Fig Island - Occupation

Occupation

Ceramics found in the mounds are primarily Thoms Creek, with some Stallings. Both ceramic traditions fall in the Late Archaic period, about 3000 to 5000 years ago on the South Carolina coast and coastal plain. The earliest evidence for pottery along the South Carolina coast is from about 4200 years ago.

Groups living along the coast had become mostly sedentary by the Late Archaic period, living in permanent villages while making occasional foraging trips. Archaeologists have debated whether the shell rings resulted from the simple accumulation of middens in conjunction with circular villages, or if they were deliberately built as monuments. The start of mound building in the lower Mississippi River valley and in Florida by about 6000 years ago is cited as increasing the plausibility that the shell-rings were also monumental architecture. Excavations of the Fig Island rings revealed little evidence of habitation on the rings, and circumstantial evidence of rapid deposition of large quantities of shells in deliberate creation of the rings.

Although the large size of shell middens gives the impression that the people associated with them lived primarily on shellfish, careful excavation of middens has revealed large quantities of fish bones, indicating that the people obtained more of their protein and calories from small fish than from shellfish. There is no evidence that the shell-ring dwellers practiced horticulture, but gathered plants were exploited. Nuts, fruits and seeds have been excavated from shell-ring sites.

On March 29, 2007, Fig Island was designated a National Historic Landmark.