Odd deposits: interpreting sweetgum use at Coles Creek mound centers

ABSTRACT

The archaeological record of the Lower Mississippi Valley represents a long history of Indigenous people making wide and variable use of the region’s exceptionally rich ecosystems. Often, archaeological interpretations of these interactions focus on subsistence and do not take into consideration non-food uses of plants and animals. Our excavations at two Coles Creek (AD 750–1000) mound centers, Feltus and Smith Creek, yielded curious concentrations of sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) in addition to the expected suite of plants. We first discuss the archaeological context of sweetgum on these sites, then outline our methods of identifying the plant in archaeological samples. We detail the process of identifying sweetgum both in-field and from flotation and water-screening samples and provide identification criteria that can be used by other analysts. Finally, we review what we know about sweetgum use from the broader archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic records. Drawing these lines of evidence together, we synthesize pre  – and post-colonial ethnobotany to hypothesize about how and why Coles Creek people used this plant in ceremonial activities taking place at mound centers.

KEYWORDS:

• Coles Creek
• Late Woodland
• Lower Mississippi Valley
• paleoethnobotany
• ethnography
• ethnohistory

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the landowners of Feltus and Smith Creek for their support and permission to excavate and the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials at the Penn Museum for providing the lab space for this research. Finally, we are deeply grateful to our colleagues in southeastern archaeology for helping us sift through the large body of gray literature discussed in this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding statement

The Penn Museum’s generous Director’s Field Funds and Summer Field Funds made this research possible for both authors.

Data availability statement

The Feltus and Smith Creek collections are housed at the University of North Carolina and University of Pennsylvania, respectively. The paleoethnobotanical data are preserved on University of Pennsylvania servers and published in their entirety in Graham (2023), Kassabaum (2014), and Peles (2022). Original files will be shared on a case-by-case basis, by request. Contact the second author.