5 - Rituals and Commerce

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While stationed at Fort Benning, Major George Veight, a dentist, spent his spare time searching for artifacts. He was walking near the post's southern border in July 1955 when he spotted something interesting along Halloca Creek. As he stooped to retrieve his discovery, he saw pieces of pottery with intricate curving designs that he suspected were made thousands of years ago. Veight contacted Staff Sergeant David Chase, known for his archeological research, who soon visited the site with him to probe for more signs of prehistoric cultures.

Chase's tools were a shovel, pencil, and paper. He recorded that the site was on a tributary of Ochillee Creek, one of the larger streams on the post emptying into Upatoi Creek. The potsherds surfaced near a swampy area adjacent to a wide meander of Halloca Creek. A rolling terrace gently rose from the swamp toward a series of low clay hills. Construction nearby of a military road had exposed some of the ancient artifacts that Veight had noticed.

With help from Frank Schnell Jr., an archeologist now employed by the Columbus Museum, and others, Chase dug a series of test holes, some two and a half feet deep, to see how widespread the artifact distribution might be. Ultimately, they concluded that an area about an acre in size seemed to contain a multitude of artifacts.

In some of the holes, at about six to 12 inches deep, they encountered black sand, evidence of a prehistoric garbage dump. This darkly stained sand, which archeologists call midden, also contained many stone flakes from prehistoric tool production, as well as potsherds and charcoal.

Joseph Caldwell, an archeologist with the University of Georgia, next visited the site and recommended further testing. He suggested digging a deep trench where the midden seemed particularly dense. This trench confirmed that much of the pottery belonged to the Woodland cultural era of 700 B.C. to A.D. 900. The trench excavation began in August 1955, directed by David Chase, assisted by Fort Benning soldiers. The soldiers participated because General Herbert B. Powell, the post commandant took a personal interest in the archeological work.

The effort, like so much of the early archeological Investigations at Fort Benning, was accomplished primarily on weekends when David Chase, often accompanied by his wife, Phyllis, was free from regular duties.

The work proceeded slowly under a blistering summer sun. As David Chase wrote, the fieldwork took place "often under the most adverse conditions, brought about by the intense heat and the hordes of insects." The team removed and studied more than 300 artifacts from the trench and determined that prehistoric people camped at the site in various prehistoric eras. Their findings led to further excavations in the spring and summer of 1957.

In the soil about a foot below the surface, scientists uncovered pieces of fiber-tempered ware, called Stallings Island pottery, from the Late Archaic era. Pottery names reflect specific decorations, tempering, and clay texture, as well as where a particular type was first discovered. They also found soapstone bowl sherds made in the Archaic years. However, the major occupation of the site occurred during the Early and Middle Woodland eras.

Potsherds from the earliest years of the Woodland era demonstrated that people strengthened clay by adding sand or used clay that was already sandy. Or they added crushed rock, called grit.

This was a time of experimentation for potters. Woodland people in the Fort Benning area often formed deep vessels, some with four small appendages on the bottom. These tetrapods, or feet, stabilized the pot so it wouldn't tip over. Potters also developed new decorations. For example, using their fingers as looms, they wove Spanish moss, roots, and other plant fibers into fabric, which they wrapped around a stick or paddle then pressed into the damp clay before they fired a pot. This technique is evident on a type of pottery archeologists call Dunlap.

Fabric-impressed pottery, found at Halloca Creek and at other Fort Benning sites, is only one indication that prehistoric people had learned to weave plant fibers. While no prehistoric fabric has been found on Fort Benning, perhaps because it decayed, there is little doubt that people of this time, and even earlier, were weaving. The Windover bog archeological site in Florida, where the muck sealed out oxygen and other corrosive elements, revealed that even earlier Archaic-era people were twining fibers together into fabric. Scientists have also found woven slippers, this time from the Woodland era, in Salt Cave in Kentucky, another protective environment.

Some artifacts labeled fabric-impressed pottery found at Fort Benning may actually not be fabric impressed. Researchers think that Early Woodland people sometimes formed pottery inside baskets and that the wet clay took on the basket impressions, mistaken for fabric marks by some archeologists. Again, artifacts from sealed environments not far from Fort Benning show that prehistoric people wove baskets and similar items. For example, Archaic people living in Russell Cave in northern Alabama wove cane strips into mats for the cave floor. Impressions from the mats remain preserved in the cave clay. Also, evidence of Woodland basketry showed up in Salt Cave in Kentucky.

