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The Southeastern Indians
... The Beneath World is envisioned as a dark and watery abyss, home to snakes, serpents, and other formidable water spirits. Consequently, it is closely associated with death, chaos, and the afterlife (Emerson 1989;Hudson 1976). In contrast, the Above World, or sky vault, engenders order, light, and purity, serving as a home for weather spirits and great avian deities (Duncan 2011;Hudson 1976;King and Reilly 2011). ...
... Consequently, it is closely associated with death, chaos, and the afterlife (Emerson 1989;Hudson 1976). In contrast, the Above World, or sky vault, engenders order, light, and purity, serving as a home for weather spirits and great avian deities (Duncan 2011;Hudson 1976;King and Reilly 2011). Floating atop the waters of the Beneath World, the Earth Disk -also referred to as the earthly plane or Middle World -lies between these two opposing realms. ...
... Thus, the Mississippian cosmos is typified by a series of dualistic oppositions between supernatural forces: Above World/Beneath World, light/dark, and chaos/order. Only through the permanent tension of these forces can the universe remain balanced and intact (Emerson 1997;Hudson 1976;Lankford 2008). ...
Symbolically charged ceramic rim-effigy bowls, characterized by figural head and tail adornments, are hallmarks of the Late Mississippian period in the central Mississippi River valley (CMV). Hundreds of whole rim-effigy bowls, most often depicting serpents, birds, or humans, have been collected at sites from southeastern Missouri to northwestern Mississippi. However, a comprehensive iconographic analysis of the CMV rim-effigy bowl corpus – specifically focused on visual style and theme – has never been conducted. A systematic review of the corpus’s imagery suggests that CMV rim-effigy bowls acted as materializations of the Mississippian cosmos, reinforcing the principle of cosmic balance. Further, given discrete concentrations of bowl styles and themes across the region, localized religious collectives – perhaps sodalities – may have produced their own rim-effigy bowls for use during charter rites or ceremonies. More broadly, by reviewing an understudied ceramic corpus, this study furthers understandings of Mississippian art and iconography in the CMV and beyond.
... Indigenous populations have been in the southeastern US for at least 15,000 years, and archaeologists have divided this time into specific periods based on technological advances and cultural changes as follows: Paleoindian (before 8000 BC), Archaic (8000-1000 BC), Woodland (1000 BC to AD 1000), Mississippian (AD 1000-1570), and Protohistoric (AD 1570-1700) [45][46][47]. The Archaic Period in the southeastern US is characterized by cultural adaptations to both climate and landscape changes during the early and middle Holocene epoch [48]. ...
... The Archaic Period in the southeastern US is characterized by cultural adaptations to both climate and landscape changes during the early and middle Holocene epoch [48]. It is further delineated into Early (8000-6000 BC), Middle (6000-3000 BC), and Late (3000-1000 BC) Archaic Periods [46,47]. Expanding deciduous forests created an ecosystem rich with nut-bearing trees, seed-bearing plants, and small game, while riverine and marine environments provided an abundance of fish and shellfish [46,47]. ...
... It is further delineated into Early (8000-6000 BC), Middle (6000-3000 BC), and Late (3000-1000 BC) Archaic Periods [46,47]. Expanding deciduous forests created an ecosystem rich with nut-bearing trees, seed-bearing plants, and small game, while riverine and marine environments provided an abundance of fish and shellfish [46,47]. The archaeological record has shown that populations increased and that groups were highly mobile across the landscape with a focus on seasonal resource procurement [47]. ...
Object-based image analysis (OBIA) has been increasingly used to identify terrain features of archaeological sites, but only recently to extract subsurface archaeological features from geophysical data. In this study, we use a semi-automated OBIA to identify Archaic (8000-1000 BC) hearths from Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) data collected at David Crockett Birthplace State Park in eastern Tennessee in the southeastern United States. The data were preprocessed using GPR-SLICE, Surfer, and Archaeofusion software, and amplitude depth slices were selected that contained anomalies ranging from 0.80 to 1.20 m below surface (BS). Next, the data were segmented within ESRI ArcMap GIS software using a global threshold and, after vectorization, classified using four attributes: area, perimeter, length-to-width ratio, and Circularity Index. The user-defined parameters were based on an excavated Archaic circular hearth found at a depth greater than one meter, which consisted of fire-cracked rock and had a diameter greater than one meter. These observations were in agreement with previous excavations of hearths at the site. Features that had a high probability of being Archaic hearths were further delineated by human interpretation from radargrams and then ground-truthed by auger testing. The semi-automated OBIA successfully predicted 15 probable Archaic hearths at depths ranging from 0.85 to 1.20 m BS. Observable spatial clustering of hearths may indicate episodes of seasonal occupation by small mobile groups during the Archaic Period.
... Archaeologists have long understood that a connection exists between environmental setting and human settlement (e.g., Butzer 1982;Osborne 1943). The environment plays an important role in the histories and cultures of Native American groups that inhabited the region beginning approximately 14,000 years ago (Halligan et al. 2016;Hudson 1976;Marquardt and Payne 1992;Swanton 1987). Paleoenvironmental research in the Southeast indicates that natural resources including plants, animals, minerals, and potable water were abundant and widely available, making this region inviting to human settlements. ...
... Early ethnographers classified historic indigenous peoples based on language group (Swanton 1987), adaptation to local environments, and relationships to one another (Hudson 1976). Pre-Columbian groups were mainly classified by material culture use such as lithic technologies or ceramic forms and decorative styles. ...
... A different type of feast event, the Green Corn Ceremony, is known from first hand accounts during the early historic period (Hudson 1976). During the late summer when the first corn began to ripen, Southeastern Indians celebrated the Green Corn Ceremony (or Busk), a time for fasting, forgiveness, and feasting. ...
Interest in the study of foodways through an archaeological lens, particularly in the American Southeast, is evident in the abundance of literature on this topic over the past decade. Foodways as a concept includes all of the activities, rules, and meanings that surround the production, harvesting, processing, cooking, serving, and consumption of food. We study foodways and components of foodways archaeologically through direct and indirect evidence. The current synthesis is concerned with research themes in the archaeology of Southeastern foodways, including feasting, gender, social and political status, and food insecurity. In this review, I explore the information that can be learned from material remains of the foodstuffs themselves and the multiple lines of evidence that can help us better understand the meanings, rituals, processes, and cultural meanings and motivations of foodways.
... Half of those illustrated from the late Middle Mississippian Angel site are perforated (Black 1967:454). Chunkey players rendered on Middle Mississippian shell disks from Eddyville (Hudson 1976:424) and the Bootheel Riverine locality (Chapman 1980:202), and in Catlin's pamttng of historic Mandan (Hudson 1976:425) seem to depict perforated discoidals. The only other comparable objects at Oneota sites are well-used manos that become circular and are often pitted on both sides to give the appearance of crude discoidals. ...
