North America - Southeast (Geographic Keyword)
226-250 (537 Records)
We demonstrate two quantitative methods for potential inter- and intra-group comparisons of archaeological ceramics. For 3D morphometrics, we define a single stable landmark that is consistent throughout our ceramic data, and employ opposing curves populated by semi-landmarks to capitalize on the shape variation that occurs in coil-built ceramics. Eight such curves are used to capture four complete profiles. The landmark data are then subjected to generalized Procrustes analysis (GPA) and...
Geospatial Analysis of Ogeechee River Valley Settlement Patterns (2016)
The Ogeechee River valley lies between the Oconee and Savannah River valleys in central Georgia. It is a slow moving blackwater river, unlike the faster-flowing Oconee and Savannah Rivers. More than 7,000 sites have been recorded in the Ogeechee basin, compared to 20,200 sites within the Savannah drainage and 9,800 sites within the Oconee drainage. Using existing site data ranging from the Paleoindian through Historic periods, I test whether the number of sites recorded for each basin is...
Get the Lead Out: Towards Identifying Lead on Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth Century Battlefields and Settlements (2016)
Small arms ammunition in America, throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries, consisted of round soft-metal balls. These were mostly lead, although archaeologists have documented other metals such as pewter and silver as additives. Available small arms and related ammunition varied by military unit, and included pistols, rifles, trade guns, carbines, fowlers, and large caliber wall guns, as well as American, French and English muskets. Macroscopic identification of associated bullets alone...
Gila River Indian Community’s Wildland Fire Archaeology Program (2015)
Wildland fires have the potential to impact a variety of resources, and cultural remains are among those most vulnerable. Unlike most natural resources, archaeological sites including structures, artifacts, and sacred places are irreplaceable once damaged or destroyed. Over the past three decades, archaeologists have increasingly served as technical specialists on wildland fire incidents. Cultural resource specialists are now included in strategic planning and implementation of fire...
GIS as Method or Theory: The Settlement Ecology of Middle-Range Societies in Southeastern North America, AD 1000-1600 (2016)
In this paper, I explore the relationship between method and theory in spatial archaeology that employs Geographic Information Systems (GIS). I do this through an examination of the settlement ecology of societies of varying sociopolitical complexity in the Southeastern United States. I use GIS to estimate past environments and landscapes and record attributes of settlement sites, their catchments, and surrounding areas, which I then analyze using spatial statistical methods. Comparisons of...
Giving 3D Scanning a Porpoise: Digitizing the Zooarchaeological Type Collection at the University of West Florida (2015)
The faunal type collection at the University of West Florida’s Department of Anthropology, used for zooarchaeological reference, is composed primarily of specimens of local fauna donated by students, staff, and faculty. These crowdsourced contributions are stored in a lab facility and therefore are not readily available to archaeologists needing to make IDs in the field or to researchers working from afar. Using the department’s NextEngine Desktop 3D scanner and hand-held Sense 3D scanner, we...
Good Fare and Tribal Affairs: The George and Saleechie Colbert Site (2015)
The George and Saleechie (Shillichi') Colbert site in northeastern Mississippi is an early 19th century Chickasaw occupation that has yielded extensive evidence of a well-travelled site, with a wide and prolific scatter of period artifacts, including pearlware, flintlock gun parts, wagon and harness hardware, Chickasaw pottery, trade beads, and in situ architectural foundation features. Historic documentation indicates that Colbert’s home served as the Chickasaw council house, where the treaty...
A Good Place to Be: 2015 Phase I Investigations at Wakulla Springs State Park, North Florida. (2016)
Preliminary archaeological investigations took place at Wakulla Springs State Park, in Wakulla County, Florida, during August to September of 2015. The project’s primary objective was to locate areas containing dense artifact clusters, in an effort to proceed with Phase II and Phase III investigations. The abundance of cultural materials found at previously documented sites within the park is a testament to this rich archaeological site, and warrant continued research efforts. Furthermore, few...