Excavations at Halloca Creek revealed that Woodland people living in the Fort Benning area also developed other ways of decorating pots. These excavations, led by David Chase and A. R. Kelly of the University of Georgia, uncovered significant amounts of artifacts-more than 5,000 stone tools and potsherds. Some of the sherds reveal that Woodland-era people wove plant fibers into cord, which they wrapped around a stick and pressed into wet clay.

They also carved simple designs in wood paddles then pressed the paddles into clay. One of the most popular early paddle designs was a series of parallel lines called simple stamping. Potters also carved small, waffle-like squares into the paddles. Called check stamping, this type of design also appeared on potsherds at Halloca Creek and other Fort Benning locations. Scientists label the simple stamping and check stamping pottery from this era Mossy Oak, Cartersville, and Deptford.

The people who visited Halloca Creek in the first few centuries of the Woodland era probably often used the uplands, the areas away from the Chattahoochee River. In fact, the Late Archaic and Early Woodland inhabitants may have used the uplands more often and more productively than any other group throughout the thousands of years of prehistory, suggests archeologist Tom Gresham, who studied four massive archeological surveys on Fort Benning that examined almost 8,000 acres.

By the Woodland years, people probably scheduled their hunting and gathering with maximum efficiency. They recognized which plants they could eat without fear of poisoning, and they knew where and when to find various animals. They understood intimately the details of animal behavior that could mean the difference between a successful hunt and going hungry. They had knowledge passed down through the generations about plants with apparent medicinal properties. And they selected some plants for special attention. They collected the seeds and replanted them.

The roots of agriculture probably reach back to the Archaic period when people developed increasing appetites for eating and cooking the seeds of some plants, such as sunflowers. Perhaps, as they prepared seeds for meals, some fell to the ground and eventually sprouted. Someone noticed and concluded that rather than consume all the seeds they should save a portion and bury them. Gradually, they learned they could nurture favorite plants by watering them and clearing away competing vegetation.

Archeologists know about prehistoric agriculture because of ancient seed and pollen samples they collect at excavations. Ancient sunflower seeds, for example, found at Woodland-era sites tend to be uniform in size and larger than comparable seeds found in the wild. These flower seeds seem to confirm that prehistoric people purposely saved what they considered the best seeds from the best plants. Similar findings lead to thinking that Woodland people also cultivated sumpweed and chenopodium, now considered weeds. Prehistoric sumpweed seeds are two to three times bigger than those of today, suggesting that the larger, seed-bearing plants became extinct without human intervention. People grew squash, perhaps as early as the Archaic era, possibly using it for gourd-like containers.

The plants that dramatically changed prehistoric life, however, were corn and beans, which probably filtered into eastern North America from Mexico. Data collected so far at Fort Benning indicates that corn did not play a pivotal role locally during the Woodland years.

What did have an impact was a widespread trade in burial goods and a mysterious ceremonialism. Scientists trace the beginning of these developments to the middle and southern Ohio region, although the antecedents may have originated earlier in the lower Mississippi River Valley or even in Mexico.

About 500 B.C., people in Ohio and neighboring sections of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Indiana participated in what archeologists call the Adena culture. They built cone-shaped mounds for burying the dead, placed ceremonial objects in the graves, and enacted extended mortuary rites. Stone tablets carved with elaborate predatory bird drawings and geometric designs, as well as fragments of animal masks, have been uncovered in human graves of the time.

Archeologists think the Adena people disposed of their dead in various ways. They might have placed the body on a scaffold or in a tree or buried it temporarily in an earthen mound and waited until decay was advanced. When most of the flesh was gone, they bundled the major bones together for burial in a mound. The Adena people buried some remnants of the dead in log tombs. At other times, they cremated the bones in clay basins dug in the ground. They placed still other remains inside buildings which they deliberately set afire.

The Adena culture was eventually overshadowed by a development called Hopewell that directly impacted the Fort Benning area. Sometime between 100 B.C. and 100 A.D. the Hopewellian movement blossomed in Ohio and Illinois, perhaps growing out of the Adena culture or merging with it. Hopewell followers built large ridges of earth, as tall as 12 feet, that sometimes extended for miles, forming giant squares, circles, and octagons enclosing up to 80 acres.

Venerated religious leaders or priests officiated at the intricate Hopewell burial ceremonies that often involved cremation and sumptuous feasts. The Hopewellians buried the dead with prized objects made from materials that originated far away. These included copper from the Great Lakes and the Appalachian Mountains, bear teeth and glass-like obsidian from the Rocky Mountains, and seashells and shark teeth from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Their presence in the Hopewell burials all point to a well-organized trade system. Perhaps the trade's primary purpose was to obtain these materials and objects for funerals. Some researchers think there was also a specialized group of artists who made some of the articles buried with the dead. Certainly, Hopewell people crafted interesting and sometimes compelling objects-human figurines, copper falcons, and elaborate jewelry.

