LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOLOGY SURVEY PROJECT

CAROLINA BAYS REGION

Lonnie William Franklin, MA

University of Leicester

published by

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LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOLOGY SURVEY PROJECT

CAROLINA BAYS REGION

LONNIE W. FRANKLIN, AUTHOR

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The South Carolina Coastal Plain features an extraordinary wetland area called Carolina

Bays, a seemingly endless band of similarly-shaped shallow ponds, swamps, and lakes.

With a mysterious and unresolved origin, attributed to everything from beaver ponds to

meteors, they occur not just in South Carolina but along most of the eastern seaboard of

the United States. There are perhaps one-half million of them in a narrow discontinuous

band from Florida to Maryland, varying greatly in size but all if them roughly oval

shaped and oriented with an axis NW to SE ( Kovacik and Winberry, 1989).

Evidently formed from 30,000 to over 100,000 years ago (Outreach Program of the

Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, 2006), these similarly shaped shallow ponds and

swamps have been called "islands of biodiversity" that are among the richest in species

diversity found anywhere in the world (Sharitz, 2003). Previous research has established

that mammoth, large saber toothed cats, giant ground sloth and other extinct Pleistocene

mammals were residents of the bays at the time when early man arrived in the Americas

(Howard ,1997).

There are a number of theories concerning how and when early man arrived in the

Americas (Scarre, 2005). One of the most persistent is that of the earliest Paleoindians

arriving in the Americas as nomadic big-game hunters unwittingly following the great

herds of animals like mammoth across Beringia, into the new world, at the end of the

Wisconsin glaciation (Fagan, 2005). This journey would no doubt have been cold and

arduous, between two of the largest ice sheets that ever existed (Scarre, 2005), with

hunger or death a constant specter.

However early man found his way to the Americas, they found the way to South

Carolina very early on (Bonnischen, 2004), and would surely have found South Carolina

very accommodating. They must have found the bays almost endless resources

particularly appealing.

South Carolina’s climate is (and was 10,000 years ago) humid and subtropical, basically

warm, with usually reliable moderate rainfall (Kovacik and Winberry, 1989). The warm

providing environment of the Carolina Bays would seem to be the “promised land” to

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subsistence hunter-gatherer nomads. Year long warm weather, all their needs provided

to them, one bay after another after another; virtually a Holocene-era buffet line.

Seemingly no end to nature’s largesse.

Surely, early man would have exploited the bay’s resources, but could the wealth of the

bays lure the hunters into settling down?

Although serious archaeology in the area has been virtually nonexistent, the enormous

number of artifacts recovered from the area by “collectors” – including Clovis points - is

convincing that the bays were extensively settled or used, from the earliest times. But,

the overwhelming number of the bays and difficulty of on-ground survey creates

considerable difficulty in establishing details.

Can the problems posed by the bay area geography be overcome? Can settlement or use

of Carolina Bays be determined from aerial photography (and confirmed by ground

truthing, on-ground survey.

Is this a question worth asking? Is this an appropriate project for landscape survey?

The scale of the bay area is overwhelming to most archaeological projects. The potential

increase in survey area made available by aerial reconnaissance and photography brings

the bay area size into a feasible, economically achievable prospect.

Is there a site? Although called “Carolina Bays,” the phenomenon occurs over an area

several hundred kilometers long and about 100 kilometers wide, consisting of perhaps a

half-million bays.

Much of this “site” includes the most heavily developed regions of the east coast and

much of the “bay” area has been obliterated by agriculture and real estate development.

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Since the ecology of the area is similar throughout and almost continuous, the entire

region where bays or remnants can be observed needs to be considered as the “site.” The

survey area, for preconsideration of methodology, should be considered to contain an

almost continuous scatter of potentially recoverable artifacts of varying density.

Samples, however, will of necessity have to be selected from areas where extant bays

are accessible, necessitating a combination of probabilistic and purposive sampling

methodologies.

