Edward Henry

Colorado State University | CSU · Department of Anthropology & Geography

Long-term interactions between people and places has been a focal point for archaeologists since the beginnings of the discipline. Monuments are one analytical unit of analysis that archaeologists regularly study and interpret as evidence for the ways people organize cooperative labor and inscribe on the landscape their connections to it. However,...

This report presents results of re-excavation and reanalysis of unit 5276N 4790E, located on Ridge West 3 (RW3) at the Poverty Point site. Jon Gibson excavated this unit and others in 1991 and argued that RW3 was constructed rapidly. We test the fast construction hypothesis by applying new methods (micromorphology, magnetic susceptibility, sequenti...

The origins and histories of mounds are perennial topics of investigation in the American Southeast, underscoring the centrality of these monuments to the social lives and cosmologies of Indigenous southeastern peoples. Drawing upon theories of persistent place and path dependence, we argue that a focus on the pre-mound histories of mound sites can...

The distribution of mounds, plazas, and defensive palisades associated with Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site (CMSHS) defines the core urban environment of Eastern North America’s first American Indian city. The large mounds surrounding Cahokia’s centrally located Grand Plaza, including the palisades that enclose them, are referred to as Downtown...

Aerial light detection and ranging (lidar) has emerged as a powerful technology for mapping urban archaeological landscapes, especially where dense vegetation obscures site visibility1,2. More recently, uncrewed aerial vehicle/drone lidar scanning has markedly improved the resolution of three-dimensional point clouds, allowing for the detection of...

Aerial lidar (light detection and ranging) has emerged as a powerful technology for mapping archaeological urban landscapes, especially where dense vegetation obscures site visibility 1,2 . More recently, drone-based data recovery has drastically improved the resolution of lidar point clouds, allowing for slight traces of ancient structural feature...

Time and history are central to understanding past and present infrastructures from a material and social perspective because infrastructure is tied to both socially embedded and pre-existing material phenomena. Social practice and historical forces converge to play significant causal roles underlying the emergence, maintenance, and permanence of i...

Archaeological studies of Early Islamic communities in Central Asia have focused on lowland urban communities. Here, the authors report on recent geophysical survey and excavation of an Early Islamic cemetery at Tashbulak in south-eastern Uzbekistan. AMS dating places the establishment of the cemetery in the mid-eighth century AD, making it one of...

Archaeological excavations at the Dali site complex located in southeastern Kazakhstan provide a rich picture of Bronze Age life spanning from the early third to late second millennia B.C. Nearly ten years of research at the site have produced an abundant assemblage of architectural remains, ritual and burial contexts, human and animal ancient DNA,...

Novel trajectories of food production, urbanism, and inter-regional trade fueled the emergence of numerous complex Iron Age polities in central and southern Africa. Renewed research and re-dating efforts in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and along the Swahili Coast are transforming models for how inter-regional interaction spheres contributed to these pattern...

Sixteen new and seven recently published AMS radiocarbon dates from Guli Waabayo rock shelter in southern Somalia show repeated use of the site over a ~ 20,000-year period that spans most of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 2 ~ 29–14.5 thousand years ago (ka) and the MIS 1 African Humid Period ~ 14.5–6 ka. Improved methods of ostrich eggshell and tooth e...

https://www.midwestarchaeology.org/mcja/book-reviews

The construction of earthen enclosures changed how the Middle Woodland landscape was monumentalized in central Kentucky. Archaeologists have long associated these monuments with important social changes, leading to modern interpretations of these mounds as material evidence for cooperative labor, large kin-based coalitions, and pan-regional ritual...

Elaborate Middle Woodland (ca. cal 200 BC–cal AD 500) mounds and exotic artifacts traded over long distances provide evidence for institutions that helped coordinate the gathering of large communal groups on the ancient midcontinent. However, the material heterogeneity archaeologists have documented for these societies suggests diverse material, hi...

Elaborate Middle Woodland (ca. cal 200 BC–cal AD 500) mounds and exotic artifacts traded over long distances provide evidence for institutions that helped coordinate the gathering of large communal groups on the ancient midcontinent. However, the material heterogeneity archaeologists have documented for these societies suggests diverse material, hi...

The construction of earthen enclosures changed how the Middle Woodland landscape was monumentalized in central Kentucky. Archaeologists have long associated these monuments with important social changes, leading to modern interpretations of these mounds as material evidence for cooperative labor, large kin-based coalitions, and pan-regional ritual...

Archaeologists often use near-surface geophysics or LiDAR-derived topographic imagery in their research. However, rarely are the two integrated in a way that offers a robust understanding of the complex historical palimpsests embedded within a social landscape. In this paper we present an integrated aerial and terrestrial remote sensing program at...

