Archaeological Investigations at Yourhaney Plantation (38GE18)

ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT YOURHANEY PLANTATION131Fragmentation can result from such taphonomic factors such as differential destruction during thebutchering of carcasses, breaking of bone during processing, and scavenger activity (Grayson1984: 17). Factors outside the realm of intentional breakage that inflate NISP include trampling,breakage during excavation, and careless handling of specimens. (Lyman 1994: 101).When NISP is used as a measure of abundance of taxa at a site, its use causes the analyst toassume all fragmentation, be it cultural or the result of some other force, is uniform and that all taxaare being represented, recovered, and counted equally (Reitz and Wing 1999: 192). In this vein,NISP does not account for differential survivability of bones and is unable to determine the howmany of the bones belong to one individual organism. It also affects the identifiability of aspecimen, which varies from taxa to taxa. While NISP has a few limitations, it was utilized in thisanalysis.Bone weight, which represents quantities of bone present, is useful for comparing relative size ofspecimens, as well as degree of fragmentation (Jackson and Scott 2001: 189; Reitz and Wing1999: 200; Erlandson 1994: 151, 154; Zeder 1991: 107, 219). It can also be used to comparein a relative way the quantities of bone representing different taxa (Reitz and Wing 1999: 200;Driesch 1993; Stahl 1995: 158). While it cannot account for differential densities of bone, it doeseliminate the negative effects fragmentation has on assemblages (Jackson and Scott 2001: 189).Due to its strengths and the fact that it provides the most robust quantitative measure, weight datawas obtained during this analysis.The size ranges of the fish from the site were examined to infer what procurement methods werepossibly used. Species percentages for fish were analyzed to determine what environments weretargeted for resource acquisition.Burned bones were recorded, as were bones that exhibit calcination. The percentages of burntbones were looked at in relation to species. Calcined bones were noted as it provided informationon the intensity and duration of exposure to fire.ARCHAEOBOTANICAL STUDYThis archaeobotanical analysis focuses upon macroplant remains collected by flotation from 12prehistoric Native American features (5 Woodland, 3 Mississippian, 4 indeterminateWoodland/Mississippian), 14 historic Euro-American features (3-18 th century, 4-circa 1800, 2-19 thcentury, 5-indeterminate 18 th /19 th century), and 1 non-feature control sample (Bag 417). Thesampled features (Tables 1-2) consisted of historic hearths (N=3), historic postholes (N=5),indeterminate pits (N=9), pits containing smashed prehistoric pottery vessels (N=4), an historicbuilder’s trench (N=1), an historic root/storage pit (N=1), an historic clay extraction pit (N=1), aprehistoric human burial (N=1), and an historic midden deposit (N=1) from the Yauhannah BluffSite (38GE19). The non-feature context (Bag 417) was a control sample collected from generalexcavation fill.Prehistoric occupation of this multi-component site consisted of Early through Late Woodland Periodand Mississippian Period occupations. Five of the features that were sampled for archaeobotanicalremains clearly date to the Woodland Period (Table 14).