North America: Southeast United States (Geographic Keyword)
451-475 (475 Records)
In January 2015, we instituted a monthly "Volunteer Day" at the Archaeological Research Laboratory at the University of Tennessee. Originally conceived as a way to increase outreach to the general public as well as prepare a large number of artifacts for curation, this activity has developed into a "citizen science" opportunity, where participants help collect data. Here we reflect on the positives and negatives of the program as we have implemented it over the past two years, with feedback from...
The Wade Site: Evidence for Long-Distance Trade Networks in the Southern Piedmont of Virginia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located in the southern region of the Virginia Piedmont, the Randy K. Wade site (44CH62) is identified as a Late Woodland, Amerindian community which exhibits expected pit storage technology, boundary features, and material culture (Dan River Series ceramics, diagnostic lithics, dietary remains). However, high-status mortuary treatments and the village’s...
War of Jenkins Ear: Battle of Gully Hole Creek (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 280 years since July 7th, 1742, the exact locations of Gully Hole Creek and Bloody Marsh have been speculated and debated without resolution until now. Fort Frederica National Monument partnered with the Frederica Baptist Church regarding private metal detecting finds found on a property near Gully Hole Creek on St. Simons Island, Georgia. National...
War, Power, and History in the Mississippian Period Central Illinois Valley (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper considers the impact of warfare-induced settlement nucleation on the sociopolitical organization of the thirteenth-century Central Illinois River Valley. Concurrent with the beginning of a period of intense warfare, Mississippian groups in the region abandoned their small, dispersed farmsteads and aggregated into the region’s...
Weeden Island Shell Rings from the Bottom-Up: The View from Old Creek (2018)
The transition to Weeden Island mortuary and ceramic expressions along the Florida Gulf Coast also coincided with a shift in settlement. During this interval, around A.D. 600-750, earlier Swift Creek shell rings were abandoned and Weeden Island rings established nearby. In many cases, these Weeden Island shell rings were substantially larger than their predecessors, however, some anomalously small, isolated Weeden Island rings have also been recorded, such as the Old Creek Shell Ring (8Wa90) in...
What Happened at Joara, Cuenca, and Fort San Juan: Archaeological Finds from the Berry Site in Western North Carolina (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeologies of Contact, Colony, and Resistance" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Between 1566 and 1568, expeditions led by Captain Juan Pardo sought to establish permanent Spanish colonial towns and forts along an overland route connecting Santa Elena, the capital of La Florida, in coastal South Carolina, with New Spain and the rich silver mines near Zacatecas, Mexico. Written accounts chronicle the movements of...
What Is Going On with the Younger Dryas in Florida? Late Pleistocene Perspectives from the Aucilla Basin (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. The Aucilla River basin in northwestern Florida contains 92 recorded sites with components predating 9000 cal BP, making it an excellent area in which to examine terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene landscape use. More importantly, some of these sites, all drowned terrestrial localities, contain strata with...
What to Do with All Those Digital Data: Examples from the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) (2018)
The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) is a Web-based initiative designed to foster inter-site, comparative archaeological research on slavery throughout the Chesapeake, the Carolinas, and the Caribbean. The goal of DAACS is to facilitate research that advances our historical understanding of the slave-based societies that evolved in the Atlantic World during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this paper we argue that the digital methods encapsulated within...
What’s For Dinner: An Examination of Animal Resources Utilized in the Okeechobee Basin Area of Florida. (2018)
In order to gain a better understanding of the faunal diet composition of Native Americans in south-central Florida, an examination was conducted to determine which types of animals appeared most frequently within tree island assemblages. Of the 19,149 bones examined from a 2016 excavation, all were identified to at least an animal’s taxonomic order, although identification to the species level was usually not possible due to the fragmentary nature of the sample. This information was compared...
Where are the Boot Marks? Evaluating the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail (2018)
The Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail is a Revolutionary War route used by an estimated 1,040 patriot militia during the Kings Mountain campaign of 1780. It totals approximately 272 miles from the mustering point near Abingdon, Virginia, to Sycamore Shoals (near Elizabethton, Tennessee); from Sycamore Shoals to Quaker Meadows (near Morganton, North Carolina); from the mustering point in Surry County, North Carolina, to Quaker Meadows; and from Quaker Meadows to Kings Mountain, South...
Where Is the Waterline? Integrating Terrestrial and Underwater Investigations in the Aucilla River, Florida (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past decade, research in the Aucilla River of northwestern Florida has focused upon understanding the geoarchaeological context of numerous formerly terrestrial, now inundated sinkhole spring sites and the landscapes surrounding them. Dozens of terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene-aged diagnostic artifacts have been...
Where the Devil Don’t Stay: The Role of Moonshine Production in the Mountains of North Carolina (2018)
Since the mid-nineteenth century, the vast majority of local whisky production has been unregulated and illegal. Both production and distribution of illicit liquor moved underground with the passing of the 18th Amendment – known as the Prohibition – in 1919. This economic shift occurred in tight-knit mountain communities where knowledge has been vigilantly guarded. This continuous whisky production cycle has resulted in the deep social, economic, and cultural ties that persist in the Cataloochee...
"Where’s the Beef?" and Other Meat-Related Questions: Pre- and Post-Emancipation Foodways on James Island, South Carolina (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological evidence, historical documentation, and oral histories are used to compare the diet of individuals enslaved on Stono Plantation with those of the tenant-era population of James Island. Pre-emancipation data indicate a high level of livestock consumption supplemented primarily by fishing, but also by some degree of trapping and/or hunting....
Whirlwind of Power: Mississippian Tornado Iconography and Mythology (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mississippian cosmologies were inextricably entangled with the sacred environment and landscape, often materialized through iconographic imagery and motifs. One example of such interwoven relationships may be seen in the imagery of other-than human beings; that is, preternaturals who control and often...
White Caps and Laptops: Results from the 2019 and 2020 Surveys of Submerged Precontact Landscapes in the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sea-level rise models since the last glacial maximum demonstrate that the North American landmass available for precontact human habitation was larger than at present. In the northwestern Gulf of Mexico, less than 1 m2 of the continental shelf has been sampled and tested archaeologically. Out of 106 sediment cores acquired for...
Whiteness in Relation: Black Studies and the Racializing Assemblages of the Antebellum South (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For decades, Black Studies scholars have provided powerful, far-ranging critiques of the concept of race and the processes of racialization. Yet, when applied to archaeological case studies, these concepts are often only used to discuss the lives of Africans and their diasporic descendants. However, as Black Studies scholars point...
Who Tells Your Story? Utilizing Legacy Collections to Serve a Living Culture (2019)
This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Unlike most archaeological collections, those held and curated by the Seminole Tribe of Florida (STOF) represent a living culture, and tribal understanding of those archaeological collections is a fluid, dynamic entity. The unique relationship between the Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) and STOF requires an adherence to and respect of...
“Wide-Awake Merchants” and Reform-Minded Women: Archaeology of Alexandria, Virginia’s German Jewish Community (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Migrant and Diaspora Communities Archaeologically: Beyond the Cultural Fixity/Fluidity Binary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historical archaeological investigations of Jewish diaspora sites have often heavily relied on faunal remains, particularly the presence or absence of pig remains, as a proxy for Jewishness. Keeping kosher is not the only relevant component of Jewish diasporic identities or even the only...
Wild Fruits and Connective Linkages in Precolumbian South Florida (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Academic reconstructions of south Florida Indigenous lifeways prior to European contact have focused primarily on the deliberate choice of these highly complex societies to rely exclusively on wild foods, even while corn agriculture was practiced in nearby parts of the peninsula....
Women's Networks and the Foundations of Mississippian Politics (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mississippian societies were undoubtedly underwritten by networks of kin, clan, and other social relationships that are difficult to discern in the archaeological record. Structures of social networks provide contexts for social, political, and economic institutions and serve as conduits through...
Wonderful Things: Using Legacy Archaeological Collections for Research (2018)
How does one go about using legacy archaeological collections – or any archaeological collection, for that matter – for research? The prospect can be daunting, especially if you are staring down dozens of dusty boxes on shelves. This paper offers direction for studying even the most untamed collection by understanding it as a type of secondary data – lessons learned while working with legacy collections from the Potomac and Rappahannock river valleys in Maryland and Virginia. Secondary data, a...
Woodland Subsistence in Upper East Tennessee (2018)
This paper describes the species diversity and taphonomic modifications of Woodland Period fauna from Upper East Tennessee. Fauna from both rock shelter and open-air locales from the Early Woodland (ca. 3000 years B.P.) to the Late Woodland (ca. 1000 years B.P.) period are used to characterize subsistence practices and site use in the region. In this paper, we present the MNI, NISP and measures of diversity, richness, and evenness of different animal species identified in the faunal assemblages...
The Works Progress Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority, and Geophysics: Bringing Together Digital Geophysical Data and Historic Excavation Results for Comprehensive Data Sets (2018)
Under contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), New South Associates, Inc. conducted comprehensive geophysical surveys of five Mississippian sites in the Tennessee River Valley between 2013 and 2017: the Bell Site (40RE1), the Cox Mound (1JA176), Hiwassee Island (40MG31), Ledford Island (40BY13), and Long Island (40RE17). The Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted salvage excavations on all of these sites in the 1930’s and the information available from their notes and limited...
XRF Analysis of North Carolina Piedmont Ceramics to Locate Source of Production and Trade at Rural Plantation Sites (2018)
Little documentation exists of the trade exchange occurring in the central Piedmont during the 18th and 19th century at wealthy plantation sites or at surrounding sites of lower economic status. In this historical archaeology research, I focus on understanding the socio-economic patterns of settlers in the more rural areas of the region at two plantation sites and wasters from a local kiln site from same time period. Using pXRF data of lead glazed earthenware I attempt to map ceramic regional...
Zooarchaeology of Domestic Activities at a Weeden Island Shell Ring in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge (2018)
The purpose of this research is to examine different domestic activities at the Mound Field site (8Wa8), a Weeden Island shell ring in Wakulla County, Florida. Zooarchaeological analysis was conducted on the faunal remains recovered in 2016 from six excavation units at Mound Field. These units represent different hypothesized areas of domestic activities from across the site. The differential deposition of food remains may reveal more about the patterns of activities in which people...