Lithic Technological Organization of the Suwannee Tradition: A View from the Ryan-Harley Site (8JE1004), Florida, USA

ABSTRACT

Suwannee points are an unfluted lanceolate style found on the Lower Southeastern Coastal Plain of North America. Suwannee points are undated but thought to represent a regional, post-Clovis group that lived during the Younger Dryas, with a hypothesized age range of ∼12,700-11,500 years ago based on contextual data. This paper presents analyses of the Suwannee component from Ryan-Harley, the only known discrete Suwannee assemblage. The site is interpreted as representing “gearing up” ahead of a mobility event. The toolkit and assemblage from Ryan-Harley demonstrate that Suwannee people practiced residential mobility and maintained an adaptable, versatile toolkit. However, some elements of the assemblage, like dependence on local tool stone, are more common in logistically organized groups. This mixture of provisioning strategies indicates that the Suwannee assemblage at Ryan-Harley may exhibit the start of a transition toward logistical organization which began after the end of the Younger Dryas in this region.

KEYWORDS:

• Younger Dryas
• technological organization
• Suwannee
• submerged landscapes
• Paleoindian

Acknowledgements

Research at the Ryan-Harley site was supported by funding from the El Frieda Frank Foundation, North Star Archaeological Research Program, Center for the Study of the First Americans, and the Texas A&M Anthropology program. Research continued with permits and assistance from the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. I sincerely thank brothers Ryan and Harley Means for finding the site and bringing it to the attention of science. Special thanks to Jim Wiederhold who taught me much about usewear as we worked through the artifacts together.” I also thank Drs. Michael Waters, Ted Goebel, and Jessi Halligan for comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and critiques, which have strengthened the arguments herein. I also thank Adam Burke for his commentary on raw-material use strategy in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by College of Liberal Arts and North Star Archaeological Research Program, Texas A and M University, and the El Frieda Frank Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Morgan F. Smith

Morgan Smith earned his PhD at Texas A&M University in 2019. He is currently a UC Foundation Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. His research interests include submerged landscapes, the peopling of the Americas, mobile foraging groups, and geoarchaeological site characterization methods.