Masters Theses

Date of Award

8-1984

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Anthropology

Major Professor

Walter E. Klippel

Committee Members

Michael H. Logan, Gerald F. Schroedl

Abstract

Research in 1980 and 1981 at the Cave Spring site, located on the Duck River in the Nashville Basin of Middle Tennessee, revealed a buried paleosol in a Holocene terrace which contained charcoal, river gravel and chipped stone artifacts. Radiocarbon dates from this buried stratum range from 6500 to 7300 years before present. Evaluating the potential of this buried deposit for yielding behaviorally significant information depended upon learning (1) whether the cultural materials were undisturbed or were redeposited by the river, (2) whether one or several periods of deposition or occupation were represented, and (3) whether material from one or more than one cultural group was included in the deposit. Gravel from the excavation was studied and compared to control samples from a nearby gravel bar and from a Pleistocene terrace. A significantly higher percentage of reddened and broken gravel occurred with the artifacts than in the control situations. This information, in conjunction with a gravel concentration exposed during excavation, suggests that the gravel had been culturally introduced for use in stone boiling or as hearth stones.

Refitting analysis was conducted using chipped stone artifacts and debris to determine if the highly leptokurtic vertical distribution of artifacts resulted from disturbance processes or sequent occupations. Reconstructed flake sequences and conjoined artifact fragments documented that vertical post depositional movement of these buried materials had occurred. Pieces from the same refitted set had dispersed as much as 40 cm vertically through silty clay during the past 7,000 years. Horizontal movement of pieces and systematic size sorting, as would result from stream action, had not occurred.

The problem of how many cultural groups were responsible for the archaeological remains was confronted using the Cave Spring projectile point-knife sample. Given the perspective of systematic chipped stone reduction, the concept of multistage types is developed. The Eva biface reduction system is proposed with the Eva multistage type encompassing a variety of morphological and functional states which reflect expectable variation in the reduction or uselife sequences of particular artifacts within the overall system. The variability observed in the Cave Spring projectile point-knife sample, including specimens traditionally classified as Morrow Mountain points, can be attributed to a single biface reduction system and we need not infer the activities of two distinct cultural groups in accounting for the observed variability. The Morrow Mountain type in the southern Appalachian region apparently represents a biface reduction system distinct from that in the Middle Tennessee region commonly denoted as the Eva-Morrow Mountain cluster. This conclusion has significant ramifications for the assignment of assemblages to specific archaeological taxonomic units, and for making appropriate assemblage comparisons. It is not tenable to refer variability in the archaeological record directly to cultural variability. The situational nature of behaviors which operated to create the archaeological record must also be considered.

Download
Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Included in

Anthropology Commons

Share

COinS