... Burlington chert, for example, is found in both Brice Prairie and diameter and has a 2.3 em diameter hole drilled through the center. Discoidals such as these are generally interpreted as targets for the chunkey game based on ethnographic accounts of the 19th and 20th century (Catlin 1973 ;Hudson 1976). These and other accounts indicate that Chunkey was played by groups from across eastern North American in historic times. ...
For 10,000 years people have exploited the abundant and
diverse resources along the upper Mississippi River. For at
least the last 600 years, they .have lived on the broad sandy La
Crosse terrace overlooking the Mississippi River in Wisconsin.
Occupation here began at least by A.D. 1300, and continued
until the present with only brief interruptions. The record of
the Oneota occupation on a portion of the southern La Crosse
terrace is presented here.
... Hickory nuts ripen in September through December, while black walnuts mature in September and October. These various nutmeats provide an excellent source of food energy and protein, and could also be processed to extract oils for both cooking and food preservation (Hudson 1976;Shea et al. 1987;Swanton 1979). Honey locust seeds also ripen in the early fall, and are held in pods that contain an edible pulp used historically as a sweetener and thickener (Fernald and Kinsey 1996;Hudson 1976;Nesom 2003). ...
... These various nutmeats provide an excellent source of food energy and protein, and could also be processed to extract oils for both cooking and food preservation (Hudson 1976;Shea et al. 1987;Swanton 1979). Honey locust seeds also ripen in the early fall, and are held in pods that contain an edible pulp used historically as a sweetener and thickener (Fernald and Kinsey 1996;Hudson 1976;Nesom 2003). ...
The Tennessee Division of Archaeology conducted archaeological excavations at site 40DV83 in 1987, prior to development of the site area as part of the proposed Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Although no intact midden deposits were identified at the site, mechanical excavations resulted in the recovery of more than 8,000 prehistoric artifacts and identification of 41 cultural features, including five human graves and one dog burial. This report presents the results of those investigations.
... The significance of the color red is well documented among indigenous cultures world-wide (e.g., Hudson (1976); Hamell (1992); Gage (1999); Purcell (2004Purcell ( , 2012; DeBoer (2005); Cobb and Drake (2008)). Purcell (2012) discusses the Southeastern Native American use of red and white to represent split ideological and social realities. ...
... Previously (Sherwood and Kidder 2011:81), we interpreted such veneers as functioning in two realms, the symbolic and the practical. Here we emphasize the potential for symbolism based on the strong symbolic connection between the color red and Southeastern Indian mythology, social organization, and political structure (Hudson 1976;DeBoer 2005;Cobb and Drake 2008). In all the sites noted above, red clay, or in the case of Shiloh, red clayey sand, must be sought out and intentionally extracted from the natural environment. ...
In North America mound research traditionally focuses on how these earthen structures functioned -- as mortuary facilities, ceremonial platforms, observatories, and the residences of political elites and/or ritual practitioners. This paper acknowledges mound building as the purposeful selection of soils and sediments for specific color, texture, or engineering properties and the organization of deposits suggesting that the building process reflects both shared knowledge and communicates specific information. We present two examples: Late Archaic period Poverty Point site Mound A, and Mississippian period Shiloh site Mound A, in the exploration of structured deposits to identify ritual in contrast to a more mundane or purely practical origin. We argue the building of these earthen monuments was not only architecturally important as a means to serve a subsequent purpose but that the act of construction itself was a ritual process intended to serve its own religious and social purposes. In these contexts, ritual does much more than communicate underlying social relationships; it is instrumental to their production.
... Anthropogenic fire has a long history in the southern United States (Hudson 1982;Pyne 1982). Since their arrival over 10,000 years ago, Native Americans burned southern pine forests and grasslands to drive game and clear agricultural lands (Hudson 1982;Pyne 1982;Buckner 1989;MacCleery 1993). ...
... Anthropogenic fire has a long history in the southern United States (Hudson 1982;Pyne 1982). Since their arrival over 10,000 years ago, Native Americans burned southern pine forests and grasslands to drive game and clear agricultural lands (Hudson 1982;Pyne 1982;Buckner 1989;MacCleery 1993). This practice was continued by European immigrants who burned the land for many of the same reasons (Stoddard 1962;Pyne 1982). ...
Fire is essential to maintain the open forest structure required by the southeastern fox squirrel (Sciurus niger niger). In recent decades, managers of the longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) ecosystem have transitioned from dormant-season to growing-season burns, which more effectively limit midstory hardwood encroachment. Similarly, aggressive hardwood removal programs have been employed to further reduce hardwood midstory. However, fox squirrels are dependent on oaks (Quercus spp.) for food and cover; thus, it is unclear how growing-season burns and hardwood removal may affect habitat quality for fox squirrels. We used compositional analysis to investigate selection of home ranges within the study area by 48 radiocollared fox squirrels on the Fort Bragg Military Installation, North Carolina. We used resource utilization functions with growing-season fire history and other habitat covariates as explanatory variables to test whether growing-season fires influenced the selection of habitat components within home ranges. Lastly, using a sample of fox squirrel relocations and paired random points, we performed binomial logistic regression to test whether habitat selection by fox squirrels was influenced by the availability of oaks and longleaf pines and select forest stand structural characteristics. When establishing home ranges, fox squirrels selected southern yellow pine over other cover types. Within home ranges, fox squirrel use increased with decreasing distance to a riparian area but was not affected by the application of growing-season fires. At the population level, fox squirrels selected for greater densities of reproductively mature oak stems. Fox squirrels likely benefit from growing-season fires that maintain expansive upland pine stands but are negatively affected by homogeneous fire application and mechanical hardwood removal that reduce the occurrence of reproductively mature oaks across the landscape. Managers should strive to maintain oaks in riparian areas, fire shadows, and naturally occurring patches within pine stands when managing for fox squirrels.
... As noted, among many Native American tribes, rivers were also believed to be conduits to the Below World (Hudson 1976;Reilly 2004). Again quoting Simek et al. (2021, p. 199): "rivers themselves were spiritually important to southeastern Native peoples, often serving as portals to the spirit world." ...
The Cahokia Mound Group in Illinois, USA, is acknowledged as the largest Native American city north of Mexico. It flourished during the Mississippian Period. Cahokia, however, was only one of three complexes in the immediate area. Located across the Mississippi River from Cahokia, the St. Louis Mound Group was part of the larger complex.The St. Louis Mound Group featured at least 25 earthen mounds including the so-called Big Mound that contained dozens of human burials.In the 1800s the St. Louis Mound Group was leveled to allow for urban expansion. Few records are in existence documenting the location or other details concerning the group. As a result, an important part of prehistory seems lost. In this paper the likely location for the St. Louis Mound Group is identified using survey plats from the 1850s, early lithographs and other data. Findings are assessed for astronomical alignments and landscape relationships, with possible cosmological implications noted.
