394 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 182 



people at the Clarksville site corresponds very closely to the diets 

 described by the earliest visitors to the Southeast, so closely that this 

 correspondence might be interpreted as evidence for a late date for 

 the site. 



The skeletons of the Occaneechi Indians suggest that the change 

 from a hunting and gathering economy to an agricultural economy 

 was at best a mixed blessing. The gains may have been a more settled 

 way of life, a somewhat more abundant and reliable food supply with 

 a little less effort expended, but aside from a slight increase in height 

 in the Clarksville men, and the survival of a few individuals to 

 greater ages, general health seems to have been adversely affected. 

 The marked increase in dental decay has just been reviewed ; but there 

 are also the changes in patterns of death rates and pathology. Al- 

 though one would expect that the Clarksville people would have been 

 exposed to fewer injuries, because of their more settled way of life, by 

 far the greater number of bone lesions of tramnatic origin appear in 

 the skeletons of this group. The thickened, bowed light tibiae found 

 in many adults suggest dietary deficiencies which may have lowered 

 the people's resistance to injury and disease. The frequency of these 

 demineralized bones and their form suggest chronic dietary deficiency, 

 rather than seasonal food shortages or periodic famine resulting from 

 crop failures. The latter, however, are possible, for settlement tends 

 to deplete the game supply ; the climatic factors causing crop failures 

 would drive the game further afield in searcli of forage; while a 

 people accustomed to depending primarily upon agriculture, might 

 experience difficulty in reverting to hunting and gathering when 

 necessity arose. Unfortunately, the archeological evidence does not 

 indicate whether the Clarksville people had a mixed hunting and 

 agricultural economy, similar to that of other Virginia Indians, or 

 depended primarily on agriculture. Even in historical times seasonal 

 food shortages were not uncommon. 



The marked difference in population composition and death rates 

 at the two sites is probably associated in some way with the difference 

 in the way of life. Over half of the skeletons recovered at the Tolli- 

 fero site were those of adult men (54 percent), the remainder being 

 women (22 percent) and children (24 percent). At the Clarksville 

 site, 36 percent of the skeletons were those of adult men, 23 percent 

 those of women, and 44 percent those of children. If women out- 

 numbered men in the burials, one might conclude that the males died 

 elsewhere, possibly being killed off in war or hunting accidents; but 

 the considerable excess of males over females cannot be explained in 

 this way, and is too great to be attributed to a random deviation in 

 sex ratios at birth. Similar sex and age ratios are found at other 

 early Southeastern sites, so that these cannot be dismissed as artifacts 



