Students and staff from the University of West Florida Archaeology Institute have spent several weeks conducting a large-scale excavation of a prehistoric Native American site on the Pensacola campus. With the work wrapping up this week, the team is trying to gather as much data as possible about the site before construction of a retention pond there.
On this day, Jennifer Melcher, UWF archaeology faculty research associate, and first-year historical archaeology grad student Abigail Bauman have been collecting soil samples for phosphate testing on the site to help identify areas of human activity.
So far, numerous artifacts have been recovered, but Bauman says she’s been most intrigued by the discovery of a lot of lithic material or stone remains, especially the unique find of a full projectile point made from Tallahatta sandstone.
“You don’t see that kind of material often being used anywhere,” said Bauman. “So especially in this region, where it’s not a popular material that grows naturally, because there aren’t any rocks that grow naturally here, it’s very interesting to see that type of tool being created and worked and in such prominence.”
In addition to the projectile point, they found hundreds of stone flakes overall, including about a dozen Tallahatta sandstone flakes. Found in the lower Alabama region, Melcher says the large assemblage of remnants discovered could represent a big part of the story of this site.
“These people are having to travel a great distance, so finding as many as we are here, they are either actively hunting here and so they’re having to reshape or remake tools sort of on an as needed basis; and they’re also, in some cases, losing tools,” stated Melcher. “And I’m sure someone was very angry that day when they lost that beautiful point that we found because it was still a very nice little point knife that could have been continued to be used and resharpened.”
In the lab, the archaeology team is processing the many artifacts found on the site, including the Tallahatta sandstone remains and a plethora of other pottery pieces. One of the biggest pieces they have is a section of a partially reconstructed jar.
“That is a type we call Wakulla Check Stamped and it is very diagnostic of the Middle to Late Woodland period here in Northwest Florida,” she said as she gently displayed the pottery piece. “Part of the reason we can tell it’s Wakulla is that the rim is folded over and that it’s stamped along the top of that fold and it’s very diagnostic of the period.”
After an initial survey a couple of months ago, the site across from the football stadium was identified as a seasonal camp likely from the Middle Woodland period, 300 BCE – 600 CE.
“We uncovered evidence of artifacts in those shovel tests,” began Dr. Ramie Gougeon, chair of the department of Anthropology and acting director of the UWF Archaeology Institute. “We had Woodland pottery and we had some hints that there were maybe buried features, these were stains in the soil that represent where people threw out their trash or where they had physical surfaces on the ground where they lived.”
The team used a backhoe to open some large excavation trenches in search of possible living surfaces. Disappointingly, though, Gougeon pointed out that the sandy soil, tree roots and animal activity over time has made those features virtually impossible to see. And with the lack of carbon material for dating, they pivoted their strategy to include an intensive look at the composition of the pottery.
“We’ve got an analyst; he’s actually a former undergraduate of this program. He’s gone on to get his master’s and PhD,” said Gougeon. “He does thin section petrography. This looks at the sort of fabric of the clay that was used to produce the pottery and the little inclusions of temper, the kinds of grit and shell and sand and pieces of clay and the things like this that were used to make the pottery durable.”
Those added elements, he said, can sometimes be tied to specific areas geologically.
“If this was a group of people moving around the southeast, or at least the northern Gulf coast, and perhaps trading pottery with other people, we may see materials that don’t belong here embedded in that clay,” he explained.
The archaeology team is also collecting data on the site’s stratigraphy, or the layering of the soils, which will help them determine how the soil has shifted through natural erosion processes over time.
“In the end, we will have a really long map, representing hundreds of meters from south to north of this landform as it slopes down to Thompson’s Bayou,” he said. “We will have soil data for the entirety of this site and can say a little bit about how this landform has changed over time, also.”
Coupled with phosphate testing of the soil, Gougeon said they’re conducting close interval shovel-testing through a series of small tests — every five meters — across the entire site.
“This is going to result in hundreds of hundreds of tests. And every 10 centimeters they stop and change their collection bag so that we know where the artifacts are coming from, not just horizontally across the site, but also vertically through the site,” he stated. “That’ll give us another set of data that can help us interpret where people were doing things on the site and at what time periods.”
It’s that evidence of everyday life from the Middle Woodland period that Gougeon is interested in. Much will be revealed about the ancient site — and a 20th century site uncovered there — in the research to come after the archaeological project concludes on Friday.