... Water features like rivers, springs, and especially the confluence of streams have been described as places of spiritual significance among many Indigenous groups who inhabited Eastern North America. For instance, places where waterways meet have been associated with the creation of, or emergence into, the Middle world (where humans live) and/or the Under World (Bacon, 1993;Bastian and Mitchell, 2004;Hall, 1997;Hudson, 1976;Romain, 2009;Rooth, 1957;Spencer, 1909). Once people began gathering at this place, cyclical movements to and away from it lasted until roughly the BC/AD transition (OS-136890: Ab2). ...
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, it is rare to acquire data that affords a rich and long-term description of the landscape before, during, and after a monument was built. In addition, archaeologists who study pre-textual societies are seldom afforded an opportunity to explore detailed questions relating to how monuments were engaged with after social dis-positions toward them changed. In this article we present diverse datasets obtained from a small Middle Woodland (ca. 200 cal BC-cal AD 500) ditch and embankment enclosure in the Middle Ohio Valley, USA. Drawing on those data, we offer a detailed biographical description of the site that illustrates how pre-construction use of the area influenced construction of the enclosure, describes how the enclosure was used after construction, and indicates what happened when the enclosure became evaluated differently in society.
... Ethnographic accounts by European and American observers indicate many ceremonial practices of Eastern Woodland native farmers were focused on agricultural fertility and life renewal-for example, the annual ritual Green Corn cycle and harvest ceremonies that have continued into the present day (e.g., Howard 1968;Hudson 1976). Given the importance of maize in post-AD 900 Cahokia and Cahokia's importance in generating religious beliefs and practices that spread across much of the eastern Woodlands, Green Corn and World Renewal ceremonialism may have been significantly elaborated at Cahokia. ...
The history of maize ( Zea mays L .) in the eastern Woodlands remains an important study topic. As currently understood, these histories appear to vary regionally and include scenarios positing an early introduction and an increase in use over hundreds of, if not a thousand, years. In this article, we address the history of maize in the American Bottom region of Illinois and its importance in the development of regional Mississippian societies, specifically in the Cahokian polity located in the central Mississippi River valley. We present new lines of evidence that confirm subsistence-level maize use at Cahokia was introduced rather abruptly at about AD 900 and increased rapidly over the following centuries. Directly dated archaeobotanical maize remains, human and dog skeletal carbon isotope values, and a revised interpretation of the archaeological record support this interpretation. Our results suggest that population increases and the nucleation associated with Cahokia were facilitated by the newly introduced practices of maize cultivation and consumption. Maize should be recognized as having had a key role in providing subsistence security that—combined with social, political, and religious changes—fueled the emergence of Cahokia in AD 1050.
... The gendered division of labor in southeastern societies has been examined in several studies (Polhemus 1998;Smith 1978, Thomas 2001 using ethnohistoric data collected by Swanton (1946) and Hudson (1976) as well as the ethnological analyses of 185 societies published by Murdock and Provost (1973). Smith (1978), for example, compares Murdock and Provost's analyses of southeastern societies to descriptions of southeastern societies in Swanton (1946). ...
Prehistoric archaeologists have done very little yet to explore how gender “works” within the historical processes of social construction during the long prehistory of the Southeast. As we undertake examinations of gender ideologies, roles, and relationships, applications of analogs play an important role. This is despite a distinctly unsettled agreement on uses of analogy in archaeology. In this piece, I explore archaeologists’ continued unease with the use of analogy in archaeological interpretation, assigning part of the blame to underlying and unresolved epistemological issues. A disciplined and studied use of formal analogies is suggested.
... Cooperation and the creation of order is an unexpected role for Beneath World spirits. In historic southeastern Native American belief, such spirits are commonly described as the denizens of a chaotic, unpredictable realm of confusion and ambiguityone hardly capable of ordering the cosmos (see, e.g., Hudson 1976Hudson :128, 2003. To speculate, in the present case one role of the bird-snakes we have called pelimocs may have been the benign one of anchoring the axis mundi at the base of the cosmos. ...
We recognize a new style of Mississippian-period art in the North American Southeast, calling it Holly Bluff. It is a two-dimensional style of representational art that appears solely on containers: marine shell cups and ceramic vessels. Iconographically, the style focuses on the depiction of zoomorphic supernatural powers of the Beneath World. Seriating the known corpus of images allows us to characterize three successive style phases, Holly Bluff I, II, and III. Using limited data, we source the style to the northern portion of the lower Mississippi Valley.
... The possibility that any bird symbolism present may be emphasizing the Underworld over the male warrior trope is strengthened when we consider that the image is created by thousands of marine shell beads, each carrying Underworld connotations (e.g., Claassen 2011;Hall 1997;Hudson 1976; also see Baires 2014:259-260 discussion). Shell masses in important mortuary contexts are not uncommon at Cahokia and adjacent American Bottom mound centers. ...
The Beaded Burial central to F101 within Cahokia’s mound 72Sub1 has been fundamental to some cosmological explanations of the founding of this North American precolumbian polity. The central burial, identified as two males surrounded by retainers, has been interpreted as paradigmatic of a paramount chiefdom, or conversely, as a mythic cosmogram. Recent bioarchaeological reanalysis and two independent osteological studies of F101 and associated burials have identified the presence of male/female pairs, numerous females, and at least one child, suggesting that previous explanations privileging the male Red Horn association should be reexamined. We suggest that 72Sub1 is most likely correlated with ritual practices promoting world creation, renewal, and fertility symbolism.
... While traffic accidents and cycling can be eliminated from consideration given the chronological assignment of the sample, it is possible that these clavicle fractures were sustained in the context of some form of sport. Various permutations of "stick ball," a male-dominated team sport of which lacrosse is a more recent form, were found throughout the Eastern Woodlands (Culin, 1975;Hudson, 1976) and could have provided a context for such injuries. Played with some form of racket, the games could be quite violent and presumably injurious (e.g., Vennum, 1994), as boy's lacrosse is documented to be today (Swenson, Henke, Collins, Fields, & Comstock, 2012). ...
Objectives
Bioarchaeological research has documented a general decline in health with the transition from foraging to farming, primarily with respect to changing patterns of morbidity. Less is known about changes in injury risk, an aspect of health more obviously tied to particular landscapes and behaviors associated with different subsistence regimes. The purpose of this research is to evaluate several hypotheses emerging from the ideal free distribution model (Fretwell & Lucas, ) that predict injury risk based on subsistence‐specific practices and land use patterns.
Materials and Methods
Postcranial fracture frequencies for long bones and clavicles in human skeletal remains from three Southeast U.S. regions permit examination of variability in injury risk among low‐intensity (floodplain) farmers. Published data on six hunter‐gatherer samples, four low‐intensity agriculturalist samples, and six high‐intensity agriculturalist samples comprise a comparative sample for examining variability in injury risk across three distinct subsistence traditions. Differences are evaluated using Z scores and the Fisher Exact test, Chi‐Square test, and Mann–Whitney U test.
