The dynamics of fishing villages along the South Atlantic Coast of North America (ca. 5000-3000 years BP).

We present new chronologies that inform the timing and tempo of shell ring and shell mound construction on the South Atlantic Bight. Our project combines recently acquired dates with legacy radiocarbon dates from over 25 rings and mounds to provide a higher-resolution chronology regarding the occupation and formation of this larger landscape of the earliest fishing villages along the East Coast of the United States. We resolve the ordering and timing of occupation of these rings and mounds through Bayesian statistical modeling. These new models historicize and contextualize these shell rings in ways previously impossible. Specifically, our new chronologies of these villages indicate that the earliest villages were established prior to the invention of pottery. The early period of village establishment evidences isolated village rings, whereas later periods seem to have more villages, but these appear to have been relocated to other areas and/or islands over time. Shell mounds are fewer in number, are spread throughout the time period, and may represent special purpose sites compared to shell-rings. Once villages spread, they quickly adopted new technologies (i.e., pottery) and created new institutions and practiced village relocation, which allowed this way of life to persist for more than a thousand years.

Ecosystem stability and Native American oyster harvesting along the Atlantic Coast of the United States.

The eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) is an important proxy for examining historical trajectories of coastal ecosystems. Measurement of ~40,000 oyster shells from archaeological sites along the Atlantic Coast of the United States provides a long-term record of oyster abundance and size. The data demonstrate increases in oyster size across time and a nonrandom pattern in their distributions across sites. We attribute this variation to processes related to Native American fishing rights and environmental variability. Mean oyster length is correlated with total oyster bed length within foraging radii (5 and 10 km) as mapped in 1889 and 1890. These data demonstrate the stability of oyster reefs despite different population densities and environmental shifts and have implications for oyster reef restoration in an age of global climate change.