The Mound Island Project: An Archaeological Survey in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. Bulletin No. 19

Title

The Mound Island Project: An Archaeological Survey in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. Bulletin No. 19

Creator

Richard S. Fuller See all items with this value

Ian W. Brown See all items with this value

Date

1998

uri

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Bibliographic Citation

Fuller, Richard S. and Ian W. Brown. 1998. The Mound Island Project: An Archaeological Survey in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. Bulletin No. 19. Alabama Museum of Natural History, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

annotates

• Survey work and investigations of sites around 1BA2 with fieldwork completed in 1994. Seventeen sites, including 11 new resources, were documented. Most sites exhibited some facet of a Mississippian occupation.
• Site 1BA272 visited, and a single sherd of shell tempered pottery which was classified as Mississippi Plain, var. Pine Log (Fuller and Brown 1998:37) indicated to them a “Protohistorical” or Early Historical era component.
• Site 1BA195 is an extensive shell midden, with sizable Late Woodland and Mississippian occupations.
• Site 1BA271 was visited and in addition to the extensive (and eroding) Rangia shell midden, pottery associated with the Protohistoric period was observed and/or collected, including Moundville Incised.
• 1BA2 was revisited, extensive surface collections of pottery were made across the site and Mississippian and later historical period Native American ceramics were identified from numerous surface proveniences.
o What Fuller and Brown (1998:71) classified as Barataria Incised, Leland Incised, Graveline and Guillory Plain, Lafitte Plain, Mississippi Plain from the surface at the “south end” and from Mound C surface are the only “historical period Native American” labels for later components.
• 1BA263 was revisited and the two shell middens were relocated, and a small collection of pottery made from various disturbed contexts (e.g., tree fall, animal burrow) and the assemblages indicate a single Bear Point Phase component.
• 1BA264 was also revisited and a small collection of Bear Point Phase artifacts made, but there is not much additional information about the site itself.
• 1BA273 has a Bear Point Phase component, but there was no evidence of buried deposits, and the authors surmised that the site subsided into the river.
• 1BA275 is the location of the Farmar’s Bluff plantation, which based on this report does have a historical Native American component based on the presence of Port Dauphin series pottery in association with French Colonial artifacts and could represent additional Taensa occupation of the bluff.
• 1BA499 and 1BA500 were relocated and Late Woodland and Mississippian series sherds were collected.
• Changes to the deltaic system have resulted in deep burial of many shell middens, and subsequent changes to the local fauna of the area for which the archaeological record, if ever truly examined, could provide important comparative datasets.

Subject

Alabama See all items with this value

Delta See all items with this value

Rivers See all items with this value

Coastal Plain See all items with this value

Ceramics See all items with this value

French See all items with this value

Sites See all items with this value

Shell Tempered See all items with this value

Midden See all items with this value

Mound See all items with this value

Bottle Creek See all items with this value

Bear Point See all items with this value

Sampling See all items with this value

Taensa See all items with this value

Port Dauphin See all items with this value

Temporal Coverage

Precontact See all items with this value

Postcontact See all items with this value

Mississippian See all items with this value

Late Woodland See all items with this value