Satellite photography can first be used to define the research area, gain an overview,

and narrow the search area to the larger scale areas still available for research, and the

more feasible smaller scaled areas for aerial photography and sampling. The resolution

of satellite photography isn’t good enough to differentiate between bays and smaller

scale ground-disturbance perhaps caused by human activity, but can provide us with a

good “birds-eye” overview.

Satellite photography would of course be vertical and can be used to associate lower level photography with maps.

Satellite photo of the Carolina Bays

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GIS representation, Carolina Bays

Infrared Photo of Carolina Bays Photos courtesy of Clemson University

GIS can be used to develop maps to connect the satellite overview to the ground,

coordinate with aerial photography, and later to plot artifact distribution patterns. One of

the benefits of computerized geographic information systems is the ability to “layer”

different data, and select data by attributes. This allows the viewer to view single data

levels without the distraction of information irrelevant to the task at hand. In this case, I

envision great benefit to be able to remove all modern data from the map and see what

the early settlers might have seen, to be able to remove the data from the unoccupied

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bays and/or bay areas and more easily see the connections or patterns between the ones

that remain.

Aerial photography (lower level) for higher resolution of areas can be used to perhaps

identify settlement or use sites, and designate areas for ground survey

Oblique aerial photography in this area would probably reveal more ground features and

would be best during midwinter when foliage is lowest.

Mid morning and mid afternoon photography reveals more subtlety due to shadowing.

Local contacts can alert us to the opportunity of fields being plowed, allowing us

unobstructed view of the ground. Infrared photography has the potential to show us

changes in vegetation (Renfrew and Bahn 2004).

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Aerial photograph of Carolina Bays in the proposed survey area, showing clearly the

“palimpsest” of human activity over the landscape. Oblique angle aerial photo by Stoney

Truett and David Allen Jr.

Note the alignment of the bays and the defining rim. In the lower center of the picture

is a bay with a ditched drain inserted prior to WWII and the enactment of stringent

“wetland” laws. Modern era plow marks are clearly visible, as well as intriguing

darkened areas near many of the “bays,” and others located nearby but away from the

bays.

Preliminary reconnaissance survey of the rims and the darkened areas has revealed

numerous artifacts, including Clovis-era points, which have been left in situ.

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A sampling strategy should be designed to allow every part of the surveyed population

as much as possible, an equal chance of being selected, so that way so that the results

can be reasonably inferred to apply to the areas that were not sampled (Renfrew and

Bahn, 2004).

Although one could say that the selection process from photography, identifying areas

that agriculture and development has left available, has already “randomly sampled” the

area. Nevertheless, due to the nature of the area: limited access to all areas, bays that

would have been ponds 4,000 years ago but have since been drained and plowed, and

areas that have been removed from availability by development; I feel that we must

resort to purposive sampling.

“Look on the rims, boy. That’s where you’ll find the stuff,” one of my pot-hunter

informants, a large landowner has told me. Although I consider that particular bit of

advice to be both a sampling problem, and attributable to visibility – in principle, it is

good advice. First and foremost, it is best to find something.

First, selection from the air of (relatively undisturbed) sites that indicate human use by

color change, sharp tonal changes, or visible patterns.

I propose that Simple random sampling of the purposively preselected available areas

would then be used to select individual Carolina Bays for ground survey. Not

methodologically satisfying but practical considering the nature of the area and the

probability that any existing artifacts will be both rare and clustered.

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I propose that the catchment area and the bay are synonymous, since the “bays” are

pretty much continuous, even overlapping one another, but of considerably varying size,

Any refinement of the definition of “bay” and “catchment area” will have to be

determined after upon initial review of the selected sites. This definition will then be

extended to the areas not selected.

This is of course a multi-stage examination, and flexibility will have to be maintained

throughout the process.

Stratified random sampling would be used on the ground due to the varied topographic

features of the bay area.

