Evaluating Non-destructive Analysis and Sampling Methods for Identifying Plant and Animal Imprints in Late Pre-contact Wattle and Daub Rubble from the Yazoo Basin, Mississippi

Abstract

ABSTRACTPast analyses of burned wattle and daub rubble from Native American house excavations have shown that plant and animal-related imprints sometimes occur in daub fragments. This paper evaluates the use of non-destructive analysis and sampling methods from a region-wide assemblage of burned daub recovered from a group of Pre-Contact Mississippian Period village and settlement sites in the Yazoo Basin of northwestern Mississippi, U.S.A. The quality and occurrence of imprints from this assemblage will be assessed, and how they may be considered in both future paleoenvironmental research and curation practices.KEYWORDS: Mississippian periodwattle and daubpaleoenvironmental analysissampling methodsSoutheastern archaeologyYazoo Basin AcknowledgementsThis paper was made possible by the suggestions and work of Dr. Evan Peacock, who spearheaded much of the early research into daub. The author also wanted to thank John Connaway for his work excavating the bulk of these artefacts, and for his significant early contributions to this subject. Drs. Andrew Ezell and David Evans, both of Mississippi State University, were instrumental in helping to identify some of the arboreal species observed in the daub, and I am deeply grateful for their assistance. The author wants to also thank the institutions and repositories that allowed him to conduct this research using their collections.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).DedicationThis paper is dedicated to the memory of Mary Evelyn Starr, who was a pioneer of this very subject, a tireless archaeologist and a true scholar of the Mississippi Delta.PermissionsThe author has full ownership of figures and data used in this paper.Additional informationNotes on contributorsWilliam D. HarrisWilliam D. Harris received a Master of Arts in Applied Anthropology from Mississippi State University in 2020 He specializes in Southeastern U.S. and Great Plains archaeology and studies seriation and artifact analysis methods.