Andrea Palmiotto

Archaeological evidence from recent investigations in the Georgia Bight propose that the enduring Late Archaic shellfishing practices and the variability in shell ring morphology represent ongoing negotiations between human and non-human actors within these coastal landscapes. The bone artifacts in these settings have the potential to contribute to a broader understanding of these negotiations through multiple lines of material analyses and elucidate resource procurement strategies, the selection of animals, and the production sequences of these artifacts—and how the materiality of these social practices may yield material evidence of persistent traditions and ongoing dialogues. In an area with few lithic sources, animals represent versatile affordances that can contribute to sustenance, construction materials, ritual acts, and raw resources for tool production, to name a few. Therefore, bones and bone tools can provide insight into the purposeful and continual co-production of knowledge and engagement with various aspects of the landscape. To understand the social processes of human/non-human interactions in tandem with technological learning processes in coastal adaptations, this proposal is centered in an integrative analysis of bone tools that includes a synthesis of bone artifacts and zooarchaeological and geochemical analyses, including isotopes and zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry.