North America - Southeast (Geographic Keyword)
451-475 (537 Records)
Cattle herding is not new to the Seminoles. It is a centuries old way of life that is embedded into their cultural heritage. This tradition began in the 1700s in the Alachua prairies of north Florida under the leader Cowkeeper and has continued into modern day on the Seminole Tribe of Florida (STOF) Reservations. The STOF Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) is currently investigating several early 20th century sites related to the formation of the Seminole cattle program, including the...
Shaft Tombs in the Caddo World (2016)
Shaft tombs are an interesting McCurtain Phase (1300-1700 ACE) mortuary ritual in the Caddo region. The tombs are dug into the center of preexisting mounds and around 8-10 individuals are supine, primarily interred, and facing the same direction. The shaft tombs could have been constructed as a revitalization ceremony after a period of abandonment from a site. Alternatively, the tombs could have functioned as a termination event at the end of an occupation for these sites. However, the purpose...
Shaping the South: Environmental Archaeology's impact on colonial archaeology of the American South and the Caribbean (2016)
This paper argues that the incorporation of environmental archaeological data into long-term research programs can significantly influence theoretical and methodological practice thereby enriching and sometimes reshaping interpretations. We draw on our respective experiences of producing, consuming and integrating environmental data to reflect on the benefits of such collaborative endeavors. To illustrate our points, we use examples from the American South and the Caribbean to explore the ways...
Shell Bead Production at a Southern Appalachian Mississippian Frontier (2017)
Frontier areas differ from non-frontier areas in multiple ways; one is by a more intense degree of interaction with other cultures. To successfully settle a frontier area, frontier groups must not just interact but also socially integrate with other groups. Craft production is one way social integration occurs. At the Middle Mississippian-period Carter Robinson site, there is evidence for the production of shell beads. This paper presents this evidence, which includes all stages of shell bead...
Shell Mound Architecture and Cooperative Mass Oyster Collection on the Central Gulf Coast of Florida, USA (2017)
Coastal fisher-gather-hunters often have a deep connection among their ritual practices, economic systems, and the built environment. Emerging trends and traditions of cooperation within forager communities can have lasting impacts on group social organization and can be instrumental in the development of early villages. The Crystal River region of the Gulf Coast of Florida, U.S.A provides an interesting locale to explore the intersection between shell mound architecture and cooperative mass...
Site Structure, Community Organization, and the Interpretation of Subsistence Remains (2016)
Subsistence strategies shape mobility and site use practices. These relationships can be investigated at a regional scale, but they also appear at the level of daily domestic activities. The interpretation of subsistence remains is enhanced by assessing how specific deposits and activity areas across a site fit into broader strategies and relate to community organization. At many coastal and riverine sites of the American Southeast, mollusk shell is prevalent and well-preserved in midden...
Slippery Oysters & a Cold Beer: Incorporating Food into Archaeology Education (2015)
Through outreach and education, The Florida Public Archaeology Network, promotes the public appreciation and value of Florida's archaeological heritage. Food has regularly been used as a fun learning device in classroom settings: from teaching excavation techniques using a chocolate chip cookie to finding core samples in a PB&J. Public events held in cafés or over a pizza seem to break down social barriers and garner greater community cohesion. Recently, we have taken this one step further by...
Social Change among the Lower Creek, the Late-Woodland to Historic Period (2017)
The proto-historic and historic periods were times of great social change among Native Americans of the southeastern United States. The era saw mass migration and shifts in political association. The indigenous tribes of the Chattahoochee River, later known as the Creek, were no exception to the cultural changes of the time. The current historical and archaeological interpretation of these changes suggests that the Creek became more closely aligned, culturally, through time. These...
Socializing Novel Landscapes: Reconsidering "Colonization" through Indigenous Philosophies (2017)
Archaeologists have long been interested in studying how landmasses became "colonized." Using biological analogies, archaeologists often describe colonization as a process by which ecological niches become filled by human populations that evolve to best fit into their new environs. This paper suggests an alternative informed by Indigenous philosophies that describe a world filled with animate and powerful beings emplaced throughout the landscape. Forging relations with these beings is a critical...
