, H.E. & Scott, S.L., 1995. The faunal record of the southeastern elite: the implications of economy, social relations, and ideology. Southeastern Archaeology 14(2), 103–19.Google Scholar
Jackson, H.E. & Scott, S.L., 2003. Patterns of elite faunal utilization at Moundville, Alabama. American Antiquity 68, 552–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, L.S. & Kelly, J.E., 2007. Swans in the American bottom during the emergent Mississippian and Mississippian. Illinois Archaeology 15, 112–41.Google Scholar
Kidder, T.R., 2011. Transforming hunter-gatherer history at Poverty Point, in Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology as Historical Process, eds Sassaman, K.E. & Holly, D.H. Jr. Tucson (AZ): University of Arizona Press, 95–119.Google Scholar
Kohler, T.A., 1975. The Garden Patch Site: A Minor Weeden Island Ceremonial Center on the North Peninsular Florida Gulf Coast. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Knight, V.J., 1986. The institutional organization of Mississippian religion. American Antiquity 51, 675–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, V.J., 2001. Feasting and the emergence of platform mound ceremonialism in eastern North America, in Feasts: Archaeological and ethnographic perspectives on food, politics, and power, eds Dietler, M. & Hayden, B.. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press, 311–33.Google Scholar
Kost, C & Hussain, S.T., 2019. Archaeo-ornithology: towards an archaeology of human-bird interfaces. Environmental Archaeology. DOI: 10.1080/14614103.2019.1590984Google Scholar
Kushlan, J.A., 1979. Feeding ecology and prey selection in the white ibis. The Condor 81(4), 376–89.Google Scholar
Kushlan, J.A., 1986. Responses of wading birds to seasonally fluctuating water levels, strategies and their limits. Colonial Waterbirds 9(2), 155–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladd, E.J., 1998. Ethno-ornithology of the Zuni, in Stars Above, Earth Below: American Indians and nature, ed. Bol, M.C.. Boulder (CO): Roberts Rinehart, 119–37.Google Scholar
Lankford, G.E. (ed.), 2011. Native American Legends of the Southeast: Tales from the Natchez, Caddo, Biloxi, Chickasaw, and other nations. Tuscaloosa (AL): University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Larson, L.H. Jr, 1971. Archaeological implications of social stratification at the Etowah site, Georgia, in Approaches to the Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices, ed. Brown, J.A.. (Memoir 25.) Washington (DC): Society for American Archaeology, 58–67.Google Scholar
Lefèvre, C., 1997. Sea bird fowling in southern Patagonia: a contribution to understanding the nomadic round of the Canoeros Indians. (Special Issue: Subsistence and Symbol. Papers from the International Council for Archaeozoology Bird Group Meeting, 1995.) International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 7(4), 260–70.3.0.CO;2-8>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melvin, S.L., Gawlik, D.E. & Scharff, T., 1999. Long-term movement patterns for seven species of wading birds. International Journal of Waterbird Biology 22(3), 411–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milanich, J.T., Cordell, A.S., Knight, V.J. Jr, Kohler, T.A. & Sigler-Lavelle, B.J., 1997. McKeithen Weeden Island: The culture of northern Florida, A.D. 200–900. Gainesville (FL): University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
Monks, G.G., 1981. Seasonality studies. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 4, 177–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olsen, S.L., 1998. Animals in American Indian life: an overview, in Stars Above, Earth Below: American Indians and nature, ed. Bol, M.C.. Boulder (CO): Roberts Rinehart, 95–118.Google Scholar
Overton, N.J. & Hamilakis, Y., 2013. A manifesto for a social zooarchaeology: swans and other beings in the Mesolithic. Archaeological Dialogues 20(2), 111–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, P. & Brown, J.A., 1978. Pre-Columbian Shell Engravings from the Craig Mound at Spiro, Oklahoma, Part 1. Cambridge (MA): Peabody Museum Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, P. & Brown, J.A., 1984. Pre-Columbian Shell Engravings from the Craig Mound at Spiro, Oklahoma, Part 2. Cambridge (MA): Peabody Museum Press.Google Scholar
Pluckhahn, T.J., 2010. Practicing complexity (past and present) at Kolomoki, in Ancient Complexities: New perspectives in Precolumbian North America, ed. Alt, S.M.. Salt Lake City (UT): University of Utah Press, 52–72.Google Scholar
Pluckhahn, T.J. & Thompson, V.D., 2018. New Histories of Village Life at Crystal River. Gainesville (FL): University of Florida Press.Google Scholar
Prummel, J. T. Zeiler & Brinkhuizen, D.C. (eds), 2008. Birds in Archaeology. (Proceedings of the 6th Meeting of the ICAZ Bird Working Group in Gronigen.) Groningen: Groningen Institute of Archaeology.Google Scholar
Romain, W.F., 2000. Mysteries of the Hopewell: Astronomers, geometers, and magicians of the Eastern Woodlands. Akron (OH): University of Akron Press.Google Scholar
