During this sunset graze, the doe paused often to raise her head and listen, but heard only the birds and usual sounds. A low whistle like the wind caught her attention too late. A deadly blow struck her in the chest, but still she couldn't see where the danger came from, because this time, the hunter was neither close nor using a spear. The fatal weapon was an arrow unleashed from a hiding place many yards away.

Altered weapons were only one of many differences separating the approximately 2,000 years of the Woodland culture from the Archaic period. Some changes were logical progressions from earlier customs, but other developments are shrouded in a mystery that may never be explained.

Growing appetites for plant foods, created by increasing populations and the need to exploit all available food, led to gardens. Big-faced sunflowers were among the original favorites for cultivation. Hardy and prolific, the sunflower yields many nutritious seeds, which early people probably crushed for cooking oil. They also grew squash. Like the sunflower, squash produces abundantly with little human effort. Prehistoric gardeners also likely tended plants that today are considered weeds, including sumpweed and chenopodium, a plant in the same family as spinach and beets.

Knowledge of ancient Southeastern agriculture comes from analysis of recovered seeds and fossilized pollen. Sunflower and sumpweed seeds, for example, collected from various sites from the Woodland period, tend to be bigger than wild seeds, and uniform in size, indicating prehistoric growers purposely saved them for their superiority and replanted them. In fact, prehistoric sumpweed seeds are two to three times bigger than those of today, suggesting that without human intervention the larger-seeded plants died out.

While any harvest would have been a welcome addition to a family's food store, Woodland people were probably far from reliant on cultivation. They continued to forage among the wild plants and nuts still widely available, as well as to depend on the animals hunters could kill.

But researchers in the Russell Reservoir area did uncover definitive evidence that people during this time grew their own food. For example, in their study of soils at a Late Woodland site called Simpson's Field in Anderson County, South Carolina, archeologists uncovered a piece of squash rind and two grains of fossilized pollen suspected to be from squash plants-persuasive evidence of agriculture. Fossilized pollen from sunflowers and chenopodium also surfaced, although researchers couldn't be certain that these resulted from cultivation. Nor could they be sure if a single, badly corroded grain of pollen came from corn. (Corn didn't really gain importance until the waning years of the Woodland tradition.) Signs of other possible foods included shells from white walnut, hickory, and acorn, and seeds from maypop, persimmon, and grape.

The last layer they added was dirt, heaped on until the entire pit was covered, trapping the considerable heat generated by the coals and rocks. Sometime later, they removed the dirt and leaves and ate the now-baked food.

Researchers concluded that the oven was much used because charcoal, ash, and clay had accumulated over a foot thick in the bottom. Three more ovens, none as deep as the first, were also discovered nearby, suggesting either large-scale communal cooking or perhaps one family digging different ovens over time.

The Simpson's Field site, located on a terrace about 130 yards from the Savannah River, is also thought to reflect another new development-a small village of some duration. One-hundred-nine postmolds, most of them probably from the Woodland years, were found. The multitude of stains, combined with other findings, signaled that dwellings once existed.

Further indications that people once lived for a year or even several years at Simpson's Field came with the unearthing of two human burials, the oldest discovered in the Russell studies. Decomposition was so extensive that researchers could determine only that one was a child about seven and the other an adult. Both were found near the outline of a possible dwelling.

In Louisiana, for example, at Poverty Point, Late Archaic people began to create some of the first earthen mounds. Using only baskets, they carried tons of dirt, which they steadily unloaded until the accumulation formed sizable hills, up to 70 feet tall.

Besides mounds, the Louisiana site features dirt formed into six octagon-shaped ridges encircling an area about two-thirds of a mile wide. Prehistoric people built their houses atop the ridges, and cut pathways through the ground below to create an orderly pattern like the rays of the sun.

Mounds were built extensively throughout the eastern United States during the Woodland period. Some were topped with religious temples; others entombed the remains of the dead; while the purposes of still other mounds are lost.

Some of the Woodland dead in Ohio were interred in log tombs; others were placed in buildings that were likely intentionally burned; and still other corpses were burned in clay basin crematories dug in the ground.

There were probably religious leaders or priests in the Woodland era responsible for properly shepherding the spiritual interests of both the living and the dead. The sites where they performed these functions became ceremonial centers. Trade of rare materials for spiritual purposes was likely among the centers, but it's possible that -everyday staples were not exchanged, according to some experts.

In southwest Georgia, such a ceremonial focal point developed at Mandeville near the Chattahoochee River. A flat-topped mound which once held a temple and a cone-shaped burial mound attest to the strong Hopewell influence at Mandeville.

Other curiosities of the Woodland era again involved accumulating staggering amounts of earth and other materials to form well-defined shapes, often in the forms of animals. Some of these conceptions reveal their designs only through an aerial view, often impossible for their builders to achieve without climbing tall trees. But erect them they did, even though they would have had difficulty seeing the full extent of their accomplishments.

Understandably, these and other unusual relics have roused far-fetched speculation and served as the basis for legends. Rocks arranged in a low wall near the top of a mountain in north Georgia, for instance, are believed by some to be the handiwork, not of prehistoric Indians, but of a prince of Wales. Prince Medoc, according to the tale, was an experienced sailor who abandoned his native land because he was disgusted by infighting over the throne among his relatives. He sailed to the Gulf of Mexico and landed near Mobile, Alabama, from where he and his followers headed inland, ultimately reaching Georgia. An attack by natives led the prince and his men to build the stone "fort" atop the mountain. When they lost the battle, supposedly he and his followers fled north toward Indiana.

