An Inundated Indigenous Quarry Preserved in Apalachee Bay, Florida, USA

Abstract

Recent investigations in Apalachee Bay, in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico, have focused on a suite of newly discovered raw material reduction localities, expanding the existing data set of archaeological sites in this renowned submerged landscape. One particular site, 8Je1796-Clint's Scallop Hole, is the most thoroughly examined such site in the Gulf of Mexico at present. This quarry is an outcrop of high-quality Suwannee chert, which occurs sporadically throughout this region of Apalachee Bay. The site was likely inundated ~4000 calendar years ago (calBP), though aspects of the lithic toolkit are suggestive that it may have been used since the Late Pleistocene or Early Holocene. The analysis of this assemblage also provides data important to the study of submerged landscapes in general. First, 8Je1796 proves that even in areas believed to have experienced the full energy of sea level transgression, archaeological sites can survive with intact features. Second, as a logistical locality, the site provides insight into raw material selection, primary reduction, and human behavior in the region. Finally, this site highlights that, using sea level as a terminus ante quem age, quarry sites offshore are more useful than their terrestrial counterparts due to more finite chronological placement.