Alabama Gulf Coast Prehistory

Several years ago, my wife and I were sitting on the beach in Orange Beach, Alabama. I like to keep busy even when I'm resting, so I was casually sifting sand through my fingers. When doing that, I usually find tiny seashells or fragments of larger ones. This time I felt something different and being an avid arrowhead hunter, I knew what it was: worked stone. In about five minutes, I had found a half dozen broken arrowheads and knives.

The Alabama Gulf Coast has a rich history dating back more than 11,000 years when Paleo Indians shared the land with mega-fauna like bison, giant ground sloth, mammoth, and mastodon.

When Native Americans became less nomadic, villages were built where condo developments, subdivisions, and amusements parks are today.

If you are curious, I will take you back to those times.

Alabama Gulf Coast Archaeological Periods

The Paleo Period

The first inhabitants of the Alabama Gulf Coast area were Paleo Indians who arrived approximately 11,000 years ago. Most scholars believe that the ancestors of those people migrated from Asia to present day Siberia and then, during the Ice Age, walked across the frozen Bering Strait. From there, they migrated to the rest of the continent.

The climate was drier in Alabama than it is now, and temperatures were five to 10 degrees cooler. Comparable temperatures today would be in southern Canada.

Paleo Indian sites are difficult to find because they were nomadic, and they lived in small bands of 20 to 50 family members. They moved away from areas where food sources were depleted. Rising sea levels have placed some Paleo Indian sites in the Gulf of Mexico. Other sites along rivers and streams were washed away or were deeply buried.

Farming was non-existent at that time; Paleo Indians were hunter-gatherers who made use of whatever game they could kill or edible wild berries, nuts, and plants they could find.

They hunted megafauna until hunting pressure and climate changes led to the extinction of those giant animals. As the megafauna began to disappear, Paleo-Indians had to increasingly rely on smaller animals, some that are still around today like white-tailed deer, squirrels, and rabbit.

Things generally associated with Native Americans like pottery and the bow and arrow were not known to those people. The weapon of choice for big animals was the spear, which was sometimes tipped with a fluted point known today as a Clovis. Artifact hunters and collectors covet this point and think of it as the finest example of Native American projectile point manufacturing. The spear was either thrown by hand or was launched by a spear thrower called the atlatl.

The Archaic Period

About 8,500 years ago, temperatures had increased to about what they are today. People remained primarily nomadic, traveling in bands of family members, but since warmer weather produced more food, over time they moved less often. Archaeologists refer to the time period 10,500 to approximately 3,000 years before the present as the Archaic period, and they farther divide this age into Early, Middle, and Late Archaic. The age of a site is determined by the size and shape of the projectile points found in the area.

Chestnuts, hickory nuts, blackberries, muscadines, persimmons and pokeweed were some of the edible plants that were harvested. Animals they hunted included many that still live today: turkeys, deer, raccoons, rabbits, squirrels, turtles, snakes, and birds. The local waters provided an abundance of seafood. Huge shell middens on these bodies of water indicate that freshwater mussels were a favored food source.

People were generally healthy, but a toothache or an infected finger cut could kill them. The average age at death was 40. The earliest signs of warfare, projectile points embedded in bones, have been found on Archaic sites.

Unlike Paleo sites, Archaic sites on the Alabama Gulf Coast have not been difficult to locate. There was a population boom during the Archaic Period; the number of people in an Archaic group has been estimated at between 50 to 150.

Around 1500 BC, pottery-making found its way to Alabama from the Atlantic Coast (present-day Georgia and South Carolina). A wider of variety of tools were in use, and many were made from non-native materials brought in from constantly widening trade routes.

Dwellings were circular and made of timber, mud, and thatch.

True communities began to form during the Late Archaic period when Native Americans began farming. The first crops in Alabama were sunflowers, squash, and other seed-bearing plants, planted in small garden plots. At around 1000 BC, civilization in Alabama had changed to a point where archaeologists refer to it as a new period, the Woodland Period.

The Woodland Period

The Woodland Period lasted for 1000 years, until AD 1000. Archaeologists farther divide the Woodland period into Early Woodland, Middle Woodland, and Late Woodland.