GPR Survey of the Brown Mound at Spiro (2017)
This poster presents the results of GPR survey at the Brown Mound, an earthen platform mound at the Spiro site in eastern Oklahoma. The mound was targeted by looters in the 1930s and was subsequently tested in the 1930s and 1980s by professional archaeologists. However, Brown Mound remains poorly understood because, for the most part, these excavations did not extend deeply enough to provide good information on mound stratigraphy or internal features. Our survey obtained nearly 100% coverage of...
Gulf of Mexico Shipwreck Corrosion, Hydrocarbon Exposure, Microbiology, and Archaeology (GOM-SCHEMA) Project: Did the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Impact Historic Shipwrecks? (2016)
After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a rapid influx of research and damage assessment funds dedicated to studying the spill’s impacts poured into the region; however, only one study is examining the spill’s impacts on historic shipwrecks. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and study partners implemented a multidisciplinary approach to examine microbial community biodiversity on deepwater shipwrecks, their role in shipwreck preservation, their response to the...
Hampton Comes Alive! An Examination of Colonoware from Hampton Plantation (2016)
Recent excavations at Hampton Plantation State Historic Site, located in Charleston County, South Carolina, have yielded colonoware from an early eighteenth century occupation and a late eighteenth to nineteenth century occupation. The later occupation is associated with the Horry family, who developed Hampton Plantation. A large assemblage of colonoware associated with this late eighteenth to nineteenth century context has been recovered from the living and work areas of enslaved workers and...
Heritage Monitoring Scouts (HMS Florida): Engaging the Public to Monitor Heritage at Risk (2017)
Along Florida’s 8,000 miles of shoreline, nearly 4,000 archaeological sites and over 600 recorded historic cemeteries are at risk from coastal erosion and rising sea levels. The matter remains complex in Florida where despite the 20 percent higher rate of sea level rise compared to the global average, "climate change" remains politically taboo. This paper will outline ongoing efforts to engage the public in monitoring coastal sites and the creation of the Heritage Monitoring Scout (HMS Florida)...
Historical Illustration as Narrative: A Critical Inquiry (2016)
The integration of research-driven results with visual media is an integral component of effective museum exhibitions, general interest publications and public programs in archaeology. Annual archaeology month activities, for example, often result in the design of posters to attract audiences and illustrate attributes of indigenous cultures. To what degree does this popular form of visual communication reflect contemporary theoretical perspectives on gender and identity rather than reinforce...
The Historical Zooarchaeology of New Orleans in Comparative Perspective (2016)
The zooarchaeology of historical contexts in New Orleans has benefited significantly from analyses conducted by Dr. Elizabeth Reitz and her students and colleagues. Several of these analyses were conducted as part of cultural resource management projects that were primarily site specific. I present a comparative analysis of various zooarchaeological projects from New Orleans contexts to examine the contribution of Reitz and others to our understanding of past food practices, animal economics,...
The Hoecake Site:Marking the Woodland-Mississippian Transition in Southeast Missouri. (2015)
The Hoecake site is a Late Woodland to Early Mississippian (A.D. 500-1100) site, located in the Cairo Lowland in southeast Missouri. This mound site contained as many as thirty to fifty mounds at one time, some of which contained burials. Multiple excavations were done at the site in the 1960s as part of the land leveling salvage archaeological work done in the area at the time. Other than an initial report of the excavations, no major analysis has been done on the site until now. The...
Home Is Where the Past Is: The Role of Environmental and Social Factors in Pre-Columbian Settlement on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida (2016)
Pre-Columbian settlement practices in coastal settings were influenced by both environmental and sociocultural factors, but determining the role of each is often hindered by a lack of paleoenvironmental data that is applicable to particular coastal areas. In Horseshoe Cove, on the northern Gulf coast of Florida, settlement practices varied between the Deptford/Swift Creek periods and the Weeden Island period, but were these practices driven by environmental change or were they linked to social...
