Hannah Grace Hoover

HANNAH HOOVER, then a graduate student at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, was awarded a grant in April 2023 to aid research on “Negotiating Difference: Investigating the Processes of Yamasee Nation-Building in South Carolina, ca. 1695-1715,” supervised by Dr. Robin A. Beck. Over eight weeks in summer 2023, the grantee and over 24 undergraduate student volunteers conducted excavations at Pocotaligo, an early 18th century capital town of the Yamasee, near Beaufort, South Carolina. This was the third and final field season othe grantee’s dissertation project, which takes a households-based approach to understanding Yamasee nationbuilding. The Yamasee were a multiethnic Native American community who settled in South Carolina (ca. 1685-1715) and played an outsized role in the regional political economy, culminating in the eruption of Yamasee War against the Carolina colony in 1715. Through a combination of geophysical techniques and horizontal excavation of six disparate areas of the town site, three structures were partially exposed at Pocotaligo. Two of these structures are the likely remains of Yamasee households with associated activity areas, like trash pits and a hearth. The third structure is large with an estimated diameter of 18 m. Given contemporary descriptions and comparative archaeological research, this structure is likely a council house and the exact place where the Yamasee War began in 1715. Future components of this research will compare artifacts and ecofacts — specifically ceramic sherds and plant and animal remains — from Pocotaligo to previous data recovered from Altamaha, another Yamasee capital town, to explore processes of social integration.