GEORGIA-Island Burial Site Sheds Light On Prehistoric Indian Culture-UPDATE

[Bianca]

                               Island burial site sheds light on prehistoric Indian culture






Submitted by
the Georgia Department
of Natural Resources

The Daily Citizen
Dec. 18,; 2008
ATLANTA —

The recent excavation of a prehistoric American Indian burial site on Ossabaw Island revealed cremated remains, an unexpected find that offers a glimpse into ancient Indian culture along Georgia’s coast.

State archaeologist David Crass of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources said prehistoric cremations were rare, particularly during the early time in which preliminary evidence suggests this one occurred, possibly 1000 B.C. to A.D. 350. The remains also mark the first cremation uncovered on Ossabaw, a state-owned Heritage Preserve about 20 miles south of Savannah.

“This interment broadens our knowledge about … the kinds of belief (involving) death within the Woodland Period,” Crass said. “This is not something we have seen before on Ossabaw Island. Similar cremations on St. Catherine’s Island may point to this practice being more widespread than we have believed up to now.”

Crass said during this time American Indians in Georgia moved to the coast in the winter for shellfish, then inland in the spring for deer hunting and into uplands in the fall for gathering nuts. “This site may have been a winter season camp,” he said.

Erosion from natural causes exposed the burial on an Ossabaw bluff earlier this year. Scientists from the DNR Office of the State Archaeologist, the nonprofit Lamar Institute and the Georgia Council on American Indian Concerns worked under the council’s direction to excavate the roughly 6- by 6-foot pit. As required by state law, Crass informed the council about the situation and organized the excavation at the group’s request.

The work on Georgia’s third-largest barrier island revealed a cremation pit that had been lined with wood and oyster shells. The body had been placed on top of the wood and the contents of the pit burned. The human remains recovered were primarily from extremities, indicating that the deceased had been disinterred after cremation, possibly to be reburied elsewhere.

The charcoal will be submitted for carbon 14 dating, but preliminary analysis of the pottery recovered from the pit suggests the cremation may date to the Refuge-Deptford Phases in the Woodland Period, c.a. 1000 B.C. to A.D. 350. A ground-penetrating radar survey showed many prehistoric American Indian features in the general area, Crass said. The bluff apparently had long been a focal point of prehistoric Indian life.

After analysis, the remains will be reinterred in a secure location under the auspices of the Council on American Indian Concerns. Crass expects the carbon 14 dating results and details on the radar survey by early next year.

Human history runs deep on Ossabaw. Shell mounds and other artifacts here date to 2000 B.C. More than 230 archaeological sites have been recorded. Spanish records indicate the island probably had an early Guale Indian village, according to The New Georgia Encyclopedia. But long before the first European contact on Ossabaw, possibly through the Spanish in 1568, small pox and other diseases unwittingly introduced by the Spanish in Mexico and South America had swept north, devastating populations of native Americans.

Crass said it’s not known what Indians were on the island when the cremation pit was used. But because of its discovery thousands of years later, more will be learned.

Access to Ossabaw is limited to approved research projects and hunts managed by the DNR’s Georgia Wildlife Resources Division. Details at www.georgiawildlife.com. Information on visiting the island for research and educational purposes is also available from The Ossabaw Island Foundation’s Jim Bitler, jim@ossabawisland.org.

The Wildlife Resources Division works to protect, conserve, manage and improve Georgia's wildlife and freshwater fishery resources. The division’s mission also includes managing and conserving protected wildlife and plants, administering and conducting the mandatory hunter safety program, regulating the possession and sale of wild animals, and administering and enforcing the Georgia Boat Safety Act.

The Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia DNR serves as Georgia’s state historic preservation office. The Historic Preservation Division’s mission is to promote the preservation and use of historic places for a better Georgia. Programs include archaeology protection and education, environmental review, grants, historic resource surveys, tax incentives, the National Register of Historic Places, community planning and technical assistance.

For more information, call (404) 656-2840 or visit www.gashpo.org.

[Bianca]

In an undated photo provided
by the Georgia Department of
Natural Resources,
DNR staff archaeologist








                                             American Indian cremation pit found on Ga. island
     





Russ Bynum,
Associated Press Writer
dEC. 19, 2008
SAVANNAH, Ga.

– Exposed by erosion at the edge of a crumbling bluff, the pit discovered beneath 2 feet of sandy dirt at first appeared to be a grave just long and deep enough to bury a human body.

Excavation by archaeologists on Ossabaw Island revealed something more puzzling — just a few small bones, apparently from fingers or toes, mixed with charcoal, bits of burned logs and pottery shards predating the arrival of the first European explorers by at least a century.

The find has led researchers to suspect American Indians used the ancient pit to burn bodies of the dead, making it a rare example of cremation among the early native inhabitants of the southeastern U.S.

"It's a special sort of burial," said Tom Gresham, an Athens archaeologist who worked on the excavation and serves on Georgia's Council on American Indian Concerns. "The way Indian tribes over time buried their dead varied tremendously. But cremations are fairly rare."

Located six miles off the Savannah coast, Ossabaw Island remains one of Georgia's wildest barrier islands. Hogs, deer, armadillos and Sicilian donkeys roam the state-owned island's 11,800 acres of wishbone-shaped uplands. Live oaks tower above the remains of slave plantations and ancient Indian burial mounds.

Researchers have found evidence that humans came to Ossabaw more than 4,000 years ago. It's believed Indians at first may have used the island as a winter camp to feed on shellfish before moving inland to hunt deer in the spring.

Burial mounds on Ossabaw typically hold intact human remains, said Dave Crass, Georgia's state archaeologist. Archaeologists said Friday that carbon dating on charcoal from the pit place it between 1290 and 1420 A.D.

Archaeologists initially thought the pit could be 1,000 to 3,000 years old based on pottery shards they found. Though carbon dating revealed it to be more recent, the find is still considered prehistoric because it predates the arrival of the first European explorers in Georgia in 1520.

Crass said other prehistoric graves on Ossabaw tend to be bodies buried intact, in a near fetal position, in shallow bowl-shaped pits.

"What makes this particular site unusual is that the individual was apparently cremated and then the remains were presumably taken from this pit and interred somewhere else," Crass said.

David Hurst Thomas, a curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said the cremation pit sounds significant.

Thomas was not involved in the Ossabaw excavation but has been studying Indian burials on neighboring St. Catherines Island for 30 years. Out of about 900 graves he's studied there that predate the arrival of Europeans, only nine held cremated remains, he said.

"Based on our St. Catherines experience, this is about a one-in-100 shot," Thomas said. "As a mortuary feature of that antiquity, I would say that's a big deal."

The Ossabaw cremation pit, roughly 6 feet long and 3 feet deep, had other unique characteristics.

Crass and fellow archaeologists, at first, suspected it might be a more modern grave because of its flat bottom and straight sides.

Early Indian graves tend to have round bottoms because people lacked shovels or other digging tools, said Dan Elliott, a Savannah archaeologist who helped excavate the Ossabaw pit last month.

"We're thinking it was a fairly formal structure that was used to deflesh people — it looks almost like a little oven," Elliott said. "That's so far back in history that we don't know what was on their minds, but it shows there was a special reverence for the dead."

The state Council on American Indian Concerns gave the archaeologists permission to excavate the Ossabaw pit because erosion was destroying it.

The few human bones found in the pit will be studied further in hopes of determining if they belonged to more than one person. Once that's done, Crass said, they'll be reinterred with the Council overseeing the burial.

Thomas said such a find is a step in helping researchers understand America's early inhabitants, though why they would choose to cremate some of their dead and bury others intact remains a mystery.

"We don't know whether that's high status or low status. Is that the way you treat elders or battle captains?" Thomas said. "We're buried according to who we are when we die. It tells us a lot about a society by the way they treat the dead."