Qualla: Stallings Island https://qualla.com/stallings-island en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/v/w/stallings-island-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Stallings Island https://qualla.com/stallings-island Stallings Island: Introduction https://qualla.com/stallings-island/ Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. Pick up a pottery fragment from Stallings Island and you are holding the oldest known ceramic in North America. The shard is rough, laced with plant fibers pressed into wet clay more than four thousand years ago by hands that left telltale marks on the surface. Archaeologists studying the jab-and-drag designs etched into these vessels can determine whether the potter was right-handed or left-handed -- and the consistency of technique across generations suggests mothers were teaching daughters a craft that would outlast the civilization that invented it.

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/v/w/stallings-island-wp/djvw-stallings-island-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Stallings Island: The Mussel Eaters https://qualla.com/stallings-island/ Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. Stallings Island sits in the Savannah River upstream from Augusta, Georgia, in a stretch of shoals and channels known as the Ninety-Nine Islands. People first settled here around 2600 B.C.E., drawn by a resource so abundant it built the landscape itself: freshwater mussels. For s...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/v/w/stallings-island-wp/djvw-stallings-island-the-mussel-eaters.mp3 0:06 2 full Stallings Island: When Clay Met Fiber https://qualla.com/stallings-island/ Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. Sometime around 2000 B.C.E., the island was abandoned. When people returned around 1800 B.C.E., they brought something new: pottery. The Classic Stallings culture, as archaeologists call this later group, produced distinctive fiber-tempered ceramics -- clay mixed with Spanish mos...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/v/w/stallings-island-wp/djvw-stallings-island-when-clay-met-fiber.mp3 0:06 3 full Stallings Island: A Woman's Craft https://qualla.com/stallings-island/ Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. The Stallings culture was, by archaeological interpretation, female-dominant, and the prominence of pottery in the culture tracks a worldwide pattern in which women were the primary producers and users of ceramics. The orientation of the jab-and-drag marks reveals whether a right...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/v/w/stallings-island-wp/djvw-stallings-island-a-womans-craft.mp3 0:06 4 full Stallings Island: Unearthed and Endangered https://qualla.com/stallings-island/ Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. The island was first identified as an archaeological site in 1861, during the Civil War, and has been excavated multiple times since. But scientific attention also attracted looters, and for decades Stallings Island appeared on lists of threatened landmarks as unauthorized diggin...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/v/w/stallings-island-wp/djvw-stallings-island-unearthed-and-endangered.mp3 0:06 5 full Stallings Island: Reading the River https://qualla.com/stallings-island/ Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. From the air, Stallings Island is a modest patch of green in the braided channels of the Savannah River, easy to overlook among the Ninety-Nine Islands that surround it. Nothing visible from altitude hints at the shell middens packed beneath the soil or the pottery sherds scatter...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/v/w/stallings-island-wp/djvw-stallings-island-reading-the-river.mp3 0:06 6 full