Seminar in Southeastern Archaeology

Contributions by Keith A. Baca, Jeffrey P. Brain, Samuel O. Brookes, Ian W. Brown, Philip J. Carr, Jessica Crawford, Patricia Galloway, Alison M. Hadley, Christopher T. Hays, Edward R. Henry, Cliff Jenkins, Jay K. Johnson, Evan Peacock, Janet Rafferty, Maria Schleidt, Mary Evelyn Starr, James B. Stoltman, Andrew M. Triplett, Melissa H. Twaroski, and Richard A. Weinstein This volume includes original scholarship on a wide array of archaeological research across the South. One essay explores the effects of climate on early cultures in Mississippi. Contributors reveal the production and distribution of stone effigy beads, which were centered in southwest Mississippi some 5,000 years ago, and trace contact between different parts of the prehistoric Southeast as seen in the distribution of clay cooking balls. Researchers explore small, enigmatic sites in the hill country of northern Mississippi now marked by scatters of broken pottery and a large, seemingly isolated "platform" mound in Calhoun County. Pieces describe a mound group in Chickasaw County built by early agriculturalists who subsequently abandoned the area and a similar prehistoric abandonment event in Winston and Choctaw Counties. A large pottery collection from the famous Anna Mounds site in Adams County, excavations at a Chickasaw Indian site in Lee County, camps and works of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the pine hill country of southern Mississippi, and the history of logging in the Mississippi Delta all yield abundant, new understandings of the past. Overview papers include a retrospective on archaeology in the National Forests of north Mississippi, a look at a number of mound sites in the lower Mississippi Delta, and a study of how communities of learning in field archaeology are built, with prominent archaeologist Samuel O. Brookes's achievements as a focal point. History buffs, artifact enthusiasts, students, and professionals all will find something of interest in this book, which opens doors on the prehistory and history of Mississippi.

Within the general structure-and-process theme of this compendium, the authors have focused on either "intrasite" problems (those dealing with the formation and structure of a site, type of site, or type of feature) or "intersite" problems (those dealing with behavioral organization and process as developed from comparative site data). These papers, from a broad range of specialists, present a comprehensive study of southeastern archaeology.

Ten scholars whose specialties range from ethnohistory to remote sensing and lithic analysis to bioarchaeology chronicle changes in the way prehistory in the Southeast has been studied since the 19th century. Each brings to the task the particular perspective of his or her own subdiscipline in this multifaceted overview of the history of archaeology in a region that has had an important but variable role in the overall development of North American archaeology. Some of the specialties discussed in this book were traditionally relegated to appendixes or ignored completely in site reports more than 20 years old. Today, most are integral parts of such reports, but this integration has been hard won. Other specialties have been and will continue to be of central concern to archaeologists. Each chapter details the way changes in method can be related to changes in theory by reviewing major landmarks in the literature. As a consequence, the reader can compare the development of each subdiscipline. As the first book of this kind to deal specifically with the region, it be will valuable to archaeologists everywhere. The general reader will find the book of interest because the development of southeastern archaeology reflects trends in the development of social science as a whole. Contributors include: Jay K. Johnson, David S. Brose, Jon L. Gibson, Maria O. Smith, Patricia K. Galloway, Elizabeth J. Reitz, Kristen J. Gremillion, Ronald L. Bishop, Veletta Canouts, and W. Fredrick Limp

A synthesis of research on earthenware technologies of the Late Archaic Period in the southeastern U.S. Information on social groups and boundaries, and on interaction between groups, burgeons when pottery appears on the social landscape of the Southeast in the Late Archaic period (ca. 5000-3000 years ago). This volume provides a broad, comparative review of current data from "first potteries" of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains and in the lower Mississippi River Valley, and it presents research that expands our understanding of how pottery functioned in its earliest manifestations in this region. Included are discussions of Orange pottery in peninsular Florida, Stallings pottery in Georgia, Elliot's Point fiber-tempered pottery in the Florida panhandle, and the various pottery types found in excavations over the years at the Poverty Point site in northeastern Louisiana. The data and discussions demonstrate that there was much more interaction, and at an earlier date, than is often credited to Late Archaic societies. Indeed, extensive trade in pottery throughout the region occurs as early as 1500 B.C. These and other findings make this book indispensable to those involved in research into the origin and development of pottery in general and its unique history in the Southeast in particular.