Results
While statistically significant differences are apparent among low‐intensity farming groups in the Southeast sample, in the global comparison postcranial fractures are significantly less common in low‐intensity agriculturalists than in hunter‐gatherers or high‐intensity agriculturalists.
Discussion
The results of this study support the hypothesis that, with respect to traumatic injury risk, low‐intensity farming is a risk‐averse subsistence strategy in comparison with full‐time foraging or high‐intensity agriculture. These data suggest that it is not agriculture per se that predicts an increase in this health risk, but rather the mode and intensity of agricultural production, findings that have important ramifications for our understanding of the health consequences of major subsistence transitions.
The Gulf Atlantic Coastal Plain (GACP) Long‐Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network site is characterized by hot and humid summers with low gradient stream channels surrounded by wetland forests and croplands. Beneath its sandy soils, a confining layer stifles recharge to the deeper aquifer system, so a substantial proportion of streamflow is driven by shallow subsurface baseflow. Agricultural practices in the area consist of forage and livestock production, forestry, and rotational cropping systems dominated by cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) and peanut (Arachis hypogaea). Certain factors impose challenges to the viability of GACP agricultural systems, like changing economics and demographics, as well as pest and disease pressures. The GACP communicates with stakeholders from various backgrounds, who provide their perspectives as agricultural research service scientists execute their research plans. The GACP LTAR common experiment (CE) is carried out via plot‐ and field‐scale studies. The plot‐scale CE compares prevailing practices, determined from regional data, with an alternative treatment including winter covers, such as the biofuel feedstock carinata (Brassica carinata, A. Braun), to provide both economic and environmental benefits. The field‐scale CE is observational; key variables are monitored for two farms where management practices largely emulate the prevailing treatment. Data collection efforts quantify vegetation, hydrology, soils, and climate data to produce datasets for modeling and statistical analysis. Research teams quantify relationships between land management, environment, and socioeconomic benefits. Ultimately, the GACP LTAR site works to facilitate agricultural system health and wellbeing at local, regional, and national scales by providing long‐term science‐based solutions.
Plants and animals play a vital role in the human experience, from providing basic sustenance to creating unique social practices that may govern familial, political, or religious experiences; reconstitute identities; or forge social relationships. In this article, we present analyses on the ethnobotanical and zoological remains recently recovered from the Spring Lake Tract, Cahokia, a neighborhood populated from approximately AD 900 to 1275. The assemblage represents a variety of plants and animals that demonstrate the diverse utility of the biota from the region. We conclude that this assemblage indicates that this neighborhood community participated in an array of practices not easily dichotomized into “ritual” or “domestic.” From the perspectives of “Place-Thought” and locality, we emphasize the agency of these entities (plant/animal/human) in the process of creating and sustaining this Cahokian neighborhood.
This article reports on our assessment of the events that resulted in Mound 2 at the Hopewell Earthworks, with a special focus on its two caches of blue-gray chert bifaces. Our analysis begins by examining the ritual practices associated with Mound 2, including the evidence for fire ceremonialism, extended burial regimes, and the ceremonial deposition of two biface caches. Initially, we focus on evidence of Scioto Hopewell fire ceremonialism on the lower floor under Mound 2, including the significance of the basin-shaped hearth found next to the lower cache of bifaces and several features that contained puddled-clay hearth fragments. We then examine the five burials found under Hopewell Mound 2, considering their grave goods and mortuary furniture. Next, we analyze the two biface caches and their resemblance to similar deposits. We also provide a preliminary assessment of the chert sources from which these bifaces were produced based on a reflectance spectroscopic analysis of 172 bifaces. Our subsequent discussion considers the historical intersection of these three aspects of Hopewell Mound 2 (i.e., fire ceremonialism, biface caches, and burials), including how Middle Woodland ceremonial situations gathered together and arranged increasingly complex assemblages in novel ways.
Early Woodland Liverpool (Black Sand variant) pottery decorations consist of belts, rectilinear panels, and/or punctates encircling the vessel. Vertically arranged thematic motifs reflect the structure of the cosmos in its simplest form: Below realm, Earth’s disk, Above realm. This article postulates that the Early Woodland decorative tradition was an enduring symbolic system shared by women making pottery in the upper Midwest. Cosmograms in pottery motifs trace three universal metaphors of the Woodland era belief system: (1) Cooking vessels were feminine spiritbeings; (2) the Woodland culinary vessel shaped like the female form represented her biological destiny as the reproductive vessel for humankind and cooking was a ritual action (“prayer”), a metaphor for the creation of new members of society; (3) the cooking pot was a mandala of cosmograms expressing daily life, ritual practice, and cosmology. These themes carry through subsequent studies on Middle Woodland Havanoid and Late Woodland corded or trailed pottery in an upcoming book.
Flexible strategies of crop production and wild food procurement helped late Mississippian farmers withstand environmental and social perturbations that preceded and followed European contact. Beans were fully incorporated by AD 1400, but their economic importance is difficult to assess due to low likelihood of preservation. Likewise, oily native seeds including sumpweed and sunflower are poorly represented in archaeobotanical assemblages, with cultigen sumpweed often considered all-but-extinct by the fifteenth century AD. Ritual grain offerings from an intentionally burned and buried structure at the Kuykendall Brake site in central Arkansas indicate that in this special context, beans were at least as highly valued as corn. Large domesticated sumpweed seeds were the third most common species, adding to evidence from other sites in the Southeast that this crop had not been dropped from all Native farming systems. Combining the information from Kuykendall Brake with data from other late Mississippian and early Contact period assemblages from the region, we conclude that the high level of agrobiodiversity and broad harvesting base alleviated risks of food insecurity and helped local societies sustain and prolong traditional lifeways.
Peoples living in the Eastern Woodlands of North America domesticated a suite of small‐seeded crops between five thousand and two thousand years ago, making this region one of roughly ten independent centers of domestication across the globe. In the Southern Appalachian region, foraging peoples began cultivating these native crops around thirty‐five hundred years ago (during the Late Archaic period [3000–800 BCE]); by the start of the Early Woodland period (800–200 BCE), they had significantly altered their lifeways and surrounding landscape. This included a change in the physical landscape, as demonstrated by paleoethnobotanical data, with an increase in weedy plants at the expense of bottomland forests. Groups also significantly shifted their lifeways, becoming more sedentary, as evidenced by an increase in storage pits, more substantial structures, and the adoption of ceramic vessels. Storage pits also tend to be smaller, indicating a shift from community‐based food procurement and storage to the household level. This may reflect the development of private property and distinctions among households with differential access. Community‐based rituals, as evidenced in several caves and rock‐shelters in the region, may have been established to strengthen group ties in the face of the broader changing social and physical landscape.