While there may indeed have been a Prince Medoc, his disappearance from the British Isles in 1169 apparently came hundreds of years after the erection of the rock structure at Fort Mountain. Furthermore, the wall, only a few feet tall at its highest point, would have been an ineffective defense. And there is no archeological record in the Southeast indicating that European explorers arrived in the area before the Spanish did in the 1500's. More likely, Woodland people performed rituals at the mountain wall and at other similar places in the East.

Population in the area possibly declined during the Early Woodland era, with people moving away to an, as yet, undetermined region. But while fewer people may have lived within the study boundaries, numbers were swelling along the Atlantic coast where a new type of ceramics called Refuge pottery emerged. Artists there made tooth-like projections on the sides of vessels and impressed designs of parallel lines in the clay. Many authorities think that even earlier, during the Late Archaic era, coastal dwellers began shaping a culture that became distinctly different from the ways of people in the Piedmont.

Within the reservoir boundaries, many years passed from pottery's first use in the Late Archaic period well into the Woodland years before it become essential to daily life. While people commonly made clay wares, they were not dependent on them until much later.

None of the fabrics were found in the Russell excavations, probably because of their susceptibility to decay. But even earlier weavings have been found in Archaic human burials in Florida at the Windover bog. And in Salt Cave in Kentucky, woven slippers from the Woodland period escaped deterioration.

Some 50 different early Woodland era locations within the reservoir area disclosed pottery decorated with fabric impressions called Dunlap. (Archeologists name ceramics based on the tempering and texture of the paste, the designs, and geographical locations where they are found.) Other pottery uncovered in the reservoir area may have achieved a fabric-impressed look by being formed inside a basket. Prehistoric basketry from the era has been found in the eastern United States, at Salt Cave in Kentucky, for example, but none appeared in the reservoir studies. That doesn't rule out its existence, however. The local people probably weaved baskets and possibly also carved intricate wood art. Wood, like baskets and fabric, rarely surmounts damaging environmental effects over thousands of years. Carvings, however, have been found in other areas in the East, so again, a precedent exists.

Pottery also became more important. Potters used coarse sand and crushed rock, called grit, to temper the clay in wares known as Deptford. Some Deptford pots were plain. Others were embellished with parallel lines called simple stamping, or with check stamping resembling tiny waffles. Both of these distinctive patterns were first carved in paddles then pushed into the clay.

Archeologists also found signs of several other possible shelters at Rucker's Bottom. Postmolds for one suspected house formed an oval about 11 yards across at the widest points. Other stains near the center of the oval indicated there were once support poles for rafters and the roof, making for a sturdy structure. A jumble of postmolds near the oval may have been the remnants of an entrance or perhaps a storage place.

Such differences of ceramic styles found within a short distance trigger many questions. Were the people of Simpson's Field immigrants from central or western Georgia where complex designs were much more prevalent and associated with ceremonial centers and trade? Or were they simply innovators of longstanding residence in the area, more open to change than the people at Rucker's Bottom?

The complex pottery decorations of Simpson's Field have been widely associated with the last 300 years of the Woodland period in north Georgia. But, according to David Anderson, the Russell studies showed that the simple stamped designs were also possibly made at the same time in north Georgia, and throughout wide stretches of South Carolina.

Woodland residents, like earlier Archaic people, dug shallow, basin-shaped holes to cache food. But they also dug much deeper pits, sometimes almost four feet wide and two feet deep. These pits, which were bell-shaped, bigger at the base than at the top, were used to store seeds and nuts and perhaps other foods. Such storage provided a way to tide hungry people over lean hunting and gathering times. Occasionally, a pit became a garbage dump, which was gradually filled in over time.

The Russell studies further helped pinpoint other aspects of the Woodland lifestyle. Researchers learned that people in the area moved closer to the Savannah River towards the end of the period, and spent much less time camped on ridges or near creeks in the uplands. Teresa Rudolph concluded from artifact analysis that camps or villages were established at junctures of tributaries and the Savannah River, and on islands in the river. The narrowness of the Savannah River valley, she concluded, made the walk fairly easy from Woodland camps to upland resources.

In contrast, other Woodland people living not far away within the Coastal Plain spent more time away from major rivers than before. Some coastal people also engaged in burial mound building, interring their dead in sand hills several feet high. Grave goods along the coast were modest compared to the lavish objects buried elsewhere at ceremonial centers, perhaps a signal of more egalitarian societies.

Burials of female remains predominated in sand mounds on St. Catherine's Island off the Georgia coast, prompting David Thomas and Clark Larsen to speculate that women were possibly the leaders there.

There were implications, too, that some coastal people may not have buried their dead immediately. Instead, they may have kept corpses in charnel houses until decomposition was well advanced, then buried the skeletons. They may have also delayed interment of those who died while they were away on seasonal stays in the backcountry. Perhaps the survivors protected the remains until they could be returned to the coast for burial in the sand mounds.

Experts think the people of Kolomoki may have practiced a particularly harsh ritual. When a revered leader died, they may have killed the deceased's close family members and servants and buried them with him.

Intriguing ceremonial practices continued after the Woodland era ended, but the ritualism that dominated at the mound centers gave way to a more secular rule. In the final, prehistoric period in the region, called the Mississippian era, inhabitants were ruled by chiefs, some of whom were quite powerful, holding sway over miles of territory. Mississippian people became more dependent on agriculture, created intricate art, and frequently lived in larger, more permanent towns protected from attack by defensive ditches and fences. These were the people who made first contact with Europeans, often with disastrous results.