Yamasee Bowl- Combahee River, SC
This bowl comes from an excavation of a Yamasee town in southern South Carolina. Archaeologists recovered it near Bluff Plantation (best known as a filming location for the movie Forest Gump) located close to the modern town of Yemassee, named after the Yamasee tribe.
When Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto encountered the Yamasee in 1540, they were a highly structured collection of agricultural chiefdoms in modern-day Florida. When colonialism upended their way of life, the Yamasee moved to South Carolina. From 1683 to 1715, the Yamasee Confederacy stretched across the southern United States, providing deerskins and Indigenous slaves to Carolina colony.
While in Florida, the Yamasee were associated with Lamar pottery, a style of mostly jars and bowls with thin walls and exterior surface decoration. After they moved to South Carolina, the Yamasee quickly adopted the Altamaha/San Marcos style. Artists created these by stamping the smoothed exterior surface of the vessel with a wooden paddle carved with a complicated design. However, the stamps used by the Yamasee were distinctly less elaborate.