Rudegeair, T.J., 1975. The Reproductive Behavior and Ecology of the White Ibis (Eudocimus albus). PhD dissertation, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Russell, N., 2012. Social Zooarchaeology: Humans and animals in prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sassaman, K.E., 2016. A constellation of practice in the experience of sea-level rise, in Knowledge in Motion: Constellations of learning across time and place, eds Roddick, A.P. & Stahl, A.B.. Tucson (AZ): University of Arizona Press, 291–8.Google Scholar
Sassaman, K.E., Barbour, T.E., Blessing, M.E., et al. , 2019a. Lower Suwannee Archaeological Survey 2014–2016: Shell Mound and Cedar Key tracts. (Technical Report 25.) Gainesville (FL): Laboratory of Southeastern Archaeology, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Sassaman, K.E., Blessing, M.E., Goodwin, J.M., et al. , 2019b. Maritime ritual economies of cosmic synchronicity: summer solstice events at a civic-ceremonial center on the northern Gulf Coast of Florida. American Antiquity. DOI: 10.1017/aaq.2019.68Google Scholar
Sassaman, K.E., Mahar, G.J., Donop, M.C., Jenkins, J.A., Boucher, A., Oliveira, C.I. & Goodwin, J.M., 2015. Lower Suwannee Archaeological Survey 2013–2014: Shell Mound and Cedar Key tracts. (Technical Report 23.) Gainesville (FL): Laboratory of Southeastern Archaeology, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Sassaman, K.E., Palmiotto, A., Mahar, G.J., Monés, M.P. & McFadden, P.S., 2013. Archaeological Investigations at Shell Mound (8LV42), Levy County, Florida: 2012 testing. (Technical Report 16.) Gainesville (FL): Laboratory of Southeastern Archaeology, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Sassaman, K.E., Wallis, N.J., McFadden, P.S., et al. , 2017. Keeping pace with rising sea: the first 6 years of the Lower Suwannee Archaeological Survey, Gulf Coastal Florida. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 12, 173–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serjeantson, D., 1998. Birds: a seasonal resource. Environmental Archaeology 3, 23–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serjeantson, D., 2009. Birds. New York (NY): Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Spivey-Faulkner, M.S., 2018. Fort Center's Iconographic Bestiary: A Reanalysis of the Site's Carved Wood Assemblage. PhD dissertation, Washington University, St. Louis.Google Scholar
Steadman, D.W., 1989. Extinction of birds in eastern Polynesia: a review of the record, and comparisons with other Pacific Island groups. Journal of Archaeological Science 16, 177–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steadman, D.W., Plourde, A. & Burley, D.V., 2002. Prehistoric butchery and consumption of birds in the Kingdom of Tonga, South Pacific. Journal of Archaeological Science 29, 571–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunderhaus, T.S. & Blosser, J.K., 2006. Water and mud and the recreation of the world, in Recreating Hopewell, eds Charles, D.K. & Buikstra, J.E.. Gainesville (FL): University Press of Florida, 134–45.Google Scholar
Swirko, C., 2018. Snake Key rookery being closed to protect nesting birds. Gainesville Sun, 9 January 2018. https://www.gainesville.com/news/20180109/snake-key-rookery-being-closed-to-protect-nesting-birds (accessed 1 September 1, 2019).Google Scholar
Viveiros de Castro, E., 1998. Cosmological deixis and Amerindian perspectivism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4(3), 469–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von den Driesch, A., Kessler, D., Steinmann, F., Berteaux, V. & Peters, J., 2005. Mummified, deified and buried at Hermopolis Magna – the sacred birds from Tuna El-Gebel, Middle Egypt. Egypt and the Levant 15, 203–44.Google Scholar
Walker, R.B., 2007. Hunting in the Late Pleistocene period: faunal remains from Dust Cave, in Foragers of the Terminal Pleistocene in North America, eds Walker, R.B. & Driskell, B.N.. Lincoln (NE): University of Nebraska Press, 99–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, R.B. & Parmalee, P., 2004. A noteworthy cache of goose humeri from Late Paleoindian levels at Dust Cave, northwestern Alabama. Journal of Alabama Archaeology 50(1), 18–35.Google Scholar
Wallis, N.J., 2011. The Swift Creek Gift: Vessel exchange on the Atlantic coast. Tuscaloosa (AL): University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Wallis, N.J., McFadden, P.S. & Singleton, H.M., 2015. Radiocarbon dating the pace of monument construction and village aggregation at Garden Patch: a ceremonial center on the Florida Gulf Coast. Journal of Archaeological Science Reports 2, 507–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallis, N.J., Pluckhahn, T.J. & Glascock, M.D., 2016. Sourcing interaction networks of the American southeast: neutron activation analysis of Swift Creek complicated stamped pottery. American Antiquity 81, 717–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weets, J.D., Carr, C., Penney, D. & Carriveau, G., 2004. Smoking pipe compositions and styles as evidence of social affiliations of mortuary ritual participants at the Tremper Site, Ohio, in Gathering Hopewell: Society, ritual, and ritual interaction, eds Carr, C. & Case, D.T.. New York (NY): Springer, 533–52.Google Scholar
Williamson, R.A., 1984. Living the Sky: The cosmos of the American Indian. Norman (OK): University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar