Elena Vories is finishing up her second year here at IUP. For the last two years she has been the director of the Pennsylvania Highway Archaeological Survey Team with PennDOT. Her thesis research is on the Green’s Shell Enclosure site, a shell ring in South Carolina. Green’s Shell Enclosure, a Mississippian site dated to approximately 1275-1425 CE, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Shell rings are common on the southeast coast of the United States. They generally consist of accumulations of refuse, primarily oyster shells. Due to their scale and design, archaeologists have been trying to determine other purposes these rings could have served.

Green’s Shell Enclosure

Elena carried out excavations on the site in January, 2025. Her work included both shovel test pits and 1×1 meter test units. Elena excavated shell ridges in the interior of the ring and found animal bones and Irene phase pottery. Her goals included determining whether these anomalies were contemporaneous with the ring, and the presence of Irene phase pottery supports this hypothesis. She is currently working on analysis of the artifacts she excavated, and she is working to build an understanding of how this site fits into the broader Mississippian tradition in the Southeast.