"This is the first volume in a decade to address the Woodland period in the Southeast. The research is fresh and reports new information and interpretations gleaned from a variety of sources--new excavations, geophysics, grey literature, older collections--and covers a range of studies from single sites to specific archaeological complexes to interactions among complexes."--Lynne P. Sullivan, coeditor of Mississippian Mortuary Practices   "This volume fills an important gap in Southeast archaeology, the Early and Middle Woodland periods. It contains the best that the current generation of archaeologists has to offer, set in the context of the broader landscape of regional archaeology."--Dean R. Snow, author of Archaeology of Native North America   The Early and Middle Woodland periods (1000 BCE-500 CE) in North America witnessed remarkable cross-cultural social interactions as well as novel interactions between people and the physical world. Using case studies from Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, and Tennessee, this volume sheds new light on these dynamic and complex social landscapes. Fourteen in-depth case studies incorporate empirical data with theoretical concepts such as ritual, aggregation, and place-making, highlighting the variability and common themes in the relationships between people, landscapes, and the built environment that characterize this period of North American native life in the Southeast.

A timely update on the state of bioarchaeological research, offering contributions to the archaeology, prehistory, and history of the southeastern United States.   Building on the 1991 publication What Mean These Bones? Studies in Southeastern Bioarchaeology, this new edited collection from Shannon Chappell Hodge and Kristrina A. Shuler marks steady advances over the past three decades in the theory, methodology, and purpose of bioarchaeology in the southeastern United States and across the discipline. With a geographic scope that ranges from Louisiana to South Carolina and a temporal span from early prehistory through the nineteenth century, the coverage aims to be holistic.   Bioarchaeology of the American Southeast: Approaches to Bridging Health and Identity in the Past is organized into two main parts. The first, "Context and Culture History in Bioarchaeology," focuses on the fundamentals of archaeology--figuring out who lived at an archaeological site, when they lived there, what they did, and how they lived their lives.   This builds the framework that allows archaeologists to answer deeper questions, such as the ones addressed in the second part, "Social Identities in Bioarchaeology." Here contributors explore questions of identity, ethnicity, gender and the status of women, social status, class, power and exploitation, migration, and conflict. These chapters implement and contribute to anthropological theory and showcase improved methods, such as innovative statistical analyses, and incorporate newer technology, including a DNA and geographic information system applications.

Benjamin A. Steere's compelling study explores the evolution of houses and households in the southeastern United States from the Woodland to the Historic Indian period (ca. 200 BC to AD 1800). The Archaeology of Houses and Households in the Native Southeast contributes enormously to the study of household archaeology and domestic architecture in the region. This significant volume combines both previously published and unpublished data on communities from the Southeast and is the first systematic attempt to understand the development of houses and households as interpreted through a theoretical framework developed from broad-ranging studies in cultural anthropology and archaeology. Steere's major achievement is the compilation of one of the largest and most detailed architectural datasets for the Southeast, including data for 1,258 domestic and public structures from sixty-five archaeological sites in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and the southern parts of Missouri, Indiana, and Illinois. Rare data from hard-to-find cultural resource management reports is also incorporated, creating a broad temporal and geographic scope and serving as one of many remarkable features of the book, which is sure to be of considerable value to archaeologists and anthropologists interested in comparative studies of architecture. Similar to other analyses, Steere's research uses multiple theoretical angles and lines of evidence to answer archaeological questions about houses and the people who built them. However, unlike other examinations of household archaeology, this project spans multiple time periods (Woodland, Mississippian, and Historic); is focused squarely on the Southeast; features a more unified approach, using data from a single, uniform database; and privileges domestic architecture as a line of evidence for reconstructing daily life at major archaeological sites on a much broader scale than other investigations.

