Ph.D. Candidate Emily Bartz was awarded the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant for her project “Hunter-Gatherer Foodways in the American Southeast: Organic Residue Analysis of Stalling Period Pottery of the Middle Savannah River Valley.”
Emily’s research employs organic residue analysis (ORA) to chemically analyze the resources processed within North America’s earliest pottery vessels, Stallings wares (ca. 4500-3400 cal. B.P.) from the middle Savannah River valley of Georgia and South Carolina, spanning the transition from mobile to sedentary settlement. Focusing on this transition, ORA will be conducted on samples of ceramic sherds from multiple sites to determine the types of foods processed with pottery vessels of the Early Stallings phase (ca. 4500–4100 cal BP), when communities were mobile, and the ensuing Classic Stallings phase (ca. 4100–3800 cal BP), when communities established permanent settlements and locations of ritual intensification using pottery. In support of analyses of archaeological residues, this research project includes controlled experiments in indirect-heat cooking, a mark of Stallings foodways in the middle Savannah, but never before subject to ORA analyses.
Congratulations, Emily!