These burials can tell experts 

 whether a society was egalitarian or 

 stratified into classes. They have 

 yielded clues confirming early explor- 

 ers' notes that leaders lived in the 

 towns, while commoners scattered 

 around the periphery. And they can 

 unlock doors to understanding a society 

 with details about the size of a popula- 

 tion that lived centuries ago, what the 

 inhabitants looked like, when they 

 lived and what they ate. 



From bones, for example, experts 

 can determine the Indians' diets. At the 

 Flynt site in Onslow County, little 

 direct evidence of prehistoric crops has 

 survived. But tests on bones showed 

 the inhabitants ate corn, beans and 

 other domesticated crops. 



Archaeological sites are nothing 

 less than cultural treasure chests, 

 loaded with gems of knowledge about 

 how Indians lived and died. And 

 archaeology is a field of research 

 perpetually in motion, turning over 

 theories about prehistoric societies like 

 trowels of dirt. 



"What we're looking for is enough 

 undisturbed remains to provide 

 information about past settlement 

 patterns, people, diets, environments, 

 how they lived and how they died," 

 Mathis says. "Who were they? That's 

 the big question." 



In spite of the possibilities, how- 

 ever, there has been only sluggish 

 interest in excavating the Indian sites in 

 coastal North Carolina. 



David Phelps, an archaeologist at 

 East Carolina University, says that until 

 universities took interest in the 1970s, 

 the Coastal Plain was the least known 

 archaeological region of the state, 

 received less professional attention and 

 supported fewer projects than other 

 regions. 



Phelps is now coordinating an 

 effort to reconstruct the lives of 



Southern Algonkians from Delaware to 

 North Carolina using clues from 

 archaeology, physical anthropology, 

 linguistics and ethnohistory. 



Dale McCall, an anthropologist at 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL 

 SITES ARE 

 NOTHING LESS 

 THAN CULTURAL 

 TREASURE CHESTS, 

 LOADED WITH GEMS 

 OF KNOWLEDGE 



ABOUT HOW 

 INDIANS LIVED 

 AND DIED. 

 AND ARCHAEOLOGY 

 IS AFIELD OF 



RESEARCH 

 PERPETUALLY 

 IN MOTION, 

 TURNING OVER 

 THEORIES ABOUT 

 PREHISTORIC 

 SOCIETIES LIKE 

 TROWELS OF DIRT. 



the University of North Carolina at 

 Wilmington, is one of 1 1 experts 

 working on the project. A research 

 geneticist, he is studying human skulls 

 to characterize the Algonkian popula- 

 tions by appearance and to raise 

 hypotheses about the differences or 

 similarities he sees. The North 

 Carolina Algonkians, for instance, had 

 narrower heads and larger cheekbones 

 than their northern neighbors, McCall 

 says. 



This holistic approach to Native 

 American history, using experts from 

 various disciplines, is a new one. 



But the routine study of a non- 

 European society's leftovers is a 

 tedious process that is slow to kindle 

 public passions, Phelps says. Interest 

 heightens when an ossuary is un- 

 earthed, but only about 20 Native 



American sites have been excavated on 

 the coast. 



Many are salvages to save a site in 

 jeopardy, and they can raise compelling 

 questions about how prehistoric Indians 

 lived. But Phelps says the projects that 

 provide the real cultural context for 

 these salvages are ongoing excavations 

 such as Neoheroka Fort and Jordan's 

 Landing, both Tuscaroran sites in 

 Greene and Bertie counties. 



"Unfortunately, salvage operations 

 are not the answer to the problem," he 

 says. "Long-range planning and 

 sufficient funding for excavation of key 

 sites would reduce the need for quick 

 salvage and produce more controlled 

 information." 



Even today, it is a little known fact 

 that the Coastal Plain of North Carolina 

 is scattered with these buried time 

 capsules. Excavation of the sites, 

 however, is crucial because the links to 

 ancient coastal Indian societies have 

 been so thoroughly severed. 



Few vestiges of the original cultures 

 remain, Phelps says. Even the lan- 

 guages that distinguished the Al- 

 gonkian, Iroquoian and Siouan Indians 

 of eastern North Carolina have van- 

 ished, although isolated words remain 

 in the American vocabulary. 



The only written accounts of coastal 

 Native Americans' lives were provided 

 by Europeans, who observed these 

 societies through their own cultural 

 biases. For the Algonkians, there were 

 records from the voyages of English- 

 men John White and Thomas Harriot. 

 But for the Siouan and Iroquoian 

 groups, there was not even that. 



Surviving artifacts, however, speak 

 volumes. With the care of surgeons, 

 archaeologists use dental picks, wispy 

 paintbrushes and sifters to unearth 

 bones from burials, shards of crushed 

 pottery, jewelry, stone and shell tools, 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 9 