This collection presents, for the first time, a much-needed synthesis of the major research themes and findings that characterize the Woodland Period in the southeastern United States. The Woodland Period (ca. 1200 B.C. to A.D. 1000) has been the subject of a great deal of archaeological research over the past 25 years. Researchers have learned that in this approximately 2000-year era the peoples of the Southeast experienced increasing sedentism, population growth, and organizational complexity. At the beginning of the period, people are assumed to have been living in small groups, loosely bound by collective burial rituals. But by the first millennium A.D., some parts of the region had densely packed civic ceremonial centers ruled by hereditary elites. Maize was now the primary food crop. Perhaps most importantly, the ancient animal-focused and hunting-based religion and cosmology were being replaced by solar and warfare iconography, consistent with societies dependent on agriculture, and whose elites were increasingly in competition with one another. This volume synthesizes the research on what happened during this era and how these changes came about while analyzing the period's archaeological record. In gathering the latest research available on the Woodland Period, the editors have included contributions from the full range of specialists working in the field, highlighted major themes, and directed readers to the proper primary sources. Of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists, both professional and amateur, this will be a valuable reference work essential to understanding the Woodland Period in the Southeast.

A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication Until recently, archaeological projects that included analysis of human remains had often lacked active collaboration between archaeologists and physical anthropologists from the planning stages onward. During the 1980s, a conjunctive approach developed; known as "bioarchaeology," it draws on the methodological and theoretical strengths of the two subdisciplines to bridge a perceived communications gap and promote a more comprehensive understanding of prehistoric and historic cultures.   This volume addresses questions of human adaptation in a variety of cultural contexts, with a breadth not found in studies utilizing solely biological or artifactual data. These nine case studies from eight Southeastern states cover more than 4,000 years of human habitation, from Archaic hunter-gatherers in Louisiana and Alabama to Colonial planters and slaves in South Carolina. Several studies focus upon variations in health between or within late prehistoric agricultural societies. For example, the discovery that reliance upon maize as a dietary staple did not result invariably in poor health, as claimed by earlier studies, either for entire populations or, in ranked societies, for the non-elite majority, has fostered a new appreciation for the managerial wisdom of the Mississippian peoples, as well as for their agricultural skills.  

Traces the sources of power and large-scale organization of prehistoric peoples among Archaic societies. By focusing on the first instances of mound building, pottery making, fancy polished stone and bone, as well as specialized chipped stone, artifacts, and their widespread exchange, this book explores the sources of power and organization among Archaic societies. It investigates the origins of these technologies and their effects on long-term (evolutionary) and short-term (historical) change. The characteristics of first origins in social complexity belong to 5,000- to 6,000-year-old Archaic groups who inhabited the southeastern United States. In Signs of Power, regional specialists identify the conditions, causes, and consequences that define organization and social complexity in societies. Often termed "big mound power," these considerations include the role of demography, kinship, and ecology in sociocultural change; the meaning of geometry and design in sacred groupings; the degree of advancement in stone tool technologies; and differentials in shell ring sizes that reflect social inequality.

This book deals with the prehistory of the region encompassed by the present state of Alabama and spans a period of some 11,000 years--from 9000 B.C. and the earliest documented appearance of human beings in the area to A.D. 1750, when the early European settlements were well established. Only within the last five decades have remains of these prehistoric peoples been scientifically invest

