The New Georgia Encyclopedia is supported by funding from A More Perfect Union, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
A portion of the largest shell ring on Sapelo Island was excavated in 1950. The trench, cut into the ring by archaeologists, reveals white flecks of shell left behind by the hunter-gatherers who lived on the island during the Late Archaic Period, 5,000 to 3,000 years ago.
Courtesy of Victor D. Thompson
An archaeologist stands beside Shell Ring No. 1 on Sapelo Island. The shell rings, circular or semicircular in shape, are too large to be shown in their entirety by a single photograph.
Courtesy of Victor D. Thompson
This type of pottery originated in northwestern Georgia and is found in small quantities throughout the state. It is from the Middle Mississippian subperiod.
Courtesy of Mark Williams
Stallings Island, located in the Savannah River eight miles upstream from Augusta, is best known for its very early pottery, a technological development that predated the advent of farming in Georgia by several millennia. Pictured are sherds of the punctated fiber-tempered pottery, ca. 3,800-3,500 years ago. The sherd on top is actually 11 centimeters wide.
Courtesy of Kenneth E. Sassaman
An illustration of what Sara's Ridge probably looked like during the Middle Archaic Period. The woman in the foreground is cooking with soapstone slabs, while hunters carry a deer toward racks where fish are hung over a fire.
From Beneath These Waters, by S. Kane and R. Keeton
Archaeologists excavated a prehistoric Indian village in Rucker's Bottom near the Savannah River about 500 years after the civilization's height.
