(Original headline: Fig Island has remarkable examples of shell rings)
COLUMBIA, S.C. - Fig Island looks like any of the thousands of tidal hummocks along the South Carolina coast.
Craggy cedar trees and palms with every other crown blown off rise over the surrounding tidal creeks. Prickly pear cactus and bush palmetto carpet the surface.
But the vegetation disguises one of the most important, and least appreciated, cultural history sites in the country, archaeologists say.
Much of Fig Island was built by man, not nature.
Three of the four separate pieces of high ground that make up the 40-acre island were constructed about 4,000 years ago.
Oyster shells - with some conch-type shells, broken pottery and a few animal bones mixed in - were crafted into stadium-like rings and crescents for reasons that remain a mystery.
Fig Island is to the Southeast what the cliff dwellings are to the desert Southwest. It's twice as old as Rome's Colosseum and, like that facility, might have been used for public spectacles by the natives who lived here in the Late Archaic period.
State officials aim to draw attention to the cultural treasures by applying for National Historic Landmark recognition and, eventually, a spot on the exclusive list of World Heritage sites.
The 20 U.S. entries on the World Heritage list include the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon and the Everglades. Many experts feel Fig Island is that special.
"Shell rings are found in only a few countries worldwide," said Mike Russo, an archaeologist with the National Park Service. "The Southeastern U.S. rings are among the largest and best preserved."
Similar, smaller rings in Peru were mined for their shells in recent years. Japanese rings are much older, shorter and less symmetrical.
About two dozen shell mounds have been found in South Carolina. Another two dozen rings are in Georgia, and a handful of others have been located in Florida and Mississippi.
The Fig Island complex features one ring with the largest open interior plaza (slightly more than an acre), another ring with the smallest plaza (about the area of a basketball court) and the largest mound by volume of any of the known shell enclosures. The oyster shells brought to Fig Island to build the mounds would fill 12 Olympic-size swimming pools.
"The importance of the Fig Island site as a research laboratory into coastal adaptations of the past cannot be overstated," wrote Russo and Rebecca Saunders in a research paper after two months of study on the island in the summer of 2000.
The researchers braved waves of humidity and swarms of mosquitoes while driving metal probes into the mounds. They mapped mounds ranging from 5 to 20 feet high and, using carbon dating, they found shells from 3,800 to 4,200 years old.
Some experts speculate that the mounds formed as refuse piles when natives built temporary homes along the coast. Others see them as ceremonial structures for special occasions, not everyday living.
Russo leans toward the latter, pointing to the large shell pieces found throughout many rings. If the mounds had served as daily refuse piles, they would have been built slowly and shells would have been broken more often. But if they were built during large ceremonial gatherings, shells would have been piled on quickly, causing less breakage.
The Fig Island complex has three identifiable rings and a crescent.
One theory is that the larger mound (called Fig 1) was built for the tribal leaders. The mound is the largest in width and height, but it has the smallest interior plaza. The slow-sloping mound rises nearly 20 feet above the surface, forming an exclusive amphitheater in the center. The shorter, circular mound (Fig 2) rises about five feet and has a 1-acre central plaza that could have held larger groups.
Maybe Fig 2 was built first, and the leaders built Fig 1 to get away from the masses. Fig 1 also includes a second, less defined ring and attached crescents on each end that resemble the claws of a crab. The entire structure stretches 985 feet by 900 feet.
Researchers hit sand under a few feet of shell at a mound on one end of Fig 1, a strange departure from the norm that could indicate it's a burial mound, Russo said.
Pottery shards found on Fig Island match pieces found at inland sites populated at the same time period, Judge said.
He speculates that natives might have traveled from a site he has studied in Darlington County to the coast for special occasions. Often, small groups would gather a couple of times a year for rituals. Mating with someone outside the family was encouraged at these gatherings, thus ensuring genetic diversity.
A trip to Fig Island might have been used for the Late Archaic Period's version of spring break at Myrtle Beach. Visitors could have walked to Fig Island back then, when, experts believe, the sea level was six to 12 feet lower.
Julia Krebs, chairwoman of the biology department at Francis Marion University and of the South Carolina Heritage Trust board, recently toured the site. "The fact that human beings gathered all those shells and brought them to that place," Krebs said, "it's incredible."