There may have also been a special class of traders who followed a network of trails and rivers extending hundreds of miles. As the traders sought materials near and far, they probably imparted their religious and ceremonial ideas to those they met along the way.

Apparently, one of the major trade routes passed from Ohio south through the Fort Benning area and followed the Chattahoochee River into western Florida. A long this path, a major ceremonial center, now called Mandeville, developed just south of Fort Benning in Clay County, Georgia, not far from present-day Fort Gaines. There, in about A.D. 100, inhabitants built a large village on a bluff overlooking two creeks about a fifth of a mile from the Chattahoochee.

At first, villagers had little contact with the outside world, thinks archeologist Betty Smith, who notes that artifacts from this era consist of locally made pottery and tools formed from nearby materials. Then, about A.D. 250, the community began erecting two mounds and accumulating artifacts similar to those made by the Hopewell people in Ohio and Illinois. One of the mounds eventually reached a height of about 14 feet and had a flat top where a building stood, perhaps a temple or the residence of a revered leader. The other mound, about eight feet tall, was shaped like a cone and served as a cemetery. Burned bones found in the mound indicate that cremation was among the funeral practices.

The mounds, now submerged under the waters of Lake Walter F. George, stood about 900 feet apart, with the village between them. Archeologists uncovered many artifacts in the mounds, including five panpipes, the earliest musical instruments ever discovered in the region near Fort Benning. Made from hollowed river cane, four of the instruments were coated with copper; one was covered with a mixture of copper and silver. The Mandeville mounds also contained copper beads, cut mica, prismatic blades, and many ax-like tools called celts made from lustrous greenstone.

Fourteen copper ear spools, all except one found in a single grave, testified to what must have been a particularly painful form of adornment. The ear spools, disk-shaped and resembling miniature cymbals, were held in place by a thin column or rivet. The wearer's ear lobe was sliced open with a sharp rock, then the ear spool column was inserted. As the wound healed, the ear spool was sealed into place.

Archeologists uncovered remnants of several smoking pipes, one with the bowl shaped like a bird. All of the pipes found at Mandeville were the platform variety, standing upright on squat, rectangular bases. The bowls are plain or shaped into bird and other animal effigies.

Scientists also found several human figurines at Mandeville, both intact and in fragments. One clay figurine, about three and a half inches tall and found in the burial mound, represents a woman bent slightly forward at the waist. She wears a skirt painted red and is bare breasted. Her feet are also painted red, and she wears red arm bands. Her hair tapers down her back to the waist, and both her hair and back are painted black.

There is a display in the Columbus Museum of another Mandeville woman figurine with an elaborate hairdo with two out-swept sides resembling horns. Archeologists speculate that the figurines may be sculptural portraits of the society's elite.

People who lived at Mandeville participated in hunting and gathering forays into surrounding areas that no doubt included Fort Benning land. They may have camped at the Halloca Creek site and left potsherds with the same intricate patterns found on ceramics at Mandeville. Called Swift Creek pottery, the designs include chevrons, rectangles, squares, and other decorations carved into wood paddles and pressed into the wet clay. Potters also carved curved lines, ovals, concentric circles, and teardrop shapes into the paddles. Sometimes they filled these designs with straight lines resembling ladders. Like earlier potters, those who visited Halloca Creek also left some pots plain.

The whorling complexity of Swift Creek pottery is striking. Potters of this era moved beyond the limited repetitiveness of earlier ceramic decorations. They developed a sense of form and allowed imagination to influence their work. Swift Creek pottery appears in only a restricted area of the Southeast, including Fort Benning, although similarities to ceramics farther north attest to the widespread influence of trade and Hopewell culture.

In large sections of Georgia and South Carolina where Swift Creek pottery has been discovered, there is no evidence of the extensive ceremonialism practiced at Mandeville, according to archeologist David Anderson. That makes ongoing studies at Fort Benning all the more important because they may provide more clues to how Hopewellian ideas affected those living near the Chattahoochee.

Swift Creek pottery changed subtly over time. The complicated stamping that covered nearly entire pots during the early Woodland centuries was often confined to just parts of the vessels as the era drew to a close. Woodland people grew more adept at storing food, using deep ceramic jars, baskets, and earthen pits. At Halloca Creek, the largest pit David Chase uncovered was about four feet across at the top. The sides plunged downward about two feet, ending in a flat bottom. Similar pits, though not all as big, were found on other Woodland sites on Fort Benning. Some were used for garbage disposal.