No underwater research is proposed, but drained bays will be examined throughout with

any artifacts found in the formerly flooded area separately accounted for. A thick peat

bottom has been noted for some of the bays and considering the “bog bodies” and

preserved wood finds in other areas of the word, that prospect raises some interesting

possibilities. For the time being however, the limitations of this examination will have

to postpone that exciting prospect.

A 5m spacing of field walkers increases the size of the sample of material and increases

the chance of even very small scatters being detected (LA 4.9). Considering the

likelihood that the number of people occupying the area would have been small, I would

like to increase the odds of finding as many artifacts as possible by having intensive

coverage.

Pre-printed record sheets will be provided to all field walkers, with description boxes for

the commonly found lithics as identified by prior archaeology nearby. The unidentified

or unique items are to be bagged separately. Since the possibility of a unique or very

early-man find is possible, the walkers will be trained to mark the find spot with a flag

and notify the supervising archaeologist. Clovis has been found in this area, and pre-

Clovis artifacts have been located nearby (Goodyear, 2003).

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Since the objective of this survey is to be able to determine if settlement or use of the

bays can be detected remotely, any artifacts that potentially establish the link between

the ground and the air need to be recovered, classified, and cataloged. Indeed, with the

rapid development of the bays area, the artifacts need to be recovered and curated so that

future archaeologist will have access to the recovered assemblages before they are lost

forever.

Archaeologists have a duty, both to colleagues and to the general public to explain what

they are doing and why (Renfrew and Bahn, 2004).

In spite of the criticism of the obstacles and limitations of pedestrian survey preventing a

“true” picture of past settlement patterns: man made disturbances, dense vegetation

cover, erosion, poor preservation of surface finds, etc., arguments deriding pedestrian

survey are irrelevant to the purpose of this study. Since the object of this investigation is

simply to determine if settlement or use can be remotely determined, it is my opinion

that the recovery of significant artifacts in conjunction with the aerial observation of

human activity is determinant.

One of the most important surface-find determinations that have been recently made of

significance to this study is that there is little lateral displacement of artifacts due to

plowing. Displacement seems to be a problem only on slopes where there is significant

soil creep (Haselgrove, Millett and Smith citing Gingell, 1980). Since the bay area is

virtually flat throughout, this finding adds confidence that surface finds are associated

with activity at that location.

In the absence of lithics or other determining tangible artifacts, I propose to use

appropriate geoprospection methods to establish the link between human activity on the

ground and whatever phenomena is observable from the air.

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Although prior research has established varying degrees of confidence between different

geoprospection methods and data concerning past activity (LA 6.28), a combination of

complementary methods no doubt would be more reliable. Finding the right

combination is the challenge.

Resistivity survey is best suited for discovery of discrete archaeological features (LA,

6.11 -16), and would not seem the best choice for a boggy area.

Magnetic susceptibility has been used very successfully to establish intense human

activity in an area’s soil. It has been useful over broad areas to identify “multi-modal

activity areas” not associated with structures or artifact scatters (LA 6.21).

An identified shortcoming of magnetic susceptibility is the inability to identify specific

uses of an area, but since that is not one of the objectives of this exercise, it presents no

problem. Therefore, magnetic susceptibility would appear to be an appropriate choice

for the identification of habitation/use sites identified with the bays, where wood and

bone is not likely to be preserved, and lithic artifacts are not discovered. Potentially,

podsolization and gleying could be a problem (LA 6.19).

Soil phosphate survey, based on the fact that phosphorous in the soil is redistributed due

to human and animal feces, bone, etc.(LA 10.05), would probably not be effective since

animal activity would have been predominant. Furthermore, the soil around the bays is

highly acidic and ph12 is highly soluble in acidic soils (LA 6.24).

The resolution of the challenge will to be to remain flexible during the phases of the

survey and discover what combination works best in the environment.

Excavation is not planned for this survey, but all possibilities should be considered.

