North America: Southeast United States (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (475 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A prototype visualization tool for a statewide historical geography of African American communities emerging in Tennessee’s post-Civil War period is raising awareness and elevating visibility of the African American historic cultural landscape—both above and below ground—for cultural resource management as well as for students, educators, planners, and the...
The Archaeology of Late-19th and Early-20th Century Freedman's Towns in Dallas, Texas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Texas, emancipation of slaves was formally announced in Galveston on June 19, 1865. In the decades that followed "Juneteenth," freed men and women established hundreds of communities across the state in search of land, loved ones, opportunity, and freedom. Such rural settlements have been the focus of both historical and archaeological research. Yet some...
Archaeology of Ritual in Cherokee Towns of the Southern Appalachians (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual and ceremonialism were important domains of practice through which Cherokee peoples of the southern Appalachians maintained cultural identities during the aftermath of European contact in the Americas, and through which Cherokee towns responded to the opportunities and challenges associated with European exploration,...
Archaic Tattooing and Bundle Keeping in Tennessee, ca. 1600 BC (2018)
The Fernvale archaeological site in Williamson County, Tennessee, is a multi-component site that includes a significant Late Archaic cemetery and occupation dated ca. 1600 BC. Although the site was excavated in 1985, it was not fully analyzed or published for nearly three decades. Formal analysis of zooarchaeological materials from Fernvale took place from 2007-2012 as part of an overall effort to reassess the site assemblage. In this paper we describe findings generated by combining traditional...
Architectural Conformity vs. Slave Identity: An Example in Late Antebellum Georgia (2018)
In 2015, Brockington and Associates conducted Phase III Data Recovery at a middle-nineteenth century field slave settlement within the Colonel’s Island Plantation in Glynn County, Georgia. Excavations at five slave dwelling footprints showed that all exhibited nearly identical dimensions and construction techniques. Dwellings appeared to be double-pen wood frame with central chimneys and wooden floors. Rather than set off the ground by wood or brick supports, each dwelling was marked by a...
Articulating the Big Bend of Florida (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Liquid Landscapes: Recent Developments in Submerged Landscape Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Working from the known to the unknown is a core concept in archaeological prospection and is particularly important in submerged landscapes studies. These landscapes are harder to access and have experienced, potentially, more dramatic changes since they were last occupied. We share here the results of a study in...
Artifact Boxes and Cans of Worms; Navigating the 87 Church Street Legacy Collections (2019)
This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The collections excavated in the 1970s at 87 Church Street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina play a crucial role as part of a repertoire of sites deployed to understand Charleston as a critical urban center and waypoint in the eighteenth-century American southeast. However, a full site report does not exist for these early excavations, and...
"…As the Waves Make Towards the Pebbled Shore": Site Formation Processes on Drowned Coastal Sites and Implications for Preservation, Discovery, and Interpretation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Submerged prehistoric sites left behind by coastal groups have the potential to answer multiple critical questions concerning human activities, but locating, excavating, and interpreting such sites brings with it challenges unlike those encountered in coastal settings that remain (for now) terrestrial....
The As(h)cendant: Cosmological Work of Material Traces of Burning in the American Southeast (2018)
Archaeological contexts of the American Southeast are rife with ash deposits that go beyond the residues of mundane burning activities. Burials and other pits at Stallings Island have layers of wood ash sandwiched between charcoal and shell; some rockshelters of the Cumberland Plateau contain successive layers of ash, each capped with earth; freshwater shell was mixed with ash to fill a massive pit on Silver Glen Run; and in north-central Florida, a dried sink filled with peat was burned to...
Ash Deposition and Community Building in the Mississippian World: A Case Study from the Yazoo Basin (2018)
Ethnographic sources indicate that fire and its alternate forms—smoke and ash—are powerfully symbolic substances for many historic period southeastern Indian groups. The remains of fire are frequently deposited in ways that amplify its power, or alternatively, attempt to neutralize it. This paper examines ash deposition at Parchman Place, a late Mississippi period (AD 1300-1541) site located in the northern Yazoo Basin. Here, and elsewhere in the Southeast, Mississippian people incorporated ash...
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust in Caddoan Mortuary Ritual (2018)
Sediment of varied textures and colors, ash among them, is highlighted from deliberately burnt Harlan-style charnel houses. These were erected in sub-mound pits. In one rendition that followed an earlier house burning, light gray ash alternates in the superior, or upward, position with the black charcoal layer of a collapsed burnt thatch and cane roof. The ash was levelled as a platform. This completed a mortuary cycle linked lineally to subsequent pyramidal mound construction. In other cases...
Assessing Biface Reduction and the Ideal Use-life of Fluted Bifaces (2018)
Various methods have been developed to assess the use-life of Paleoindian bifaces by focusing on morphological attributes. Comparative studies have often proven difficult in part because of the diverse nature of Paleoindian biface technologies in North America. While morphological ratios such as length-to-width vary considerably throughout biface use-lives, technological ratios related to fluting and lateral grinding typically remain more constant. In turn, technological variables may be more...
Assessing the Viability of Shallow Geophysical Surveying to Identify Post-Removal Homesteads in Choctaw Nation (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2020, Choctaw Nation Historic Preservation (CNHP) began a project to identify and document Choctaw homesteads in Southeastern Oklahoma. Although these sites are an essential part of Choctaw cultural heritage, the locations of many of these sites remain unknown. To assist CNHP's goals of locating these culturally important sites, a "pilot study" was...
