ABSTRACT Identifying ancient patterns of trade, exchange, and social relations through the tracking of the origin point and final place of deposition of objects is an integral part of archaeological research. Using such information, scholars have constructed elaborate interpretive models to explain the interactions of past societies. The key to success is the correct identification of the original

ABSTRACT Plants and foodways have long been recognized for their importance to the construction of identity and culture in plantation settings. Yet despite this focus on plants and foodways in plantation archaeology, there is a need for more archaeological documentation of the types of plants and fields being cultivated in newly formed plantations in the New World. We combine historical documentation

(2021). The Archaeology of Virginia’s First Peoples. Southeastern Archaeology. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT Attributes of Mississippian public architecture have been used to infer aspects of social organization and political economy, but the inclusion of artifactual datasets in these interpretations has occurred less frequently. As a result, we often do not know much about the activities actually associated with public buildings and spaces. This article discusses several public contexts at the Town

ABSTRACT Ceramic assemblages from pithouses at the Carson site in Mississippi show distinctly nonlocal trends that indicate Cahokian influence in the region. This study evaluates pottery collections from multiple locations with a focus on vessel shapes, slips, and nonlocal types. A minimum number of vessels was established for two contexts at Carson, and those vessels were analyzed based on manufacturing

ABSTRACT Despite the prevalence of Woodland-period middens on the Gulf of Mexico’s northern coast, Woodland fisheries remain poorly known. Vertebrate and invertebrate assemblages from Plash Island (1BA134; cal AD 325–640) and Bayou St. John (1BA21; cal AD 650–1040) suggest this period was more than a prelude to Mississippian farming. Much of the coastal Woodland economy centered on reliable, productive

(2021). New Life for Archaeological Collections. Southeastern Archaeology: Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 156-157.

(2021). Using and Curating Archaeological Collections. Southeastern Archaeology: Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 157-158.

(2021). The Archaeology of Southeastern Native American Landscapes of the Colonial Era. Southeastern Archaeology. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT Excavations at site 40HO13 in Houston County, Tennessee, documented three prehistoric lithic reduction areas associated with a Benton Phase occupation. The site was located in an area of abundant chert resources, notably Fort Payne chert. The paper focuses on lithic data from one of the lithic concentrations. The analysis determined that the lithic concentrations were the result of biface

ABSTRACT Resource depression – a decline in encounter rates with prey due to the actions of a predator – has been documented for numerous species in North America. Yet it is not fully understood whether white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), the most common prey species for Native peoples in eastern North America, were depressed prior to European colonization. To investigate whether white-tailed

ABSTRACT Coastal low-lying archaeological sites are known to be at risk due to sea-level rise associated with climate change. However, not all of the potential impacts of sea-level rise on these sites have been documented. In this interdisciplinary study we set out to document the effects of rising groundwater tables induced by rising sea level on middens located on barrier islands in southeastern

ABSTRACT Around AD 1050 at Cahokia, a sudden coalescence of peoples with new ceremonials and Mound 72's commemorative human interments provide evidence of long–distance contacts and finely crafted artifacts. Beads from the famous Mound 72 Beaded Burial have remained unstudied since they were unearthed-a strange situation given the importance of the Beaded Burial. This article presents results from

ABSTRACT This paper develops the case for an indigenous polity on the lower Ocmulgee River in Georgia. Doing so enhances understanding of the late prehistoric–early historic indigenous cultural landscape in the Atlantic coastal plain. It also allows for refined interpretation of indigenous responses to European colonial activities. Two lines of evidence, a ceramic attribute analysis and a European

(2021). Middle Atlantic Prehistory: Foundations and Practice. Southeastern Archaeology: Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 75-76.

(2021). The Cumberland River Archaic of Middle Tennessee. Southeastern Archaeology: Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 77-78.

(2021). Archaeology in South Carolina. Southeastern Archaeology: Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 74-75.

For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the port city of Charleston was arguably the largest coastal commercial center south of Philadelphia. From its beginnings in the late seventeent...