To accomplish the objective of this survey, it is not necessary to further analyze any

surface found artifacts; however, after any artifacts that might be found are collected, it

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would prove useful to future research and regional comparison to analyze and classify

the artifacts. Factor analysis would be appropriate to look for variation among the

artifact types within an assemblage. Cluster analysis could be used to identify

similarities and differences among complete assemblages. The assemblages could then

more easily be referenced and compared within the bay area, adjoining areas, and

temporally.

Archaeology in the area has been discouraged previously for numerous reasons:

inaccessibly, lack of visibility, some of the most stringent “wetland’ laws in the country

restricting excavation, and the overwhelming size of the area. Furthermore, researchers

have believed that early human activity in the Southeast concentrated on the coast and

along rivers and streams or “tethered” to seasonal foraging between resources (Fagan,

2005). Previous researchers have perhaps simply concentrated their limited resources in

those areas.

Recently however, researchers have found evidence of human settlement from at least

10,000 years ago around Flamingo Bay on the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) 310-

square-mile Savannah River Site near Aiken (Savannah River Ecology Laboratory news

release January, 1996).

The fact that early man was in the area has already been established (Goodyear, 2005).

The Paleoindian-era climate of the bays microenvironment has previously been

determined (Sharitz, 2003). All of this previous research, although not directed

specifically toward early man and the bays, establishes that man had the opportunity

and the incentive to end his wandering ways.

What remains is the purpose of this study. Did they? What remains is the object of

landscape survey, to define the total environment in which human activity took place,

the physical location of sites, the source of resources, the basis for the nature of a

culture, of long term change in a region.

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References

Bonniscen, R., et al., 2004. Evidence of Pre-Clovis Sites in the Eastern United States.

In Paleoindianamerican Origins: Beyond Clovis. Texas: Texas A&M University Press.

Fagan, B.M.,2005. Ancient North America. London: Thames and Hudson.

Goodyear, A., and Steffy, K., 2003. Evidence of a Clovis Occupation at the Topper Site,

38AL23, Current Research in the Pleistocene Vol. 20:23-25. Texas: A&M University.

Haselgrove, C., Millett, M., and Smith, I. 1985. Archaeology from the Ploughsoil.

Midsomer Norton: Bookcraft.

Howard, G.A., 1997. The Carolina Bays. http://www.georgehoward.net/cbays.htm.

[Accessed 13 March 2006]

Kovacik, C.F., and Winberry, J.J., 1989. South Carolina: The Making of a Landscape.

Columbia, S.C., USA: University of South Carolina Press.

LA, Landscape Archaeology, Module 1. Leicester:

School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester.

Outreach Program of the Savannah River Laboratory,

University of Georgia.

http://www.uga.edu/~srel/home.html.

[Accessed 13 March 2006]

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Renfrew, C., and Bahn, P., 2004. Archaeology, Theories, Methods, and Practice.

London:

Thames & Hudson.

Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. http://www.uga.edu/srel/inland.html.

[Accessed 13 March 2006]

Scarre, C., 2005. The Human Past, World Prehistory and the Development of Human

Societies. London: Thames & Hudson.

Shartz, R.R., 2003, Carolina Bay Wetlands: Unique Habitats of the Southeastern United

States. Aiken, S.C., USA: Department of Plant Biology, University of Georgia and

Savannah River Ecology Laboratory.

Further Reading, not cited in the text, but made an important contribution to this work:

Drennan, R.D., 1996. Statistics for Archaeologists, A Commonsense Approach.

New York:

Plenum Press

Haselgrove, C., Millett, M., and Smith, I., 1985. Archaeology from the Ploughsoil.

Midsomer Norton:

Bookcraft

Ormsby, T., Napoleon, E., Burke, R., Groessl, C., Feaster, L., 2004.

Getting to Know ArGis desktop.

Redlands, California, USA:

Esri Press

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Schiffer, M.B., Sullivan, A.P., and Klinger, T., 1977. The design of archaeological

surveys. World Archaeology, Volume 10, No.1