Anthropology Commons^™

An Analysis Of Ceramic Vessel Form And Function At The Pockoy Island Shell Rings, Catherine Garcia

Senior Theses

Four thousand years ago, Late Archaic peoples along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia accumulated mollusk shells into enormous, circular structures known as shell rings. The purpose of these rings has been a subject of archaeological debate for decades, with no clear consensus as to whether they are accidental accumulations of domestic refuse, or intentionally constructed landscape markers with ceremonial or symbolic meaning. This paper presents the results of a morphological and functional analysis of ceramic vessels excavated from the Pockoy Island Shell Rings, a double shell ring site located on the shore of Edisto Island, South Carolina, in …