Hickory nut storage and processing at the Victor Mills site (9CB138) and implications for Late Archaic land use in the middle Savannah River valley

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite the ubiquity of charred hickory nutshell in archaeological contexts throughout the Eastern Woodlands, evidence for nut processing and storage is elusive and ambiguous. To the extent that hickory nuts factored prominently in Indigenous foodways – particularly as a storable resource – mass processing was possibly specialized at times and sited in places for that express purpose. One such place was Victor Mills (9CB138) in Columbia County, Georgia. Excavations at this site of Early Stallings activity (ca. 4350–4050 cal BP) revealed an assemblage of pits, fire-cracked rock, anvils, hammerstones, fiber-tempered pottery, and soapstone slabs indicative of large-scale nut storage and processing. Given the seasonal ecology of hickory production, visits to Victor Mills for harvesting and storing nuts took place in the fall, but also at other times of the year, when stores were tapped and nuts processed for transport to sites of habitation. Put into larger context, nut storage at Victor Mills fits the conditions for concealment as outlined by DeBoer ([1988] Subterranean Storage and the Organization of Surplus: The View from Eastern North America. Southeastern Archaeology 7:1–20), that subterranean stores were established in places subject to raiding when left unattended. Implications follow for the land-use patterns of Early Stallings communities and their relationship to neighbors upriver.