Sociopolitical Networks and the Transformation of Southern Appalachian Societies, A.D. 700-1400 (2017)
This paper investigates how processes of societal transformation, including the emergence of sociopolitical hierarchies and socioeconomic inequalities, are shaped by the scale and structure of social networks. Across Southern Appalachia, during more than seven centuries of population growth and sociopolitical change, two distinct regional political traditions emerged in what are today northern Georgia and eastern Tennessee. Employing data on social signaling practices as materialized in ceramic...
Sound, health, and spirituality in the colonial Lower Mississippi Valley (2016)
Wellness and spirituality are rooted in the body. Bodies and material culture are intertwined through practices of healing; ways to navigate bodily and spiritual health in daily life. In colonial Lower Mississippi Valley, European-introduced diseases and new forms of material culture greatly impacted Native American communities and their practices of healing. Some of these stories are familiar to us: the changes brought about by access to new materials, new tools, and new kinds of clothing. Yet,...
South Appalachian Mississippian in the Appalachian Summit: The Pisgah and Qualla Phases in Western North Carolina (2017)
Archaeologists have generally characterized the Pisgah phase in western North Carolina as the manifestation of Mississippian culture in the Appalachian Summit province, dating from A.D. 1000 to 1450, and the precursor to the Qualla phase, which dates from the 1400s through 1800s and is associated with historic Cherokee towns. The Appalachian Summit encompasses rugged topography, sprawling mountain ranges, and some of the tallest peaks east of the Mississippi River, and it is an area with some of...
The South-Eastern Warm Thermal Enclave and Perturbations of the Late Pleistocene (2016)
For decades late Pleistocene climate events prior to the Younger Dryas (Heinrich 0 ~12.9 ka cal BP) were ignored by archaeologists because the Clovis First paradigm implicitly supposed nothing was earlier. Since 2005 attitudes have changed and the importance of understanding the effects of major climate shifts is now important to archaeology. This presentation will focus on the timing of late Pleistocene climate events and the subsequent expressions of habitat change in the Coastal Southeast....
Southeastern Container Labelling: Does Iconography correlate to contents? (2015)
Focusing on research previously done with residue analysis of containers in the Southeast that had found Ilex or cacao, this study was conducted on imagery and residue results. Residue analysis in the Southeast has been either focused on container form, or only on the residues to be tested. Taking a new look at containers already tested for residues from 3 main sites (Cahokia, Etowah and Spiro and surrounding area), a data base of imagery was created by cataloging motifs and themes of images on...
Spanish Mission Archaeology in the Southeast. 1974-2014 A.D. (After Dave) (2015)
The archaeological study of Spanish missions among the American Indians has been underway in the Southeastern and Western regions of the United States for more than 70 years. This paper considers the directions and contributions of that body of work in the Southeast, with particular attention to the interdisciplinary impacts of the Santa Catalina Mission program, carried out by Dave Thomas between 1974 and today on St. Catherine's Island, Georgia. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR...
Spatial and Sedimentological Analyses of Redeposited Paleoindian Projectile Points from McFaddin Beach, Texas (2016)
McFaddin Beach (41JF50), in Jefferson County, Texas, is a 32 kilometer-long beach, stretching from High Island in the west to Sea Rim State Park (next to the mouth of the Sabine River) in the east. Since the 1950s, artifacts from almost all periods of Texas pre-history have been recovered on this beach. The projectile points found on McFaddin Beach are redeposited material from an offshore, submerged location. Results indicate that projectile point distribution is significantly correlated to...
Spatial and Temporal Analyses of Redeposited Projectile Points from McFaddin Beach, Texas (2015)
McFaddin Beach (41JF50), in Jefferson County, Texas is a 32 kilometer-long beach, stretching from High Island in the west to Sea Rim State Park (next to the mouth of the Sabine River) in the east. Since the 1950s, artifacts from almost all periods of Texas pre-history have been recovered on this beach. The projectile points found on McFaddin Beach are redeposited material from an offshore, submerged location. Results indicate that projectile point distribution is significantly correlated to...