Farming became more complex, and people stayed longer in one area to work their crops. Archaeological evidence indicates that for the first time, villages were occupied year-round. Beans, sunflowers, maize, and squash were crops that Native Americans became very proficient at cultivating. Spring through fall was, for the most part, dedicated to farming, hunting, and food storage and preparation. Meat was dried and crops and nuts were stored for the less productive winter months.

The invention of the bow and arrow during the Woodland period revolutionized hunting.

The Mississippian Period

The Woodland Period gave way to the Mississippian Period, which is farther divided in Early Mississippian. Middle Mississippian, and Late Mississippian.

By this time, people were living in rectangular dwellings.

Projectile points were generally small enough to fit on the end of an arrow. Many were triangular.

Farming became increasingly crucial for survival, so fertile land became more desirable. As a result, archaeological evidence indicates that tribes engaged in warfare to a greater extent than before.

The hallmark of this period of time is mound building. Mounds were constructed by moving soil, a basketful at a time. It was a slow process, but the finished product can be amazing. Moundville, on the Black Warrior River near Tuscaloosa, is certainly worth the trip to see remnants of one of the largest Mississippian villages in North America.

Alabama Gulf Coast Archaeological Sites

The Mounds at Bear Point

Up until the last several decades, the mounds at Bear Point in Orange Beach were a tourist attraction when there were not many attractions in the area other than fishing and the fort at Fort Morgan. Laws against digging in Indian mounds were nonexistent at the time, and it was an activity that both tourists and locals engaged in.

Noted archaeologist Clarence Bloomfield dug in the mounds and the immediate area from 1901 to 1918. Some of the skeletons and rare artifacts found by Bloomfield now reside in the Smithsonian Institute of the American Indian.

Native Americans did not live permanently at the site of the mounds; they used it as a base camp to gather seafood to take back to inland villages. Archaeological evidence indicates that it is possible that a small group stayed behind and resided in the area year-round.

Bottle Creek on Mound Island

Bottle Creek, located on Mound Island on the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, is the largest mound village complex on the northern Gulf Coast. Bottle Creek was occupied for three centuries, beginning near AD 1250. Like other villages during this period of time, the inhabitants of Bottle Creek and other Gulf Coast sites had an association with Moundville.

There are 18 mounds on the Bottle Creek site; the tallest is approximately 52 feet high. Because of its swampland location, the site was not plundered.

Like Moundville, much mystery surrounds Bottle Creek. Excavations indicate that the ruling class lived on the summit of the mounds. The rest of the village was located at the area surrounding the mounds. It was found that the people at the top of the mounds ate better food, and the artifacts found were less utilitarian than those of the people below them.

As the case with Moundville, Bottle Creek was a religious center through most of its history. Historians believed that at some point both villages became mortuaries-- and then all of the people left. Unlike Moundville, which sets on prime real estate high over the Black Warrior River, Bottle Creek was built in a swamp. Why those people chose to build there, nobody knows.

Dauphin Island Shell Mound Park

Located on the north shore of Dauphin Island, these Mississippian Period shell mounds were occupied between A.D. 1100 - 1550. Archaeologists believe that the site was only seasonally occupied. The mound builders at Bottle Creek visited the area during late winter and early spring to harvest fish and oysters.

The oysters were collected during low tide and steamed under seaweed. The shells were then discarded. Over time, six shell middens were created. The middens vary in size; the largest is 180 feet by 165 feet and 22 feet high.

Few artifacts from prehistory have been found on the site other than pottery shards.

Indian Mound Park is administered by the Marine Resources Division of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and is accessible to the public. Admission is free.

Middle Woodland Period Canal

In 2019, remains of a canal that was dug in 600 A.D. (the Middle Woodland Period) was discovered on the Fort Morgan peninsula. Running from Oyster Bay to Little Lagoon in Gulf Shores, Native Americans who used the canal could avoid paddling their dugout canoes across Mobile Bay. Before the canal, the fourteen-mile trip across the bay in a dugout canoe required hours of paddling, often in dangerous water. Only two sections of the canal remain visible, both near Little Lagoon. During the time of use, it was six-tenths of a mile long, thirty-feet wide, and six feet deep. Prehistoric Native American canals of that size were rare.

People have always been drawn to the Alabama Gulf Coast.

It has always been all about the water.

Read my "How to Search for Arrowheads" article here.

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