Fire continued to play a vital role at camps like Halloca Creek where archeologists discovered one cluster of 15 fire-cracked rocks. There were also fragments of bone and traces of charcoal, further evidence of a prehistoric hearth. A human burial was also uncovered, but there were no objects with the remains. Their absence indicates not everyone of the time received the special mortuary treatment accorded some buried in the Mandeville mound. The many exquisite grave goods discovered at Mandeville suggest the emergence there of leaders accorded deference in life and death.

There is some evidence that people at Mandeville were fabricating sheets of mica to trade with residents of other ceremonial centers. Archeologists found no mica in the burial mound at Mandeville, but did find mica in the flattop mound where presumably it was processed for sending to other ceremonial centers. Mica sheets appear often in burial mounds in northern Florida and at Tunacunnhee, a Woodland occupation site just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Tunacunnhee, with eight low burial mounds made from earth and limestone, features many of the same types of artifacts found at Mandeville and was presumably on the same trade route leading north toward Ohio and Illinois.

Artifacts like panpipes, ear spools, and platform pipes found in burial mounds at both Tunacunnhee and at Mandeville have not been discovered at Fort Benning or in other excavations presumably along the same route. This leads some to suspect that the primary purpose for much of the long-distance trade was to acquire objects for religious ceremonialism and burial rites and for honoring elites at the mound centers. Many theorize, however, that there was a great deal of trade of commodities important to everyday life during this era. The evidence of this more conventional commerce is less visible to archeologists because of decomposition, proposes author William Winn.

Materials subject to decomposition, such as hickory and oak shafts for tools, as well as medicinal herbs, are just some of the items probably bartered. Another commodity may have been bear oil, used for cooking, as a hair dressing, and for protecting skin from biting insects. Other possibilities were baskets, mats, stone tools, pottery, feathers for personal adornment, beads, animal skins, red ochre and other pigments for painting the skin, animal pelts, and various foodstuffs.

These more utilitarian items often were not carried as far as the exotic artifacts found at mound centers because they were exchanged among groups who lived fairly near one another. Ceremonial materials, in contrast, were often transported great distances.

The final burial at Mandeville that contained Hopewellian-type grave goods was perhaps especially dramatic and solemn. The deceased was a girl aged 11 or 12 who died sometime around A.D. 420. Her body, placed in a large pit dug in the mound, was buried with a number of what must have been rare and valuable articles at the time. There were nine greenstone celts, a green stone spade, 13 copper-covered ear spools, and more than four pounds of galena. If, as archeologists think, these exotic objects were restricted to the highest class at Mandeville, the child may have represented the last in the line of a once powerful family, speculates archeologist Betty Smith.

Inhabitants abandoned Mandeville around A.D. 500, leaving a wealth of archeological mysteries. Indeed, people of the Woodland era left behind many fascinating and curious monuments. One of the most spectacular is Serpent's Mound, built atop a steep bluff in southern Ohio. About five feet tall and 20 feet wide, this intriguing structure of dirt winds across the ground for about 730 feet, complete with a head and coiled tail. The earth snake can be fully appreciated viewed only from above.

The same is true of Rock Eagle, a mass of thousands of rocks forming the shape of a huge bird, perhaps a mythical creature. Built in Putnam County in central Georgia, Rock Eagle couldn't be fully seen by its builders unless they climbed trees and looked down from above. Another similar, though less well-known bird effigy was shaped in stone nearby in the same county. The purposes of these stone birds remain unknown. Their creators left few artifacts nearby to serve as clues for archeologists.

Woodland people also erected a long, low wall of stones atop Fort Mountain in north Georgia, near Ellijay. The wall, never more than a few feet tall, has long inspired mythic tales of invading Europeans trapped on the mountain in a fierce, climatic battle. There is no evidence, however, of Europeans visiting there or anywhere else in the Southeast until the 1500's when the Spanish arrived. More likely, the wall was used for Woodland-era rituals, as were similar structures in Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri. The people who lived on Fort Benning land during this era likely also participated in ceremonies involving stone enclosures. In fact, remnants of such a structure have been found on nearby Pine Mountain.

Another significant development was the invention of the bow and arrow. The ramifications of the weapon were enormous. Hunters no longer had to stalk game with only spears. They could stand some distance away and still be assured of a good chance of success. The bow and arrow must have eased life immeasurably and increased leisure time. First use of the bow and arrow on Fort Benning is evident from the small, triangular stone points attributable to the later centuries of the Woodland era.

