Revelatory locales: The ritual reuse of a Late Archaic shell ring in South Carolina

Abstract

Crematory pit shows ritual reuse of a site a millennium after original construction. Indigenous Philosophy provides novel insights into site reuse. Use of cremation spans at least one thousand years in the coastal Southeast U.S. Native Americans created numerous shell rings – large circular or arcing middens surrounding open plazas – across the coastal Southeast U.S. during the Late Archaic (ca. 4800–3200 cal B.P.). While archaeologists have long studied how Late Archaic peoples formed and used shell rings, their later histories are less well known despite these constructions being long-lasting and visible for millennia after their formation. We describe how later southeastern coastal occupants engaged with one such ring, the Sea Pines Shell Ring, by cremating human and non-human bodies more than a thousand years after its initial construction. This ritual reuse echoes similar practices engaged more than a thousand years earlier at another nearby ring and suggests that these sites were viewed as powerful places both during their initial construction and for hundreds of years afterwards. Relying on Native American philosophers, we suggest that shell rings, like other powerful places, are best understood as revelatory locales where time could be collapsed and communication with powerful entities, including ancestral peoples, established.