ABSTRACT Economics – the socially instituted ways of managing how people value, make, exchange, and consume goods – is a major part of human culture. Yet there is comparatively little study of the economies of the pre-sixteenth-century Southeast, in spite of revealing written comments by the earliest European observers and the fact that cross-culturally in societies of comparable scale, multiple, complicated

ABSTRACT Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Choctaws of present-day east-central Mississippi and west Alabama experienced widespread changes in trade relations and alliances, subsistence practices, and sociopolitical arrangements as a result of intensifying European colonization of their homeland. Our ability to study these changes across the homeland requires accurate and detailed ceramic

It has been three decades since the last gathering of scholars to assess the importance of Cahokia to Eastern Woodland pre-Columbian native history. New Perspectives on Cahokia: Views from the Peri...

Gonzalez-Tennant’s assessment of Rosewood, Florida, the first archaeological study of an American race riot, is an exploration of a history hidden in plain sight. The settlement of Rosewood, locate...

Continuity and Change is a synthesis of many years of archaeological research conducted by Dr. Robert A. Cook at Fort Ancient sites in southwestern Ohio and southeastern Indiana. Cook has two major...

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, public housing redevelopment and Section 106 projects provided D. Ryan Gray, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of New Orleans, an opportuni...

ABSTRACT This paper presents material and spatial evidence on skilled crafting from a series of archaeological investigations at the Fingerhut Tract, located in the western portion of the Mississippian period (AD 1050–1400) Cahokia site in southwestern Illinois. Specifically, skilled crafters at the Fingerhut Tract throughout the Mississippian period resided in distinct household clusters and neighborhoods

ABSTRACT Heritage tourism is a driving economic force in much of the coastal southeastern United States, including on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, one of the most popular destinations for vacationers in the country. Working with local community members in developing a diverse and multipronged public archaeology program, we helped facilitate research and develop programing at the Baynard Mausoleum

ABSTRACT European colonization brought innumerable changes and choices to Native groups across the Southeast. Scholars continue to examine the various ways communities navigated these disruptions. Studying the remains of daily practice offers a window into how communities negotiated continuity and change. Wood charcoal, representing the remains of daily fires, provides an important, but underutilized

Until recently, archaeologists have been reticent to invoke climate change models to account for abandonments, disjunctions, migrations, and transformations in the ancient world. John Cable’s Megad...

ABSTRACT The “allure of the exotic” dominates both the substance and practice of the archaeology of the Hopewell phenomenon in eastern North America. Ceramics have often been considered less important to Hopewellian exchange, perhaps because they are typically considered local products. I review whole vessels recovered by C. B. Moore from the Crystal River site (8CI1) and curated at the National Museum

ABSTRACT Traditional interpretation of Mississippian copper symbol badges is that they were prestige items associated with both inherited and earned status. In this article we review the current state of knowledge regarding copper symbol badges, introduce two previously unreported examples from the Big Tallassee (1MC1) and Abercrombie (1RU61) sites, and propose a new interpretation for the circulation

ABSTRACT Archaeologists typically associate resource intensification with population expansion, environmental change, and political strategizing. Many Late Woodland and Mississippian societies of the Southeast eschewed dietary diversity in favor of harvesting fewer types of resources that could meet the subsistence demands of incipient aggregation. Foods such as maize and shellfish can provide humans

ABSTRACT This investigation aggregates intact or reconstructed Gahagan bifaces from the southern Caddo area and central Texas to test the hypothesis that Gahagan biface morphology differs between the regions. The Gahagan bifaces (n=102) were scanned, then analyzed using a novel landmarking protocol and the tools of geometric morphometrics. Results provide a preview of the significant differences in

ABSTRACT In this article, the pottery production of indigenous groups living inside and outside of colonial spaces in southern Georgia is compared by identifying portions of the chaîne opératoire of pottery production. Diachronic and geographic changes to production demonstrate that groups living in the interior of Georgia were in continual interaction with coastal groups in the mission system. This

ABSTRACT The George Reeves site (11S650) is a multicomponent village on the bluffs in the central American Bottom, Illinois. The site was occupied from the Late Woodland Rosewood phase through the Mississippian Lohmann phase. Pottery use and dietary variation between the Late Woodland and Emergent Mississippian occupations at the site were explored through stylistic analysis, pottery residue analysis