The last centuries of the period may have also witnessed another major development on Fort Benning land -establishment of a large village. The discovery of the prehistoric community site came on October 24, 1958. David Chase picked up the telephone about noon that day and learned that a construction crew digging a gas line trench had churned up bones and large pieces of ancient-looking pottery. Located near the Quartermaster warehouse (Building 1737), the trench was on the outer edges of the main post. Chase immediately went to inspect what the construction crew found. With the help of Frank Schnell, Sr., and others, he began piecing together information on a prehistoric settlement about one-half mile from the Chattahoochee.

Construction had already covered or erased large portions of the site, making a thorough investigation impossible, but Chase was able to gather enough information to surmise that a large settlement had existed during the later centuries of the Woodland era. He called it a "large and productive village" with many houses. Chase's discoveries seem to bolster thinking that Woodland people were staying in place longer.

Prehistoric residents at this Quartermaster site dug immense holes in the ground, possibly for cooking. In an area labeled Pit Number One, Chase discovered some 600 Late Woodland potsherds and a large amount of animal bone, mostly from deer. He also uncovered a small needle made from animal bone, and a deer ulna bone shaped into an awl, the long pointed tool used to punch holes in hides. The pit was about five feet in diameter. The exact depth couldn't be determined because of soil disturbance by machinery, but Chase estimated the pit to be at least four feet deep. There was a layer of gray wood ash, about five inches thick in the pit. Another large pit, probably with similar dimensions, also contained two layers of light colored ash, each about five inches thick, and fire-cracked rock. Similar, though smaller, pits were unearthed at the Carmouche site and described by Dean Wood and Tom Gresham as possible earth ovens.

To cook in an earth oven, Woodland-era people probably stacked wood at the bottom of a pit, then started a fire. They let the fire burn until only hot coals remained, while simultaneously heating rocks in campfires near the earth oven. Once the rocks were extremely hot, they lifted them from the fire, probably with wood paddles, and dropped them into the coals at the bottom of the pit. They then layered moistened leaves over the hot rocks and coals and placed meat or other food on top of the leaves. They covered the food with more moistened vegetation and finished with a final layer of insulating dirt, trapping the considerable heat radiating from the hot coals and rocks inside the oven. After awhile, they dug away the dirt and leaves and enjoyed a well-cooked meal.

Other significant finds at the Quartermaster site were globe-shaped pots with folded rims associated with people living farther south along the Chattahoochee. This type of pottery developed at a mound center in south Georgia near the town of Blakely.

Located on Kolomoki Creek, about six miles from the Chattahoochee, the Kolomoki site of about 300 acres features nine mounds and signs of human sacrifice. One mound is huge, standing about 56 feet tall with a base at the bottom. 325 feet wide and 200 feet long. Archeologists think this mound was once topped with a temple. Two other smaller mounds served as burial grounds. Signs indicate that the death of a leader at Kolomoki triggered complex ceremonies that perhaps involved killing the leader's close relatives and servants. Evidence of possible retainer deaths was found in construction details of one of the burial mounds, which was dome-shaped and about 20 feet tall.

Building of the mound occurred in one fairly continuous episode, speculates archeologist William Sears. While many of the burials and cremations may have been performed for individuals who had died earlier and whose remains had been preserved until the death of a leader, some people were perhaps purposely sacrificed, possibly by strangulation. The burial mounds contained specially made funeral pottery, ocean shell beads, and other ceremonial objects such as clay animal sculptures painted red.

During Kolomoki's peak, perhaps some 2,000 people lived there. How they interacted with or affected the people on Fort Benning land is somewhat of a puzzle. Before the work of David Chase and other archeologists on the military reservation, scientists thought that pottery used at Kolomoki didn't spread farther north. But at the Quartermaster site and other locations, Kolomoki-type pottery does appear in small amounts. For example, about ten percent of the Late Woodland pottery at the Quartermaster site is similar to Kolomoki ceramics. Possibly, villagers from the Kolomoki site moved north to live on Fort Benning land. More likely, however, Fort Benning inhabitants traded with the mound center residents.

Surprisingly, only 14 sites dating to the closing years of the Woodland era have been found on Fort Benning, and archeologists are unsure whether the local population declined or people merely congregated in a few locations.

The last prehistoric era, the Mississippian period, was intensely creative, producing exquisite art. There was also much warfare. Mound building increased, and rulers became more secular. The Mississippians were the Native Americans the earliest European explorers found.

Chapter 6: Seeds of Change

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