Collective action and shellfish harvesting practices among Late Archaic villagers of the South Atlantic Bight

Indigenous coastal communities across the globe sustainably harvested oysters and other shellfish species for millennia. European colonialism and the emergence of market-based institutions, however, lead to the eventual demise of many oyster reefs and fisheries beginning in the late 1800 s. Circular shell rings situated on Georgia’s South Atlantic coast are the preserved remnants of Native American village communities during the Late Archaic (5000–3000 cal. BP). Mollusk shells from these archaeological contexts hold chemical clues into past human-environmental interactions and thus give insight into Indigenous histories and sustainable shellfish harvesting practices. In this paper, we interpret shellfish geochemistry data (oxygen isotopes, δ¹⁸O) from the Sapelo Island Shell Ring Complex within a theoretical framework of cooperation and collective action to understand the ways in which Ancestral Muskogean people of Sapelo Island, Georgia, effectively managed and sustained oyster reefs and other coastal fisheries during the Late Archaic. More specifically, δ¹⁸O values from 18 oysters and 57 clams were used to determine season of harvest and to estimate salinity values of the habitats from which the shells were harvested. Results demonstrate considerable variation in estimated salinity values and some statistically significant differences in δ¹⁸O and salinity values between shells harvested in different seasons. This indicates that the sedentary villagers who lived at the Sapelo Shell Ring Complex were moving around seasonally and using an array of habitats. We argue that this suggests the presence of social institutions or rules that governed the use of coastal estuaries so that mollusks were not overexploited.