Ethnographers have ably documented the great extent and diversity of social institutions that contemporary fishers and shellfishers employ to collectively manage common property resources. However, the collective action regimes developed among ancient maritime societies remain understudied by archaeologists. We summarize research into the development and form of collective action among the maritime societies of the western peninsular coast of Florida, USA, drawing on our own recent work in the Tampa Bay area and previous work elsewhere in the region, especially the Calusa area to the south. Archaeological evidence suggests that collective action became more important in Tampa Bay in the first centuries CE, probably owing to a marine transgression that resulted in more productive estuaries. Groups here staked claims to productive estuarine locations through the founding of villages, the building of mounds, and the construction of relatively simple marine enclosures. Historically, these changes resulted in societies of relatively small scale and limited authoritarian government. In contrast, collective action developed later in the Calusa area, may have begun in relation to resource scarcity than plenty, and may been founded in kinship rather than in public ritual. Collective action in the Calusa area resulted in projects of greater scale and complexity, providing a foundation for more hierarchical and authoritarian social formations.
The Ohio Hopewell archaeological record is full of material remains that, to contemporary Western eyes, are peculiar in design and defy understanding: asymmetrically composed multipart earthworks, sculptures of composite creatures without name, and burial forms infused with untranslated symbolism, to mention a few. Our inability to bridge to the meanings these works had for Hopewell peoples and to the motivations of Hopewell peoples in creating the works derives today from a variety of limitations. Three we address here and in other chapters of this book, and begin to overcome. Very important is our still-insufficient knowledge and systematizing of knowledge about the cultural, social, and historical contexts of the remains. It is through contextual “positioning” of an archaeological remain (Chapter 1:Listening; Carr 1991; Carr and Case 2005a:19–22; Gillespie 2012; Hodder 1982:212–228; 1986; 2012; Taylor 1948; Turner 1967) that the semi-independent, ambiguous relationship between the remain’s form and its meaning can be resolved considerably when material evidence is rich (e.g., Brown 2003; 2007; Diaz-Granados et al. 2015), as in the Ohio Hopewell case (Case and Carr 2008).
Interpretations of Scioto Hopewell social life over the past twenty-five years have repeatedly put forward the notion that its showy material record, and particularly the massive ceremonial deposits of glistening raw materials and paraphernalia that were ritually destroyed and placed within charnel houses, indicate intense social competition among individuals and among social groups. Ceremonial flamboyance has been cast as a sociopolitical or political-economic strategy that self-aggrandizing individuals and competitive lineages used to display and augment their social power and prestige, and to recruit social followings and mates, in both the Scioto Hopewell and Illinois Hopewell cases (e.g., Braun 1986; Brown 1981; Buikstra and Charles 1999; Fagan 1995; Milner 2004; Seeman 1988; Spielmann 2013; see also Artursson et al. 2015; Lynott et al. 2015). This interpretation aligns with the popular, if not pervasive, view in sociocultural anthropology and anthropological archaeology that competition among individuals and among social groups is necessary to the development of social complexity in all small and midscale societies (e.g., Friedman and Rowlands 1977; Hayden 2001; Service 1962).
Gambling in ancient North America was primarily an intergroup activity. This position as a liminal practice, taking place on territorial frontiers and at large intertribal gatherings, puts gaming on the very forefront of cultural transmission and knowledge exchange, with several implications. Intergroup gaming results in a shared fluency of games, transcending barriers of language and ethnicity. Evidence of common methods and materials allows ancient, region-spanning social networks to be identified. And subtle variations demonstrate a repeated and ongoing negotiation between groups over time as objectives and participants change, with this evolution of gaming practices continuing to the present day. The freedom to adapt to changing conditions, contrasted with notions of a static “traditional” past, is not just a matter of sovereignty relating to Indigenous games. It is a reflection of the nature of Indigenous gaming as it has always been.
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 Creek site (31Mg2), a single-mound Mississippian civic-ceremonial center in central North Carolina that was occupied between AD 1150–1400. Architectural remains and multiple artifact classes are used to explore the activities associated with several public buildings in the mound area at Town Creek. Premound and mound-summit public spaces at Town Creek were associated with food consumption at multiple scales, some of which is consistent with feasting, the consumption of special foods, craft production, and ritual activities that included smoking and tattooing. Some of these activities appear to have been integrative and inclusive while others took place in smaller, more inaccessible spaces, which suggests they were more exclusive in nature. Our findings are consistent with the idea that crafting and the performance of rituals in public spaces were important aspects of leadership at Town Creek.
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 my reexamination of all shell artifacts from Mound 72, including some new artifact identifications, bead counts, and measurements. Artifacts previously called gorgets are shell cups, and one was remarkably large. The source was probably the eastern Gulf of Mexico for most marine shells. I present a new method of examining bead drill holes using the frustum formula, suggesting that porcupine quills or biological materials were used as drill tips for columella beads. This method can be used on stone and bone beads as well. I hypothesize a general decline in bead crafting through time. Paired shell artifact emplacements throughout Mound 72 echo the paired male/female human interments from the Beaded Burial, adding to evidence that Mound 72's burials were part of a ritual theater. My analysis supports the contention that marine shell artifacts were symbolic conduits of human spirits and power.
This article reports on our assessment of the events that resulted in Mound 2 at the Hopewell Earthworks, with a special focus on its two caches of blue-gray chert bifaces. Our analysis begins by examining the ritual practices associated with Mound 2, including the evidence for fire ceremonialism, extended burial regimes, and the ceremonial deposition of two biface caches. Initially, we focus on evidence of Scioto Hopewell fire ceremonialism on the lower floor under Mound 2, including the significance of the basin-shaped hearth found next to the lower cache of bifaces and several features that contained puddled-clay hearth fragments. We then examine the five burials found under Hopewell Mound 2, considering their grave goods and mortuary furniture. Next, we analyze the two biface caches and their resemblance to similar deposits. We also provide a preliminary assessment of the chert sources from which these bifaces were produced based on a reflectance spectroscopic analysis of 172 bifaces. Our subsequent discussion considers the historical intersection of these three aspects of Hopewell Mound 2 (i.e., fire ceremonialism, biface caches, and burials), including how Middle Woodland ceremonial situations gathered together and arranged increasingly complex assemblages in novel ways.
Prevalent as bird imagery is in the ritual traditions of eastern North America, the bony remains of birds are relatively sparse in archaeological deposits and when present are typically viewed as subsistence remains. A first-millennium ad civic-ceremonial centre on the northern Gulf Coast of Florida contains large pits with bird bones amid abundant fish bone and other taxa. The avian remains are dominated by elements of juvenile white ibises, birds that were taken from offshore rookeries at the time of summer solstices. The pits into which they were deposited were emplaced on a relict dune with solstice orientations. The timing and siting of solstice feasts at this particular centre invites discussion of world-renewal rituality and the significance of birds in not only the timing of these events but also possibly as agents of balance and rejuvenation.