The southeastern United States has one of the richest records of early human settlement of any area of North America. This book provides the first state-by-state summary of Paleoindian and Early Archaic research from the region, together with an appraisal of models developed to interpret the data. It summarizes what we know of the peoples who lived in the Southeast more than 8,000 years ago--when giant ice sheets covered the northern part of the continent, and such mammals as elephants, saber-toothed tigers, and ground sloths roamed the landscape. Extensively illustrated, this benchmark collection of essays on the state of Paleoindian and Early Archaic research in the Southeast will guide future studies on the subject of the region's first inhabitants for years to come. Divided in three parts, the volume includes: Part I: Modeling Paleoindian and Early Archaic Lifeways in the Southeast Environmental and Chronological Considerations, David G. Anderson, Lisa D. O'Steen, and Kenneth E. Sassaman Modeling Paleoindian and Early Archaic Settlement in the Southeast: A Historical Perspective, David G. Anderson and Kenneth E. Sassaman Models of Paleoindian and Early Archaic Settlement in the Lower Southeast, David G. Anderson Early Archaic Settlement in the South Carolina Coastal Plain, Kenneth E. Sassaman Raw Material Availability and Early Archaic Settlement in the Southeast, I. Randolph Daniel Jr. Paleoindian and Early Archaic Settlement along the Oconee Drainage, Lisa D. O'Steen Haw River Revisited: Implications for Modeling Terminal Late Glacial and Early Holocene Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems in the Southeast, John S. Cable Early Archiac Settlement and Technology: Lessons from Tellico, Larry R. Kimball Paleoindians Near the Edge: A Virginia Perspective, Michael F. Johnson Part II: The Regional Record The Need for a Regional Perspective, Kenneth E. Sassaman and David G. Anderson Paleoindian and Early Archaic Research in the South Carolina Area, David G. Anderson and Kenneth E. Sassaman The Taylor Site: An Early Occupation in Central South Carolina, James L. Michie Paleoindian and Early Archaic Research in Tennessee, John B. Boster and Mark R. Norton A Synopsis of Paleoindian and Early Archaic Research in Alabama, Eugene M. Futato Statified Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Deposits at Dust Cave, Northwestern Alabama, Boyce N. Driskell Bone and Ivory Tools from Submerged Paleoindian Sites in Florida, James S. Dunbar and S. David Webb Paleoindian and Early Archaic Data from Mississippi, Samuel O. McGahey Early and Middle Paleoindian Sites in the Northeastern Arkansas Region, J. Christopher Gillam Part III: Commentary A Framework for the Paleoindian/Early Archaic Transition, Joel Gunn Modeling Communities and Other Thankless Tasks, Dena F. Dincauze An Arkansas View, Dan F. Morse Comments, Henry T. Wright

This collection, addressing a topic of ongoing interest and debate in American archaeology, examines the evolution of ranked chiefdoms in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States during the period A.D. 700-1200. The volume brings together a broad range of professionals engaged in the fieldwork that has vitalized the theoretical debates on the development of Mississippi Valley cultures. The initial chapter provides a general discussion of various explanations for the rise of these distinctive ranked societies in the eastern United States (A.D. 750-1050) and sets the stage for the interdisciplinary analysis from multiple viewpoints that follows. The first section discusses a cluster of individual sites in the Midwest and Southeast and reveals the parallel--and occasionally divergent--paths followed by the inhabitants as they transitioned from Late Woodland into Mississippian lifeways. The chapters in the second half discuss by region the emergence of ranked agricultural societies and examine how these networks played a role in the large-scale and roughly contemporaneous socio-political development. Contributors: C. Clifford Boyd Jr. James A. Brown R. P. Stephen Davis Jr. John House John E. Kelly Richard A. Kerber Dan F. Morse Phyllis Morse Martha Ann Rolingson Gerald F. Schroedl Bruce D. Smith Paul D. Welch Howard D. Winters

During the Mississippian period (approximately A.D. 1000-1600) in the midwestern and southeastern United States a variety of greater and lesser chiefdoms took shape. Archaeologists have for many years explored the nature of these chiefdoms from the perspective common in archaeological investigations--from the top down, investigating ceremonial elite mound structures and predicting the basic domestic unit from that data. Because of the increased number of field investigations at the community level in recent years, this volume is able to move the scale of investigation down to the level of community and household, and it contributes to major revisions of settlement hierarchy concepts.

