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1 Sketch of the Region’s Woodland History The inception of pottery making that marks the beginning of the Woodland era lies far back in time, perhaps two millennia before the Christian era and more than three millennia before the first Europeans were noting linguistic differences and recording the whereabouts of the coastal Indian tribes. As we move back in time we quickly lose any surety that the cultural geography, as represented by regional similarities in language, remains faithful to those first ethnohistoric sketches. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the geography of precontact Indian cultures is re- flected in the archaeological patterns of ceramic technological styles. Tracing the shifting boundaries of these ceramic techno-stylistic regions is one of the principal goals of this study. For convenience, the Woodland era is divided into Early (2200–400 b.c.), Middle (400 b.c.–a.d. 800), and Late (a.d. 800–1600) periods. In theory, such boundaries are designed to coincide with fundamental shifts in technology and major differences in social and economic traditions. In practice, however, the data with which to measure shifting socioeconomic conditions are often uneven or totally lacking. In such cases, the temporal boundaries of subperiods are often based on differences in a limited suite of material culture traditions including pottery and are, more often than not, imposed as a convenient means of establishing a chronological framework. In many parts of eastern North Carolina, where even the most basic subsistence data are absent, economic model building must rely on inference. Early Woodland Period (2200–400 b.c.) The Early Woodland period in eastern North Carolina begins about 2200 b.c. and is distinguished from the preceding Late Archaic principally by the emergence of ceramic technology. Studies on the lower Savannah River and Coastal Plain of South Carolina have shown that the earliest pottery made in the Atlantic coastal region (fiber-tempered Stallings) has been found in contexts dated at least 2 Chapter 1 as early as 2500 b.c. (Sassaman 1993:102–110, Figure 11, Appendix). As the earliest Stallings pottery is contemporary with contexts bearing Late Archaic period Savannah River phase materials, many researchers prefer to assign the early portion of the Stallings phase to the Late Archaic period. Finding no advantage in assigning the North Carolina Stallings potters to the Archaic era, I have chosen to stick to the more traditional formula: as pottery emerges, so begins the Woodland era. Regardless of culture–era affiliation, ceramic technology first emerged on the Atlantic coast around 2200 b.c. and evolved into an essential technology over the next 500 years. In the Savannah River valley, perforated soapstone disks or slabs, presumably used in basket or bladder cooking, appeared about 3000 b.c. (Sassaman 1993:185). This was followed in about 300 years by the innovation of ceramic vessel technology, with which it coexisted for many generations. At present it appears that the practice of pottery making spread from the Savannah Valley into the North Carolina Coastal Plain during this same period, by both overland (inland) and maritime (coastal) transportation and trade networks. Sassaman (1993) contends that the earliest fiber-tempered vessels in the Savannah region were not placed directly on cooking fires but were used as containers for boiling-stone cookery. This may also be true of early pottery from North Carolina , such as the Croaker Landing series (Byrd 1999; Egloff et al. 1988; Pullins et al. 1996). Although the Stallings and Croaker Landing pottery regions are found several hundred miles apart, they appear to reflect very similar technological styles. Vessels were typically thick-walled, slab-built, flat-bottomed containers that were inherently porous, rather soft as a result of low firing temperature, and probably cumbersome—in many ways, a poor substitute to soapstone bowls but eminently more efficient as one did not need to travel to the Piedmont to obtain the raw materials for making clay pots. In just a few centuries, this technological practice led the way to broad-scale experimentation in pottery making. On the southern and central coasts, quartz in a variety of sizes and densities became the standard ingredient in paste. The slab-built, flat-bottomed method of construction was superseded by coil building with the paddle-and-anvil system that produced thinwalled , conical-based pots that were fired at higher temperatures and, thus, represented extremely effective cooking vessels for use directly on the fire. This second generation of Early Woodland vessels along the North...

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