On behalf of the City of Houston and the Memorial Park Conservancy, Gray & Pape, Inc. conducted intensive pedestrian surveys of three areas totaling 144.4 hectares (357.6 acres) of Memorial Park, City of Houston, Harris County, Texas. Fieldwork was carried out between April 1, 2018 and March 31, 2019, under Texas Antiquities Annual Permit Number 8465. The following report presents the results of site file and background research, survey methods, field results, and conclusions and recommendations for each of these surveys. The goals of the intensive pedestrian surveys were to assist the Memorial Park Conservancy in identifying the presence of cultural resources as they are defined by Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended (36 CFR 800), and provide management recommendations for identified resources. Survey methods, site identification and delineation, and reporting adhere to standards established by the Archeology Division of the Texas Historical Commission, the Council of Texas Archeologists, and the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. At this time, the Memorial Park Conservancy plans to conduct standard park maintenance activities including low impact mechanical clearing of the invasive understory, spraying, and new plantings in each of the areas surveyed. Gray & Pape, Inc. focused particular attention on the State Antiquities Landmark-designated (#8200003264) Camp Logan archaeological site (41HR614) that encompasses large portions of Memorial Park. As a result of survey findings, the boundary for 41HR614 has been expanded to include the entirety of the former Camp Logan footprint as preserved within the boundaries of Memorial Park. The boundary of the previously recorded prehistoric site 41HR1217 was also extended. Four new prehistoric sites (41HR1226, 41HR1227, 41HR1229, 41HR1230) and one new multicomponent site (41HR1228) were also recorded. The 12.4-hectare (30.6-acre) Sports Complex survey resulted in the identification of five historic features considered part of 41HR614: the partial remains of a Camp Logan era road, segments of two Camp Logan era ditches, a Camp Logan concrete grease trap, and a concrete signpost from the 1940s. Gray & Pape recommends that the grease trap and signpost be avoided by Memorial Park Conservancy planned activities. The remaining features will not be impacted by current planned Memorial Park Conservancy activities. Based on the results of this survey, and with these protective measures in place, Gray & Pape recommends that the no further cultural resources work be required in the remaining portions of the Sports Complex project area and that the project be cleared to proceed as currently planned. The 76-hectare (189-acre) Bayou Wilds – East survey resulted in the identification of four new prehistoric sites (41HR1226, 41HR1227, 41HR1229, 41HR1230) and one new multicomponent site (41HR1228). The boundaries of the prehistoric site 41HR1217 and the historic site 41HR614 were extended A total of 14 new features were identified as associated with 41HR614, as well as two historic-age structures. Gray & Pape, Inc. recommends avoidance of the identified sites, features, and historic age structures. Based on the results of this survey, and with these protective measures in place, Gray & Pape, Inc. recommends no further cultural resources work be required in the remaining portion of the Bayou Wilds – East project area and that the project be cleared to proceed as planned. The 56-hectare (138-acre) Northwest Trails – North survey resulted in the identification of four historic-age structures, nearly identical footbridges constructed of irregular blocks and mortar that are part of the park’s active trail network; as well as a historical isolate. Based on the results of this survey, and with these protective measures in place, Gray & Pape, Inc. recommends that the no further cultural resources work be required in the remaining portions of the Northwest Trails – North project area and that the project be cleared to proceed as currently planned. As part of the Unanticipated Finds Plan developed by Gray & Pape, Inc. and the Memorial Park Conservancy, Gray & Pape, Inc. archaeologists identified and recorded nine cultural features (seven manholes, one grease trap, one segment of vitrified clay pipe) uncovered by activities undertaken by the Memorial Park Conservancy and their contractors. In each case ongoing work in the area of the newly encountered feature was halted until the feature was fully documented by a Gray & Pape, Inc. archaeologist, and potential impacts were coordinated between Gray & Pape, Inc., the Memorial Park Conservancy, and the Texas Historical Commission. Gray & Pape, Inc. also coordinated with the Texas Historical Commission on two occasions in relation to Memorial Park Conservancy projects for which no fieldwork was required. As a project permitted through the Texas Historical Commission, Gray & Pape, Inc. submitted project records to the Center of Archaeological Studies at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.
Over several mobilizations between April 2018 and January 2020, Gray & Pape, Inc., of Houston, Texas, conducted an intensive pedestrian cultural resources survey of two segments (Segments GR02 and GR03) of proposed trail development along Lower Greens Bayou in the City of Houston, Harris County, Texas. The project alignment measures approximately 10.8 kilometers (6.7 miles) in length and encompasses approximately 9.6 hectares (23.7 acres) of area. Another 0.6 kilometers (0.4 miles) or 0.6 hectares (1.4 acres) of project alignment was removed from consideration. In total, approximately 11.4 kilometers (7.1 miles) or 10.2 hectares (25.1 acres) was surveyed for the project. Because the proposed trail development occurs on publicly owned properties a Texas Antiquities Code Permit was required prior to survey. All work was completed under Texas Antiquities Permit #8328, which was assigned by the Texas Historical Commission on February 14, 2018. Fieldwork and reporting activities were performed according to procedures set forth by the Texas Historical Commission and the Council of Texas Archeologists. The goals of the survey were to establish whether or not previously unidentified archaeological resources were located within the project area, also defined as the project’s Area of Potential Effects, and whether the proposed development would affect any previously identified cultural resources. Prior to fieldwork, site file and background research was conducted, including a review of historic aerial and topographic maps in an attempt to locate any historic structures associated with the Area of Potential Effects. Site file review and background research indicated that there are no previously recorded sites within the project Area of Potential Effects. Fieldwork took place between April 10, 2018 and January 7, 2020 and consisted of a combination of pedestrian survey and shovel testing. Systematic shovel testing was performed along a single transect over both project segments resulting in 131 shovel tests being excavated, of which 11 were positive for cultural material. The survey revealed that large portions of both project segments have been heavily disturbed by development and flood events, however, three new archaeological sites, 41HR1234, 41HR1235, and 41HR1236, and one historic Isolate were identified as a result of survey. Site 41HR1234 was identified as a mid-twentieth century historic trash midden. Site 41HR1235 was identified as a Late Prehistoric ephemeral campsite. Site 41HR1236 was identified as a multicomponent prehistoric campsite and historic isolate. Diagnostic artifacts were observed at all three sites; however, it is the recommendation of Gray & Pape, Inc. that only Sites 41HR1235 and 41HR1236 are significant in the materials they contain and their potential to offer additional research potential. Direct impacts to both sites have been avoided by the project alignment as currently planned. While indirect impacts such as looting are a concern, the distance between the sites and the current alignment as well the density of woods surrounding them minimizes the danger as a result of the project. Eligibility testing is recommended for the sites if they cannot be avoided by future projects. Based on the results of this survey, Gray & Pape, Inc. recommends that the no further cultural resources work be required for the project as currently planned and that the project be cleared to proceed. As specified under the conditions of Texas Antiquities Code Permit #8328, all project associated records are curated with the Center of Archaeological Studies at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.