Assessment and Evaluation of Florida’s Citizen-Science Program to Address Climate Change: Heritage Monitoring Scouts of Florida (HMS Florida) (2018)
The Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) launched the citizen science-based Heritage Monitoring Scout (HMS Florida) program statewide during the fall of 2016 in part to assist Florida’s Division of Historical Resources, which currently does not have the budget or policy permissions in place for climate change concerned initiatives. During the first year, 233 volunteers signed up and submitted over 312 monitoring forms from across the state. This paper will provide affordances and...
At What Expense? An Expended Utility Study of Bolen Projectile Points in Northern Florida (2019)
This is an abstract from the "First Floridians to La Florida: Recent FSU Investigations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Schott and Ballenger’s (2007) work analyzing the expended utility of Dalton bifaces looked at the difference between the potential utility of an artifact and its residual utility to understand the use-wear and resharpening processes that shaped the artifact, and applied their findings to reconstructing the population-level use of...
Authority via Mobility: Interpreting Yamasee Ceramics (2018)
Yamasees worked as non-missionized laborers in Spanish Florida, raided for Charleston traders, fought to expand Georgia, lived with Creek Indians, and worked as diplomats and traders in Pensacola. Letters, speeches, and testimony demonstrate that this mobility— often leading them to outnumber local occupants— allowed Yamasees to dictate terms to and take vengeance against other Native Americans as well as Europeans. Despite such authority, pottery assemblages demonstrate the frequent adoption of...
Autonomous Landscapes at Fort Mose (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Seeking Freedom in the Borderlands: Archaeological Perspectives on Maroon Societies in Florida" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fort Mose was the first legally sanctioned free Black community in North America. While the direct result of petitions by self-liberated Africans seeking formal emancipation, the policy that generated the settlement reflected political, military, and religious concerns of the Spanish as well....
Avian Iconography at Spiro Mounds (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Much of the research and scholarship in Southeastern iconography focused on birds and avian or avian anthropomorphic imagery emphasizes connections to warfare, especially raptors and woodpeckers. While some research has discussed how birds relate to broader patterns in iconography, notable gaps in literature exist pertaining to how birds are integrated into...
Back to School: A Review of the Southeast Archeological Center’s Focused Efforts in the Fields of Outreach, Education, Engagement and Relevancy (2019)
This is an abstract from the "NPS Archeology: Engaging the Public through Education and Recreation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On-going efforts to increase outreach, education, engagement and relevancy for the Southeast Archeological Center (SEAC) over the past 8 years have resulted in the increased visibility of SEAC, the National Park Service, and archeology. SEAC has worked with educators through the Teacher-Ranger-Teacher program to...
Baubles, Bangles and Beads: The Role of Personal Adornments in a 17th Century Spanish Mission Period Community (2018)
More than a decade of archaeological investigations at Mission San Joseph de Sapala and its associated Guale village of Sapala on Sapelo Island, Georgia have provided significant new insights into the nature of Spanish-Guale interaction and negotiation. Some of these cultural transactions are reflected by items of clothing or personal adornment that were worn by the Spanish and/or Native Americans who lived in that 17th century Spanish Mission community. This poster explores the nature of...
Beads and Bohr Models: Using XRF to Discuss Choctaw Identity Formation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of a study that uses x-ray fluorescence (XRF) to examine European glass trade beads from the Chickasawhay Creek Sites (22KE630 & 22KE718) in Kemper County, Mississippi. Together, these two sites present a unique opportunity to examine Choctaw ethnogenesis. Although a combination of archaeological and ethnohistorical research has...
Before and After (and After): Alteration, Abandonment, and Re-use of Industrial Plantation Housing (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the multiple “afterlives” of quarters at Buffalo Forge, an antebellum iron plantation in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. While quarters were initially sited and constructed throughout the plantation to accommodate workers of different genders and work roles, Buffalo Forge’s cessation of iron operations in 1865 initiated new cycles of...
Beyond Boiling and Baking? Cooking Plant Foods in the Early US Midsouth (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Hearths, Earth Ovens, and the Carbohydrate Revolution: Indigenous Subsistence Strategies and Cooking during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Eastern Woodlands of North America, researchers tend to discuss cooking technologies of early foragers at the close of the Pleistocene and early Holocene in terms of nut processing rather than for use of...
Beyond Good Grey Culture: Rethinking Early Woodland Origins in the Lower Mississippi Valley (2018)
The origins of Early Woodland cultures have long been poorly understood, but recent data from sites in the Yazoo and Tensas basins, and from sites along the coast are providing new perspectives on the development of the Woodland tradition in the Lower Mississippi Valley. In this paper we summarize Steve Williams’ contributions to understanding Woodland origins and update his work with new data. In contrast to earlier thinking, recent research shows that Woodland peoples in the Lower Mississippi...
Beyond the Big Bend: Julie Stein’s Geoarchaeological Legacy in the Green River of Kentucky (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although it has been 40 years since Julie Stein’s dissertation research in Kentucky, her geoarchaeological work laid the foundation for and inspired much of the interdisciplinary work that continues in the Green River today. This research includes new excavations of shell midden sites in both the lower and upper Green River,...