ABSTRACT The Irene Mound site (9CH1) was a Middle and Late Mississippian site (ca. AD 1150–1450) situated on a bluff overlooking the lower Savannah River, Georgia (USA), a few kilometers upstream from the Atlantic Ocean. The 2.4 ha site consisted of a sequence of superimposed layers referred to as temple mounds, as well as a burial mound, a rotunda, a few residences, and other structures. It is interpreted

skills were employed in the manufacture of both utilitarian and ritual objects by the same people and embedded in domestic contexts. In Chapter Ten, Philip J. Carr and Andrew P. Bradbury seek to modify an Organization of Technology (OT) model by articulating the study of lithic life histories with everyday activities. Their study is firmly rooted in a processual approach highlighting relationships

ABSTRACT Open riverbanks and disturbed floodplains are targeted by archaeologists as optimal habitats for the growth of many of the weedy indigenous seed crops in eastern North America, but there is still little evidence for garden locations in the archaeological record. This article combines macrobotanical and geoarchaeological analyses from the Birdwell site (40GN228), located on the Nolichucky River

ABSTRACT Communal eating events or feasts were important activities associated with the founding and maintenance of Mississippian communities in the southeastern United States. More often than not, however, archaeological deposits of food refuse are interpreted along a spectrum, with household-level consumption at one end and community-wide feasting at the other. Here, we draw attention to the important

ABSTRACT Recent research has demonstrated that Catawba ceramic practices changed abruptly and dramatically after 1759 following a devastating smallpox epidemic and subsequent community relocation. Pottery from the historically documented Catawba town of Old Town and others indicate potters adopted new techniques and styles as they adjusted to new economic and social conditions, including copying European

ABSTRACT The American Southeast saw the development of large ceremonial village centers, the coalescence of households, and monumental architecture integrated into village layout during the Middle Woodland period (ca. AD 1–600). These shifts toward more sedentary lifeways occurred independently of, and prior to, the domestication of plants across the Southeast. This paper examines the seasonality of

The chapters in this book are based on a 2015 Southeastern Archaeological Conference symposium that, as the editors state, was “met with some resistance, both from participants and from conference attendees” (p. 1). Some assumed it possessed a hidden theoretical agenda (e.g., postprocessual), but a review of theoretical paradigms in the first chapter quickly demonstrates the everyday as a theorized

professionals, they are likewise richly rewarding for archaeologists. Finally, I think a nod is due to the Illinois State Archaeological Survey and the Illinois Department of Transportation for their consultation efforts with Native Americans. With regard to human remains, this resulted in a mixed strategy of excavating some burials, analyzing others in place, and leaving a number untouched within

ABSTRACT Test excavations in a small rockshelter in the mountains of North Carolina uncovered remains of a hearth containing carbonized twigs, maize kernels, bean cotyledons, animal bone, and the fragments of a single ceramic vessel dating to approximately AD 1350. Experiments in carbonization of maize kernels and beans and involving fire-extinguishing conditions indicate that the burnt seeds recovered

Mississippian mound groups. Owl Creek, Thelma, and Bessemer all have rectangular flat-topped temple mounds and chronologies spanning the eleventh through early fourteenth centuries. Grog and shell tempered ceramics are found at all three sites indicating Mississippian settlement in the same locales as Late Woodland populations or adaptation of Mississippian shell tempered pottery by Woodland groups

The village concept has travelled far during its millennium-long journey from its Latin and Middle English roots in rural villas, manor houses, and farmsteads. Yet as we see from contributions to T...

ABSTRACT Since a radiocarbon chronology of the Dalton culture in the Southeast was first proposed, several new sites have been dated. I propose a new chronology based on radiocarbon dates from sites in the Dalton Heartland and its eastern periphery using Bayesian statistical models in OxCal and an analysis of the associated diagnostic projectile points. The analyses indicate that the Dalton culture

Yamasee migrations into Spanish Florida in the period 1667–1683. Because the Yamasee quickly adopted the local coastal ceramic tradition, their archaeological presence is hard to identify. Ashley reviews past research and presents the results of his own work. Eric Poplin and Jon Bernard Marcoux focus on archaeological remains of the Yamasee in Georgia and South Carolina. They note that “Each Yamasee

