Production for Exchange in the Mid-Holocene Southeast: A Savannah River Valley Example

ABSTRACT

At various places across the American Southeast during the mid-Holocene, bifaces were produced for nonsubsistence purposes, including mortuary offerings and exchange. Examples of biface caches and oversized forms are not uncommon at sites in the Midsouth, and locations of biface production have been noted at numerous sites near sources of high-quality chert. Unfortunately, analyses of production debris have not been conducted, so there exists no information on the scale and intensity of production for exchange. In contrast, discrete concentrations of debitage and production failures at sites in the middle Savannah River Valley lend themselves to analysis of scale of production. At the Pen Point site, for instance, 200–300 preforms were manufactured and transported from the site in what appears to be a single production event. Alternative explanations for this scale of production are examined. Given emerging evidence for nonsubsistence uses of bifaces in the Savannah River Valley and its probable historical connection to the Midsouth, it is likely that production at Pen Point was geared toward exchange.