This report summarizes the results of a cultural resources survey by Gray & Pape, Inc. of an approximately 14.8-hectare (36.6-acre) property in Fort Bend County, Texas, planned for a bank stabilization project on behalf of their client, Berg-Oliver Associates, Inc. The goals of the survey were to determine if the proposed project would affect any previously identified archaeological sites as defined by Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended (36 CFR 800), and to establish whether or not previously unidentified buried archaeological resources were located within the project’s Area of Potential Effect. Portions of the project are on property owned by Fort Bend County Municipal Utility District Number 121, political subdivisions of the state, as such, a Texas Antiquities Permit (Permit Number 8734) was required prior to the commencement of fieldwork. All fieldwork and reporting activities were completed with reference to state (the Antiquities Code of Texas) and federal guidelines. Prior to fieldwork mobilization, a background literature and site file search were conducted to identify the presence of recorded sites and previous cultural resource surveys within or near the project area. The search indicated that no previously identified archaeological sites, cemeteries, historic markers, or National Register properties are located within the project area. The same research identified that eight previous cultural resource surveys had been conducted within the study radius of the project area, one of which overlapped with the current project area. In addition, 14 previously recorded archaeological sites are located within the study radius, none of which are located within or immediately adjacent to the current project area. Field investigations were carried out in two mobilizations in January and December 2019 and consisted of a combination of pedestrian survey and subsurface testing, resulting in the excavation of 32 shovel tests. Five planned tests were left unexcavated due to inundation, and eight planned tests were left unexcavated due to significant surface disturbance. All shovel tests were negative for cultural resource material and no historic-age resources were identified during survey. After a revised scope of work was submitted to the Texas Historical Commission, investigation of deeply buried soils took place tandem with construction by regular monitoring of construction excavation. When the construction schedule allowed, traditional deep testing, by means of mechanical excavation, was carried out in five of six areas anticipated to have deep impacts from the proposed bank stabilization project. A total of 22 trenches were excavated. No buried features or deeply buried paleosols were encountered. Gray & Pape, Inc. archaeologists are of the opinion that the shovel test survey and deep testing completed within the Area of Potential Effects has adequately assessed the potential for surface and near surface intact, significant cultural resources, as well as determining the potential for deeply buried resources or paleosols. No artifacts or cultural features were encountered during the course of the survey, and no new archaeological sites were identified. No negative impacts on any previously identified sites are anticipated from the proposed project. Based on these results, Gray & Pape, Inc. recommends that no further cultural work be required and that the project be cleared to proceed as planned. As required under the provisions of Texas Antiquities Code Permit 8734, all project records are housed at the Center for Archaeological Studies at Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas.
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 interaction likely contributed to the emergence of the Altamaha pottery tradition, which spread from southern South Carolina to northern Florida during Spanish colonization of the region. This research shows that Native American groups navigating colonialism drew on a wide network of communities to alter traditions in the face of unprecedented social change.
Chitimacha is a language isolate formerly spoken in southern Louisiana, and is a part of the Southeast linguistic area. Using documentary materials recorded by Morris Swadesh in the 1930s, this talk examines the language-internal evidence for the diachrony of three features of Chitimacha grammar: positional auxiliary verbs, switch-reference, and agent-patient alignment. Each feature is shown to have a clear, language-internal diachronic pathway, wherein existing lexical and grammatical material were recruited for new functions. However, each of these features is shared by other unrelated languages of the Southeast, suggesting that they were in fact motivated by contact. How then did Chitimacha borrow these structural features without borrowing any lexical or grammatical material? The answer, I suggest, is that multilingual speakers in the Southeast carried over discourse-level patterns of managing information flow from other languages, and that as these discourse patterns became more frequent and routinized, they fundamentally reshaped the structure of Chitimacha grammar.
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 ways that domestic food practices contributed to social events and processes at the community level. We examine ceramic, botanical, and faunal assemblages from two fourteenth-century contexts at Parchman Place (22CO511), a Late Mississippi period site in the northern Yazoo Basin. For the earlier deposit, everyday ceramics and plant foods combined with high-utility deer portions and exotic birds suggest potluck-style feasting meant to bring people together in the context of establishing a community in place. We interpret the later deposit, with its pure ash matrix, focus on serving wares, and purposeful disposal of edible maize and animal remains, as the result of activities related to maize harvest ceremonialism. Both practices suggest that household contributions in general and disposal of domestic food refuse in particular are critical yet underappreciated venues for creating and maintaining community ties in the Mississippian Southeast.
Places such as Poverty Point, Mound City, and Chaco Canyon remind us that the siting of ritual infrastructure in ancient North America was a matter of cosmological precedent. The cosmic gravity of these places gathered persons periodically in numbers that challenged routine production. Ritual economies intensified, but beyond the material demands of hosting people, the siting of these places and the timing of gatherings were cosmic work that preconfigured these outcomes. A first millennium AD civic-ceremonial center on the northern Gulf Coast of Florida illustrates the rationale for holding feasts on the end of a parabolic dune that it shared with an existing mortuary facility. Archaeofauna from large pits at Shell Mound support the inference that feasts were timed to summer solstices. Gatherings were large, judging from the infrastructure in support of feasts and efforts to intensify production through oyster mariculture and the construction of a large tidal fish trap. The 250-year history of summer solstice feasts at Shell Mound reinforces the premise that ritual economies were not simply the amplification of routine production. It also suggests that the ecological potential for intensification was secondary to the cosmic significance of solstice-oriented dunes and their connection to mortuary and world-renewal ceremonialism.
Much of what is known about the Indigenous city of Cahokia, located in and influential on the North American midcontinent during the eleventh through fourteenth centuries AD, derives from decades of salvage, research, and CRM excavations in the surrounding American Bottom region. We use this robust dataset to explore patterns of building conflagration that suggest these practices of burning were part of pre-Mississippian traditions that were bundled into new Cahokian landscapes during the early consolidation of the city. These bundled practices entangled sources of power that were at once political and religious, thus transforming the practices and meanings associated with terminating building use via fire.
First edition of William Morrell’s poem Nova Anglia and it’s subsequent English translation
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 from the hearth were probably dry when burned, that the fire may have been smothered or doused, and that the remains may represent an offering of dry seeds, rather than food refuse, similar to that observed historically among the Cherokee.
This study seeks to provide new interpretations for the abstract and geometric Avery Engraved vessel motifs created by the prehistoric Caddo. I argue that certain motifs represent wings, feathers, and the Upper World, while other motifs act as locatives and are representative of the Lower World in the Caddo conception of a tiered universe. Given the nature of archaeological research, it is not possible to ascertain all of the implications, nuances, and complexities of the motifs that appear on Avery Engraved vessels. However, this study and others like it, which work to extrapolate the meaning of motifs through comparative analysis with representational engraved shell imagery and through the use of ethnographic and ethnohistoric data, can enrich our knowledge about how the Caddo rendered and communicated core beliefs in nonrepresentational ways.
