Gathering for Nine Millennia along the Atlantic Coast and St. Johns River of Northeast Florida

Northeast Florida’s wide variety of freshwater and marine biomes supported a diverse array of hunter-gatherer communities over the course of 9000 years. This chapter synthesizes the available evidence for subsistence, settlement, and ceremony across the region. Whereas there is little evidence for significant changes in the subsistence economy through time, there is abundant evidence for different modes of social interaction and monumentality. A historical approach to this diversity reveals that social gathering at various scales was enabled by the physical and symbolic resources of the region, including existing monuments and objects.

Maritime Cultural Landscapes in the New York Bight

The study of prehistoric maritime cultural landscapes, in the broadest sense, seeks to explore the relationship between people and the water. If we are to reconstruct the nature of this relationship over time along the Atlantic coast of North America, we must account for environmental changes, particularly sea level rise and related shifts in ecological communities and habitats on the shore and at sea. This chapter surveys the coastal archaeology of the New York Bight (the bend in the Atlantic coast between southern New Jersey and Cape Cod) over the course of the Holocene, drawing data from terrestrial, coastal plain, and now submerged sites to examine topics such as the role of coastal environments in human settlement, evidence for seafaring and fishing technology, and the origins and consequences of adopting maritime cultural adaptations.

Sea Ice, Seals, and Settlement

The cultural history of Newfoundland and Labrador is linked with the sea. The European occupation of this subarctic region was dependent on the abundance of Atlantic cod and other marine resources, such as seals, walrus, and whales. Precontact indigenous hunter gatherers of the region also relied heavily on marine ecology for their livelihood; yet, at various times in the region’s significant history, dynamic environmental and social conditions acted to change subsistence economies, cultures, and the course of its occupation. In this chapter, we examine archaeological, historical, and paleoecological evidence to assess the relative roles that environmental and social processes played in these critical transformations.

Making the Atlantic Coast a Smaller Place and a Stepping Stone to Larger Issues

This review of the preceding chapters highlights their commonalities and differences, and discusses the extent to which they advance the understanding of the Atlantic Coast of North America as a region of study for archaeologists, particularly for maritime archaeology and historical ecology

Island Chain Coastlines

The Florida Keys are a small island chain along the Atlantic coast that preserve unique data on human-environmental interactions in prehistory, overlooked in earlier research but now the focus of new investigations. These investigations were spurred in part by the threat of sea level rise and the need to better understand human adaptations to changing ecosystems. This chapter presents a summary of previous research as well as preliminary results of new investigations into human adaptation in the Florida Keys during the pre-Columbian period.

Human-Environmental Dynamics of the Georgia Coast

This chapter synthesizes and evaluates settlement and subsistence patterns in relation to landscape change for Native American occupations of the Georgia coast in the southeast USA. Dynamic coastal processes of the region have altered the topography and distribution of resources, including those important to humans. These processes were neither uniform in space nor time, with variations leading to the creation of micro-habitats. We assess these habitats, individually and as part of a complex whole, to better elucidate the nature of human–environmental interactions and socio-ecological systems. Understanding this complex relationship helps reveal social trajectories and environmental impacts on the ecosystem of coastal groups. This research, based on historical ecology, is used as a departure point to discuss the future of humans along changing coastlines. We argue that past peoples dealt with similar coastally-related issues as today, such as sea level fluctuations or changes to once productive resources. The knowledge archeologists have gained concerning past human–environmental interactions must be conveyed to the public, including policy-makers, to transform society for the better.

Coastal Adaptations in North and South Carolina

Coastal occupation of North and South Carolina from the Late Archaic through Woodland periods demonstrates intensive use of shellfish, including unique patterns of shell ring construction along the southern coast of South Carolina and smaller middens to the north. Shell middens capture the complexity of the interactions between humans and their surroundings in prehistory, revealing how human action affected the environment. For shellfish specifically, harvest pressure was a selective force on coastal hard clam, Mercenaria mercenaria, and eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, populations, which is just one way in which human–environmental interactions may have permanently altered the ecosystem.

Coastal Adaptations to the Northern Gulf of Maine and Southern Scotian Shelf

The northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM) and its watershed have attracted humans for the last 12,500 years (cal BP), and evidence of Palaeoindian marine economies is well established in adjacent regions by ca. 8000 cal BP. Sea level rise (SLR) has obscured understandings of early coastal adaptations, although underwater research and some near-shore sites are providing important insights. The earliest evidence from surviving shell middens dates to ca. 5000 cal BP, and reveals that shellfish collecting and the seasonal exploitation of benthopelagic fish were important throughout the Late Maritime Archaic and Maritime Woodland periods. However, significant economic shifts have occurred. In particular, a Late Archaic focus on marine swordfish hunting was replaced by a dramatic increase in inshore seal hunting in the Maritime Woodland period. After ca. 3100 cal BP, inshore fishing for cod, flounder, sculpin, sturgeon and other species intensified. During the Late Maritime Woodland period, shellfish exploitation declined somewhat and the hunting of small seals, and, in some areas, white-tailed deer, increased sharply. The extent and nature of coastal economies in the NGOM was controlled, in part, by SLR, increasing tidal amplitude, and concomitant changes in surface-water temperatures, in tandem with broad regional cultural shifts.

Sea Level Rise and Sustainability in Chesapeake Bay Coastal Archaeology

The productive woodlands, estuaries, and coastlines of the Middle Atlantic region of North America have been home to Native Americans from the Paleoindian period to the modern day. Inhabitants of this region adapted to broad environmental changes, including the emergence of Chesapeake Bay when rising seas drowned the Susquehanna River valley around 8000 years ago. Estuarine conditions expanded throughout the Holocene, alongside the establishment of a rich and diverse forest environment. Much of the evidence for human harvesting of coastal resources has likely been obscured by sea level rise and modern development, but first appears around 5000 years BP. By the Middle Woodland (2500 to 1100 BP), people were harvesting oysters, clams, fish, and other bay resources as part of a broad foraging subsistence. When Europeans arrived, at least some of the people living around Chesapeake Bay were practicing agriculture while also harvesting oysters and other resources. Oyster harvesting was remarkably consistent and sustainable through time, with minimal impact on oyster populations or other environmental conditions. This long history of sustainable fishing practices in the face of persistent sea level rise and climate change suggests that reduced harvest pressure may be a key component to restoring modern Chesapeake ecosystems.

Conceptualizing the Archaeology of North America’s Atlantic Seacoast and Estuaries

From the icy shores of Labrador to the warm mangroves of the Florida Keys, North America’s Atlantic Coast was a magnet for human subsistence and settlement for millennia. North America’s Atlantic Coast is a land of diversity united by rich coastal and terrestrial ecosystems that were home to a wide variety of Native American societies and distinct cultural adaptations and systems. This introductory chapter synthesizes the coastal archaeology as well as historical ecology and paleography of North America’s Atlantic Coast, focusing on major research developments of the last 30 years. It also provides the context and framework for the rest of the volume.