Hopewellian Connections in the Midsouth—Tunacunnhee and Yearwood (2017)
In 1976 Richard Jefferies published on a Middle Woodland burial mound complex in northwest Georgia called Tunacunnhee. The previous year, Brian Butler salvaged an unusual Middle Woodland ritual and mortuary site on the Elk River in southern Middle Tennessee, called Yearwood, published in summary fashion in 1979. At the time, radiocarbon dating was too limited and primitive to get an accurate read on the age of these two sites, and the then available dates suggested a considerable difference in...
Household-level production and consumption at South-Cape, a Mississippian hinterland site in southeast Missouri (2017)
Mississippian archaeology displays a longstanding bias towards the study of large, mound-bearing sites. Studies of small, "hinterland" sites that lack mounds are relatively uncommon. Our research addresses this problem through a study of flaked stone tool technological organization at South Cape, a Mississippian hinterland site (23CG8) that is located in southeast Missouri and does not contain mounds. We compare flaked stone artifacts from two house features, including one that may have been the...
Households and Hopewellian Interaction in the American Southeast (2017)
The Middle Woodland period in the American Southeast was marked by a fluorescence of interaction, evidenced most prominently by Hopewellian exchange of exotic, symbolically-charged artifacts of stone, bone, shell, and minerals. The focus on exotic artifacts and their mortuary contexts has created a myopia toward exchange among elites, be they conceived as chiefs or religious specialists. However, recent work suggests that the exchange of exotics may have been secondary to more common exchange...
Households, Communities, and the History of Etowah (2016)
Etowah was the home of Mississippian period communities for 550 years. During that time, three distinct communities were created: an initial founding followed by two reoccupations after periods of abandonment. Because abandonment creates points in the life of a community where local traditions can be questioned and modified, they can lead to novel ways of casting identity, social relations, and history. With each new community created at Etowah, households and the larger built environment were...
Human Agency and Materiality: An Exploration of Historic Fort Lauderdale Through Glass Bottles (2015)
Historic material objects are the link between the choices that people make and their cultural values. This paper presents the results of glass bottle analysis from a nineteenth century pioneer camp site (Stranahan 8BD259) located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Glass analysis reveals patterns of use, as well as, social and temporal values. The comparison of cultural materials and historic documents provide important clues into the ways in which early settlers negotiated frontier life. SAA 2015...
Human-Animal Interactions at the start of the Middle Holocene: New Evidence from Pit Deposits in Northeast Florida (2017)
Northern Florida has provided some of the oldest evidence of riverine subsistence in the lower southeastern United States, redefining our understanding of how these communities interacted with animals. Previously, these data were restricted to bioarchaeological analyses of mortuary pond assemblages, such as the Windover site. Recent testing at Silver Glen Springs, along the St. Johns River, has uncovered direct evidence of animal exploitation that increases our knowledge of subsistence patterns...
Human-Environmental Dynamics of the Georgia Coast (2016)
This paper synthesizes and evaluates settlement and subsistence patterns in relation to landscape change for the entire prehistoric period on the Georgia coast. The dynamic coastal processes of the region have altered the topography and distribution of resources, including those important to humans. These processes were neither uniform in space nor time, with variations leading to the creation of micro-habitats. We assess these habitats individually and as part of a complex whole, to better...
Hummingbird Imagery and Smoking Pipes in the Mississippian World (2016)
Smoking ritual was highly elaborated among late prehistoric Mississippian societies in the southeastern United States. Their smoking pipes were embellished with particular kinds of symbolism, not least among them avian themes. During one interval hummingbird imagery was prominent and this presentation will outline an explanation for it ultimately based on the symbiotic plant-pollinator relationship of tobacco and hummingbirds. The archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ecological bases for the...
Identification and Assessment of Subsided and Drowned Prehistoric Archaeological Sites, Lakes Borgne and Pontchartrain, Southeastern Louisiana (2015)
From 2010 to 2014, archaeologists from Coastal Environments, Inc., conducted several remote-sensing surveys within Lakes Borgne and Pontchartrain in an effort to locate the remains of drowned prehistoric terrestrial sites that once existed prior to subsidence and shoreline transgression. In this effort, it has been critical to interpret the remote-sensing data within the established geologic and geomorphic contexts of the region. Several submerged and buried high-probability landforms and...