ABSTRACT Excavations in the 1970s at the ca. 1772 Heyward-Washington House in Charleston, South Carolina, produced a rich and diverse archaeological assemblage spanning the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Among the vertebrate remains are four bones from a large member of the parrot family. We now believe the bird was a blue-fronted or turquoise-fronted amazon parrot (Psittacidae: Amazona aestiva)

emonial center of Town Creek constituted a new kind of community and introduced new social practices, such as the formation of corporate kin groups used to consolidate group identity and compete for resources. In Chapter 8, Adam King, Christopher Thornock, and Keith Stephenson discuss the development of Mississippian culture in the middle Savannah River valley of South Carolina and Georgia. Using data

ABSTRACT In the papers assembled here, five scholars focus on shell beads at site, watershed, and regional scales. Themes include manufacturing techniques such as bore size discussions, changes in bead preferences over time and geography, the appearance of beaded regalia, and shell bead meaning. Claassen’s paper addresses the beads at Late Archaic Indian Knoll; Connaway discusses shell beads in northwestern

ABSTRACT Ramey Incised ceramics, characterized by incised symbolic motifs, are often viewed as a hallmark of Stirling-phase Cahokia and the surrounding American Bottom region. However, few comprehensive analyses of the regional Ramey motif assemblage have been conducted. Here I evaluate spatial and temporal variation in Ramey Incised motifs across 16 sites in the American Bottom to improve understandings

ABSTRACT This article examines over 7,500 beads from eight Native archaeological sites located in the lower Potomac River valley in order to understand how changes in bead assemblages between AD 1300 and 1712 expressed an ever-evolving Chesapeake cultural landscape. This analysis demonstrates clear differences in the types and distributions of beads from mortuary and domestic/nonmortuary contexts.

ABSTRACT Attempts to account for the impressive and unusual archaeological record of the World Heritage site of Poverty Point have often faltered. The vast and diverse set of artifacts, the spectacular and well-designed earthworks, and the millions of baked-clay objects known as Poverty Point Objects are all distinctive and anomalous features of the site. This paper argues that the archaeological record

ments believed to be under the governance of religious leaders were unified at periodic ceremonial events featuring feasting (as indicated by seven very large pit features at Clark’s Old Field) and ritual places such as the ossuaries maintained for generations at Edgehill and Wilcox Neck. The social implication of this evidence suggests the possibility of resistance to the expansion of Powhatan influence

nities. Many people today do not realize the Missouri River reservoirs flooded the most productive portions of several tribal reservations, destroying livelihoods and communities. Baker looks specifically at the destruction of Likea-Fishhook Village and tribal farmland inundated by the Garrison Reservoir in North Dakota. His chapter is poignant; the picture (Figure 14.3) of George Gillette, chair of

ABSTRACT In the late 1980s, a collaborative effort between Harvard University’s Lower Mississippi Survey and Tulane University’s Center for Archaeology launched a study examining the causes and consequences of subsistence change in the Lower Mississippi Valley. The Osceola Project contributed the first formal study of late prehistoric faunal remains within the Alluvial Plain, becoming the standard

ABSTRACT Southeastern Indians have been using cane (Arundinaria spp.) for basketry and matting for thousands of years. Unfortunately, it is only under extraordinary preservation conditions that such items survive archaeologically. Inferring the production of split-cane technology requires an understanding of prehistoric manufacturing and processing techniques. It is hypothesized that stone tools were

ABSTRACT The study of precontact anthropogenic mounded features—earthen mounds, shell heaps, and shell rings—in the American Southeast is stymied by the spotty distribution of systematic surveys across the region. Many extant, yet unidentified, archaeological mound features continue to evade detection due to the heavily forested canopies that occupy large areas of the region, making pedestrian surveys

ABSTRACT The geology of the Saltville Valley in southwest Virginia creates a brine with an exceptionally high concentration of sodium chloride (98.7%). Because of this resource, the town of Saltville, Virginia, became the major producer of salt for the Confederacy during the latter half of the Civil War. The wood-fired salt furnaces (as the production facilities were called) produced a maximum of four

ABSTRACT Busycon discs, barrels, rings, and columellas, Leptoxis and Prunum shell beads, and stone and coal beads from Webb and Moore excavations at Indian Knoll (15OH2) are discussed in this paper as the author seeks to determine how beads were deployed to convey social information during the Archaic period. After wrestling with the count of beads (ca. 27,337) and the number of burials (ca. 260) with