Spatial and temporal variation of prehistoric cultural elaboration in the Yazoo Basin of Mississippi (2017)
The Yazoo Basin of Mississippi is a rich and varied landscape that has been inhabited by humans for millennia. Sediment cores and tree-ring dates have documented that populations living in the basin had to contend with massive flooding events as well as substantial environmental change over the course of the Holocene. Populations contended with these changes by shifting settlement patterns, altering in subsistence strategies, engaging in intergroup competition, as well as varying investments in...
Spatial Literacy and Geostatistics in Archaeology (2016)
Spatial frameworks of cultural activity can be quantified using a number of geostatistic computations available in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). These, too commonly “deterministic” models identify and display trends within a dataset. Although these results can be compelling, they also pose problems for archaeological interpretation by not including room for the ambiguity and unpredictability of human decisions and actions. Human behavior can be understood by the choices people make, but...
Spring Surprise: The Lessons Learned and Unexpected Results of the Chassahowitzka Headsprings Archaeological Assessment and Monitoring Project (2015)
In 2013 SEARCH conducted underwater archaeological investigations and monitoring at the Chassahowitzka Headsprings restoration project in Citrus County, Florida. Although the initial underwater survey yielded a sparse artifact count, hundreds of artifacts were recovered during the monitoring of commercial diver's as they removed substantial amounts of algae, detritus, and cultural materials from the springhead with 6-inch induction dredges. Diagnostic and rare artifacts include a Suwannee...
Springs, stone, and shell: recent excavation at the Econfina Channel Site, a submerged Archaic site, Apalachee Bay, Florida, U.S.A. (2016)
We present here the results from recent surveys and excavations at the Econfina Channel Site in Apalachee Bay, Florida, U.S.A., a submerged prehistoric site with a terminus post quem of approximately 5000 B.P. This site was initially identified and excavated in the 1980s in the course of a larger survey for submerged prehistoric sites in Apalachee Bay by Faught, et al. Our relocation and new excavations at the site have confirmed the presence of chert outcrops, a shell midden deposit, and a seep...
Stable Isotope Analysis of African Slave Burials from the Grassmere Plantation, Nashville, Tennessee (2015)
Carbon and oxygen isotope analyses of dental apatite from a captive slave population (ca. 1840s) from the Grassmere Plantation (now the Nashville Zoo) in Tennessee is examined to reconstruct childhood diet and determine whether individuals were local to the Middle Tennessee region or forcefully moved from another locale. Among the 19 burials recovered, enamel apatite was obtained from 11 individuals, representing 3 juveniles and 8 adults (3 males, 4 females, and 1 unsexed). At least two teeth...
Stable oxygen isotopic evidence of mobility and site seasonality on the northern Gulf of Mexico, USA (2015)
Stable oxygen isotope analyses are commonly used in archaeology to assess the seasons-of-death of fishes and molluscs, and to make inferences about seasonal aspects of human mobility and resource use. We present stable oxygen isotope sequences from 33 bivalve shells, representing four taxa, and eight fish otoliths, representing two taxa. These were recovered from two sites located on the Gulf Coast of Alabama: Plash Island (AD 325–642) and Bayou St. John (AD 650–1041). Specimens recovered from...
Strategic Factors in Middle and Late Woodland Settlement Patterns on East Peninsula, Tyndall Air Force Base, Bay County, Florida (2016)
Data derived from archaeological investigations at Tyndall Air Force Base in northwestern Florida suggest strategic decision-making in settlement patterns during the Middle and Late Woodland periods. The installation occupies prime property on a northwest/southeast-trending peninsula that extends for 18 miles along the Gulf of Mexico and is between two and three miles wide. This small coastal stretch with minimal relief was the scene of increasingly intensive settlement beginning with the...
A Stylistic Analysis of Protohistoric Polychrome Ceramics from the Lower Mississippi Valley (2015)
The unique nature of ceramics from the Mississippi Valley provides an important basis for detailed ceramic studies that serve to aid researchers in understanding social agency and processes. These ceramic assemblages, especially those dating to the Protohistoric period, will be the focus of this research. Ceramic vessels from counties in Arkansas and Mississippi will be used to compile database of design motifs, in addition to other ceramic characteristics. Using the dates from these sites, my...