Indian shell tools

Bowls like this one from the Etowah Mound complex were the result of trade, perhaps in exchange for steatite items or copper.

Bowls made from horse conch were recovered from the Late Archaic sections of the Tick Island site in Volutia County, Florida had burned bottoms, indicating an attempt at cooking in shell vessels. This did not prove to be a successful approach as all of the bottoms of the shell vessels had burned out. Smaller horse conch shells used as dippers were traded to sites like Ocmulgee during the Middle Mississippian and Early Historic periods.

A very different kind of hoe or digging stick was made from oyster shells that were perforated, allowing the attachment of a stick handle for digging. Only the heaviest of shells can be used to create tools like this celt. These tools are very rare and are often recovered in mortuary contexts and may represent the high value placed on them by those that used them.

These pottery scrapers were recovered from a site in Washington County, Georgia. Name: This name was used by Bennie C. Many smaller tribes were constantly watching for these marauding warriors. The first Spanish explorers found that these Indians were not very friendly. The explorers soon became the targets of the Calusa attacks.

This tribe was the first one that the Spanish explorers wrote home about in The Calusa lived on the coast and along the inner waterways. They built their homes on stilts and wove Palmetto leaves to fashion roofs, but they didn't construct any walls.

The Calusa Indians did not farm like the other Indian tribes in Florida. Instead, they fished for food on the coast, bays, rivers, and waterways. The men and boys of the tribe made nets from palm tree webbing to catch mullet, pinfish, pigfish, and catfish. They used spears to catch eels and turtles. Familiarize yourself with local collections to observe the different types of indigenous stone tools and how they differ from local natural rocks.

Keep an accurate record of the locations of where your artifacts were recovered. Use a GPS to take pinpoint readings and write the information in a notebook. Each geological area was occupied by many different cultures over thousands of years. Each culture had their own tradition of making stone tools. Learn the different types and forms of tools made by the cultures from different time periods in your area.

Differentiate between the different designs and forms of each culture. Identify the material the tool is made from. Many tools called arrowheads are actually knives and spear tips.

They arrived in seven vessels and climbed to the peak of Mound Key, a foot-high, human-made island of shells and sand, to greet the king.

Indeed, given the results of recent research, they are now considered one of the most politically complex groups of non-agriculturalists in the ancient world. Marquardt and Victor Thompson of the University of Georgia are co-directing research at Mound Key, which has a complex arrangement of shell midden mounds, canals, watercourts and other features.

After A. They built massive mounds of shells and sand, dug large canals, engineered sophisticated fish corrals, held elaborate ceremonies, created remarkable works of art, such as intricately carved wooden masks and traversed the waters in canoes made from hollowed-out logs.

Known as the first shell collectors, the Calusa used shells as tools, utensils, building materials, vessels for domestic and ceremonial use and for personal adornment. The Spanish were used to dealing with natives who farmed and who provided the Spanish with some of their food. Marquardt, Thompson and other University of Georgia colleagues and students began fieldwork at Mound Key in , funded by the National Geographic Society.

What formation processes resulted in the complex of mounds and other features there? And to what extent does the occupational and architectural history speak to broader issues of Calusa complexity? So, we needed information on large-scale architecture, the timing and tempo of shell midden mound formation and the timing of large-scale public architecture.