Sewee Shell Ring

The Sewee Shell Ring is the northernmost known member of a group of more or less doughnut-shaped, prehistoric middens occurring along the Atlantic Coast from Florida to South Carolina. It is one of South Carolina’s few well-preserved, visible, and publicly accessible traces of aboriginal occupation of its territory prior to European colonization. Most of the evidence of that occupation is known only from excavation. About twenty such rings have been identified on South Carolina’s coastal plain, all located along tidal creeks. They range from about 130 to about 200 feet in diameter and up to ten feet in height. The middens were built over somewhat long periods of time by the systematic, possibly even planned, accumulation of dietary refuse (chiefly the shells of various mollusks).

The Sewee Shell Ring is composed mainly of oyster shells. Its surviving portion rises to about ten feet and has an approximate diameter of just under 150 feet. Much of its southeastern quadrant has been eroded. Near the Sewee Shell Ring lies a mound, composed exclusively of oyster shells, about 35 feet in diameter. William Edwards, who studied the Sewee Shell Ring in 1965 without publishing his findings, concluded that it had probably been used as a fish trap. In a 1985 study, Michael B. Trinkley rejected that conclusion after examining not only the ring itself but also its broader cultural context. Trinkley concluded that structures like the Sewee Shell Ring had been centers for group activities within a broader settlement pattern. He further speculated that “fundamentally, the circular shape of the shell rings may be related to the egalitarian nature of early Woodland societies, where a cluster of habitations would promote community or social interaction.” Some archaeologists have supposed a ceremonial function for certain of the southeastern coastal shell rings.

The Sewee Shell Ring is part of the Francis Marion National Forest and can be accessed by a one-mile, self-guided interpretive trail.