UF Florida Archaeology Parnell Mound Site (8CO326), Feature 1 Zooarchaeological Data

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 1,601 records.

1 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Wallis N (2020): UF Florida Archaeology Parnell Mound Site (8CO326), Feature 1 Zooarchaeological Data. v1.17. Florida Museum of Natural History, Florida Archaeology. Dataset/Occurrence. http://ipt.vertnet.org:8080/ipt/resource?r=flarch_zooarch_parnell_feature1&v=1.17

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Florida Museum of Natural History, Florida Archaeology. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 30595b72-0016-42cf-a1b5-afa6a2474cba.  Florida Museum of Natural History, Florida Archaeology publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF-US.

Keywords

Occurrence; Specimen

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

Feature 1 within Parnell Site.

Taxonomic Coverage

All archaeological specimens identified to subphylum, class, order, genus, or species.

Temporal Coverage

Project Data

Adapted From: Wallis, Neill J. (2012). Florida Museum of Natural History Suwannee Valley Field School: The Parnell Mound. In 2012 Field School Summaries, The Florida Anthropologist 65(4):246-248. The 2012 Florida Museum of Natural History Field School conducted survey and excavations at the Parnell Mound site (8CO326), a Suwannee Valley culture site near White Springs. The field school also recorded and investigated the Buck site (8CO1201), a small contemporaneous site located nearby. The project was directed by Neill Wallis and assisted by graduate students Rachel Iannelli and Micah Monés. The Suwannee Valley archaeological culture follows the McKeithen Weeden Island cultures of North Florida and dates to ca. A.D. 900 to 1500. Although Mississippi period components were known to exist as part of multi-component and mixed sites in the region following the survey efforts of Brenda Sigler-Lavelle and Ken Johnson during the 1970s and 1980s, few have been the focus of systematic excavations. Perhaps the lone exception is extensive work at the Fig Springs site led by Brent Weisman that enabled John Worth to refine the late period chronology and better characterize the Suwannee Valley culture. The Suwannee Valley culture is presumed to represent the ancestors of the Utina Timucua who occupied the region during the early colonial era, but there are curiously few archaeological correlates of the chiefdoms that the Spanish described. Preliminary investigations by FLMNH in 2011 identified Parnell as a relatively “pure” Suwannee Valley culture site, a rarity in the region. The goal of the 2012 field school was to define the habitation areas surrounding the mound and collect data to help further refine the Suwannee Valley chronology and describe village life. Students produced a topographic map of the site using a total station, delineated the distribution of artifacts through systematic shovel testing and test excavations, and discovered and excavated a very large pit feature 40 m north-northwest of the mound summit. The field school completed a total of 139 shovel tests and 32 square meters of test and block excavation. The sand mound at Parnell is situated on the edge of a terrace that overlooks a large pond and swamp. The mound is heavily deranged after illicit digging, some of it with heavy machinery, but its original dimensions are apparent, measuring 27 m across and between 2 and 3.5 m high above the natural ground surface from various vantage points along the terrace. Artifacts are distributed widely across a 200-m wide area around the mound, however, intensive shovel testing revealed three discrete clusters near the mound. One of these clusters corresponds with a large cultural feature discovered 40 m north-northwest of the mound summit. This feature, the only one recorded at the site, was a pit approximately 2.5 m by 3 m in diameter and extends half a meter below the former ground surface. The feature consisted of a dark black charcoal-filled stain covered by an organically enriched brown sand deposit filled with artifacts and fauna. The feature was also surrounded by a 2-m wide zone of very high artifact density. Within this massive feature and the immediately surrounding deposit were thousands of large deer bone fragments representing numerous individuals, along with myriad other fauna and aritfacts. Rather than uncovering the remains of daily village life, investigations at Parnell identified the location of a substantial feast, where food was prepared en masse, consumed, and soon after deposited and covered over. These are likely the remains of a major event for which people congregated from many surrounding residential sites, perhaps including the small “hamlet” recorded half a kilometer away at the Buck site. Fine screen and bulk samples taken from this feature will provide a treasure trove of information pertaining to diet, food preparation, cuisine, and feasting.

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

All soil was excavated using either a trowel or shovel. All fauna was collected through 1/4-inch and 1/16-inch screen. Materials from non-feature sediment were dry screened through 1/4-inch mesh and feature fill was water screened through 1/16-inch mesh.

Method step description:

1. See above.

Collection Data

Bibliographic Citations

1. Wallis, N.J. and M.E. Blessing. 2015. Ritualized Deposition and Feasting Pits: Bundling of animals in Mississippi Period Florida. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 25(1):79-98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0959774314000699
2. Wallis, N.J. and M.E. Blessing. 2015. Big Feasts and Small Scale Foragers: Pit features as feast events in the American southeast. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 39:1-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2015.01.003

Additional Metadata