Early Woodland Liverpool (Black Sand variant) pottery decorations consist of belts, rectilinear panels, and/or punctates encircling the vessel. Vertically arranged thematic motifs reflect the structure of the cosmos in its simplest form: Below realm, Earth’s disk, Above realm. This article postulates that the Early Woodland decorative tradition was an enduring symbolic system shared by women making pottery in the upper Midwest. Cosmograms in pottery motifs trace three universal metaphors of the Woodland era belief system: (1) Cooking vessels were feminine spirit-beings; (2) the Woodland culinary vessel shaped like the female form represented her biological destiny as the reproductive vessel for humankind and cooking was a ritual action (“prayer”), a metaphor for the creation of new members of society; (3) the cooking pot was a mandala of cosmograms expressing daily life, ritual practice, and cosmology. These themes carry through subsequent studies on Middle Woodland Havanoid and Late Woodland corded or trailed pottery in an upcoming book.
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 of Poverty Point can best be explained as the product of periodic, ritualized feasting events. Drawing on diverse archaeological and anthropological studies of feasting I demonstrate that it is a useful research framework for understanding the site’s content because many of the archaeological signatures of feasting are present at Poverty Point. I argue furthermore that Poverty Point Objects were an integral component of this culture of feasting and offer hypotheses on their role in the feasts.
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 against which all subsequent Coles Creek faunal assemblages have been measured. Recent evidence recovered from three sites located in the Eastern Uplands presented the opportunity to compare and contrast vertebrate subsistence in these two distinct physiographic regions. We hypothesize that a clear distinction exists between lowland and upland Coles Creek procurement strategies. This article evaluates this claim by examining species diversity, spatial patterns, and temporal trends evident within an eight-site sample. The results suggest that the primary factor influencing Coles Creek fauna procurement was the immediate environment, and that the composition of Late Woodland period diets may be a reflection of efficiency of effort rather than food access or scarcity.
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 once used to process cane for use in split-cane technologies. In the Southeast, it is not uncommon to find stone tools with traces of plant use; however attributing wear to specific plants has been problematic. Pilot experiments, grounded on ethnoarchaeological observations, were conducted with river cane (Arundinaria gigantea) in collaboration with expert basket weavers in the Cherokee Nation. The experimental ethnoarchaeological program was designed to test the efficiency of stone tools in cane processing and document use wear through microscopic observations. The results found that non-retouched flakes were efficient for processing river cane and that the different stages of splint preparation resulted in the differential development of use-related wear. Additional experimentation with river cane is necessary to better define use wear and establish criteria for identification in archaeological contexts. Nonetheless, the collaborative and experimental approach undertaken demonstrated the utility of combining traditional archaeological methods with experimentation, ethnoarchaeology, and tribal knowledge.
We test the hypothesis that prehistoric Native American land use influenced the Euro-Amer-ican settlement process in a South Carolina Piedmont landscape. Long term ecological studies demonstrate that land use legacies influence processes and trajectories in complex, coupled social and ecological systems. Native American land use likely altered the ecological and evolutionary feedback and trajectories of many North American landscapes. Yet, considerable debate revolves around the scale and extent of land use legacies of prehistoric Native Americans. At the core of this debate is the question of whether or not European col-onists settled a mostly "wild" landscape or an already "humanized" landscape. We use statistical event analysis to model the effects of prehistoric Native American settlement on the rate of Colonial land grants (1749-1775). Our results reveal how abandoned Native Ameri-can settlements were among the first areas claimed and homesteaded by Euro-Americans. We suggest that prehistoric land use legacies served as key focal nodes in the Colonial era settlement process. As a consequence, localized prehistoric land use legacies likely helped structure the long term, landscape-to regional-level ecological inheritances that resulted from Euro-American settlement.
Compared to other gorget styles and themes made during the Mississippian period, the so-called rattlesnake gorgets of eastern Tennessee have been found in fairly large numbers. Stylistically, Muller assigned these gorgets to the temporally related Lick Creek and Citico styles, while Crawford’s recent work has argued for substyles within. While their style has been studied extensively, the idea that these gorgets depict rattlesnakes generally has been accepted without further consideration. In this paper, we present the results of a systematic iconographic study of rattlesnake gorgets. Ultimately, we conclude that the image’s original referent is not just a snake but instead is intended to be a model of the cosmos at night.
The interpretive potential of Swift Creek pottery, widely produced throughout Georgia, eastern Alabama, and northern Florida during the Middle and Late Woodland periods between ca. cal AD 100 and 800, has been apparent for many years. Much research has been focused on identifying paddle designs from the impressions left on sherds. Less attention has been devoted to the carving of the wooden paddles and its social context. Drawing inferences from our work on Swift Creek pottery in southern Georgia and Florida, and drawing inspiration from the career of Mark Williams, we consider Swift Creek paddle production “at a human scale.” Extrapolating from the number of paddle designs identified in our sample, we argue that paddle manufacture was an infrequent occurrence, probably conducted by specialists and intended to commemorate major life events.
Antiquarians of the nineteenth century referred to the largest monumental constructions in eastern North America as pyramids, but this usage faded among archaeologists by the mid-twentieth century. Pauketat (2007) has reintroduced the term pyramid to describe the larger, Mississippian-period (A.D. 1050 to 1550) mounds of the interior of the continent, recognizing recent studies that demonstrate the complexity of their construction. Such recognition is lacking for earlier mounds and for those constructed of shell. We describe the recent identification of stepped pyramids of shell from the Roberts Island Complex, located on the central Gulf Coast of Florida and dating to the terminal Late Woodland period, A.D. 800 to 1050, thus recognizing the sophistication of monument construction in an earlier time frame, using a different construction material, and taking an alternative form. Spanish Los anticuarios del siglo XIX se refirieron a las grandes construcciones monumentales en el este de América del Norte como pirámides, pero este uso desapareció entre los arqueólogos a mediados del siglo XX. Pauketat (2007) ha vuelto a introducir el término pirámide para describir los montículos del período Mississippian (1050 a 1550 d.C.) del interior del continente, reconociendo estudios recientes que demuestran la complejidad de su construcción. Se carece de estudios que permitan este reconocimiento para montículos anteriores y para aquellos construídos de concha. Se describe la reciente identificación de pirámides escalonadas de concha del Complejo Isla Roberts, situado en la Costa del Golfo central de Florida y que data del período Woodland Tardío terminal, 800 a 1050 d.C., ampliando así la comprensión de la complejidad de la construcción monumental a un período más temprano, un material de construcción diferente y una forma alternativa.
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