Date of Award

5-1974

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Geography and Anthropology

First Advisor

William G. Haag

Abstract

The Tchefuncte culture (300 B.C. – A.D. 300), the local manifestation of the Early Woodland Tradition, was originally defined by ceramic types and today is generally viewed in terms of phases based to a large part on varieties of the original pottery types. Although the original report included a faunal list, no detailed study of the subsistence pattern of the Tchefuncte peoples has ever been published.

At the Morton Shell Mound, the excellent preservation in a peat deposit uncovered in one of the excavation units provided an excellent opportunity to study the subsistence aspect of the Tchefuncte people. In the peat, intermixed with Tchefuncte ceramics, were abundant floral and faunal remains. These form the foundation for this study of the subsistence patterns, i.e., the dietary preferences and selective hunting practices, of the Tchefuncte people. The present thesis also contains a discussion of productive hunting methods that may have been used to obtain the animals killed by the Tchefuncte people and possible cyclical gathering activities of plant foods.

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