A seamless social history of the native peoples of the American South, bridging prehistory and history.   The past 20 years have witnessed a change in the study of the prehistory and history of the native peoples of the American South. This paradigm shift is the bridging of prehistory and history to fashion a seamless social history that includes not only the 16th-century Late Mississippian period and the 18th-century colonial period but also the largely forgotten--and critically important--century in between.  The shift is in part methodological, for it involves combining methods from anthropology, history, and archaeology. It is also conceptual and theoretical, employing historical and archaeological data to reconstruct broad patterns of history--not just political history with Native  Americans as a backdrop, nor simply an archaeology with added historical specificity, but a true social history of the Southeastern Indians, spanning their entire existence in the American South. The scholarship underlying this shift comes from many directions, but much of the groundwork can be attributed to Charles Hudson. The papers in this volume were contributed by Hudson's colleagues and former students (many now leading scholars themselves) in his honor.  The assumption links these papers is that of a historical transformation between Mississippian societies and the Indian societies of the historic era that requires explanation and critical analysis. In all of the chapters, the legacy of Hudson's work is evident. Anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians are storming the bridge that connects prehistory and history in a manner unimaginable 20 years ago.  While there remains much work to do on the path toward understanding this transformation and constructing a complete social history of the Southeastern Indians, the work of Charles Hudson and his colleagues have shown the way.  

Forging Southeastern Identities: Social Archaeology and Ethnohistory of the Mississippian to Early Historic South, a groundbreaking collection of ten essays, covers a broad expanse of time-from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries-and focuses on a common theme of identity. These essays represent the various methods used by esteemed scholars today to study how Native Americans in the distant past created new social identities when old ideas of the self were challenged by changes in circumstance or by historical contingencies. Archaeologists, anthropologists, and folklorists working in the Southeast have always recognized the region's social diversity; indeed, the central purpose of these disciplines is to study peoples overlooked by the mainstream. Yet the ability to define and trace the origins of a collective social identity-the means by which individuals or groups align themselves, always in contrast to others-has proven to be an elusive goal. Here, editors Gregory A. Waselkov and Marvin T. Smith champion the relational identification and categorical identification processes, taken from sociological theory, as effective analytical tools. Taking up the challenge, the contributors have deployed an eclectic range of approaches to establish and inform an overarching theme of identity. Some investigate shell gorgets, textiles, shell trade, infrastructure, specific sites, or plant usage. Others focus on the edges of the Mississippian world or examine colonial encounters between Europeans and native peoples. A final chapter considers the adaptive malleability of historical legend in the telling and hearing of slave narratives.

A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication Among southeastern Indians pottery was an innovation that enhanced the economic value of native foods and the efficiency of food preparation. But even though pottery was available in the Southeast as early as 4,500 years ago, it took nearly two millenia before it was widely used. Why would an innovation of such economic value take so long to be adopted? The answer lies in the social and political contexts of traditional cooking technology. Sassaman's book questions the value of using technological traits alone to mark temporal and spatial boundaries of prehistoric cultures and shows how social process shapes the prehistoric archaeological record.

The Native American tribes of what is now the southeastern United States left intriguing relics of their ancient cultural life. Arrowheads, spear points, stone tools, and other artifacts are found in newly plowed fields, on hillsides after a fresh rain, or in washed-out creek beds. These are tangible clues to the anthropology of the Paleo-Indians, and the highly developed Mississippian peoples. This indispensable guide to identifying and understanding such finds is for conscientious amateur archeologists who make their discoveries in surface terrain. Many are eager to understand the culture that produced the artifact, what kind of people created it, how it was made, how old it is, and what its purpose was. Here is a handbook that seeks identification through the clues of cultural history. In discussing materials used, the process of manufacture, and the relationship between the artifacts and the environments, it reveals ancient discoveries to be not merely interesting trinkets but by-products from the once vital societies in areas that are now Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, the Carolinas, as well as in southeastern Texas, southern Missouri, southern Illinois, and southern Indiana. The text is documented by more than a hundred drawings in the actual size of the artifacts, as well as by a glossary of archeological terms and a helpful list of state and regional archeological societies.