Archaeologists around the world have shown that LiDAR has the potential to map a wide range of architectural features built by humans. The ability to map archaeological sites at a landscape scale provides researchers the possibility to reconstruct and assess the ways humans organized, constructed, and interacted with their surroundings. However, Li...

Archaeology from the newly discovered town of Tashbulak illustrates the development of a highland urbanism on the part of the Karakhanid (Qarakhanid) Empire, starting in the late 10th century CE. Located roughly 2,100 m asl, the architecture of Tashbulak covers 7 ha and its planning reflects urban principles common to known cities of the medieval p...

Ecological niche models can be useful for clarifying relationships between environmental factors and a species' geographic distribution. In this study, we use presence-only data and environmental layers to create an ecological niche model to better understand the distribution of the East African Angolan black and white colobus monkey, Colobus angol...

Hunter-gatherer communities in the American Southeast reached an apogee of social and political complexity in the period between ca. 4200 and 3000 cal yr BP. In the lower Mississippi Valley (LMV) the Poverty Point culture defined this period of socio-political elaboration. However, following a significant period of climate change that led to except...

Over the past 20 years, archaeologists have grown increasingly interested in exploring the relationships between humans and things. In part, this focus on materiality has been fueled by the integration of modern philosophical perspectives and considerations of non-Western ontologies and the New Materialisms. In North America, much emphasis has been...

Over the past few decades, archaeologists have increasingly viewed collective memory as critical to the establishment and legitimation of power relations. For societies in the past and present, collective memory can be drawn on to clarify group identity, justify or subvert hierarchies, invent traditions, and define behaviors. The contributors to th...

Excavations undertaken in 1951 at the Jaketown site revealed a dense deposit of fragmented and intact pyramid-shaped baked-clay objects (BCOs) at the base of Mound A. This deposit was associated with the site’s Early Woodland component. Recent fieldwork at Jaketown also encountered the same tetrahedron deposit and identified an additional and disti...

Chaco Revisited: New research on the prehistory of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, edited by Carrie C. Heitman and Stephen Plog , 2015. Tucson (AZ): University of Arizona Press; ISBN 978-0-8165-3160-8 hardback $65.00, £61.00; x+362 pp., 32 figs., 20 tables - Volume 26 Issue 4 - Edward R. Henry

Social complexity increased dramatically during the Middle Woodland period (c. 200 bc–ad 500) in eastern North America. Adena-Hopewell societies during this period built massive burial mounds, constructed complex geometric earthen enclosures and maintained extensive trade networks in exotic craft goods. These material signatures suggest that coalit...

Geophysical methods that explore depths more than 1 m below the surface were employed at Feltus (22Je500), a Coles Creek period (ad 700–1200) mound-and-plaza group in southwestern Mississippi, USA. It is difficult to assess the internal structure of large platform mounds such as those at Feltus using excavation and traditional geophysical technique...

A multistaged geophysical methodology was recently used at site 15Ck10, a state-protected Middle Woodland period Adena (500 bce to ce 250) conical burial mound in Central Kentucky, USA. Data from this research are used to develop anthropological interpretations on the nature of burial mound construction and regional interaction between separate mor...

Understanding how humans alter their surrounding landscape can, on a basic scale, help us understand how people were structured socially. Recent discourse on the Adena phenomenon has emphasized the amount of variation that exists within its ritual practices. This chapter uses a GIS to identify and examine the distribution of structural diversity am...

The Early and Middle Woodland periods (1000 BCE-500 CE) were remarkable for their level of culture contact and interaction in pre-Columbian North America. This volume, featuring case studies from Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, and Tennessee, sheds new light on the various approaches to the study of the dynamic and...

Investigations at Chucalissa (40SY1) in Shelby County, Tennessee, have been instrumental in establishing Mississippian period chronology for southwestern Tennessee and much of the surrounding region. Excavations conducted in 2003 produced a suite of new radiocarbon dates that has provided a refined developmental lineage of occupations in West Tenne...

Magnetic gradiometry and in-phase electromagnetic induction (EM) instruments were employed during a geophysical survey to identify archaeological features at an Adena circular ditch and embankment earthwork site. Three features identified in the geophysical survey were selected for further geophysical examination because of their shape, spatial arr...

This thesis describes archaeological investigations carried out at LeBus Circle (15BB01), a prehistoric circular earthwork in Bourbon County, Kentucky. Geophysical prospection was used to assess the earthwork's state of preservation and to guide the placement of manual and mechanical excavation trenches. Geophysical methods utilized included magnet...