North America - Southeast (Geographic Keyword)
301-325 (537 Records)
Despite over a century of research, unquestionable evidence of routine and sustained interaction/communication between the U.S. Southeast and Mesoamerica remains elusive. Similarities in iconography and ritual are very general, possibly ancient. Mexican obsidian and tropical plants occur rarely and only at the outskirts of the Southeast, while earthen mounds and some Mississippian-like artifacts occur on the northern Mexican Gulf Coast. The most glaring (absence of) evidence is the lack of...
Luminescence Dates, Archaeological Survey, and Ancestral Overhill Cherokee Towns in Upper East Tennessee (2016)
We have conducted shoreline surveys of archaeological sites on major streams in upper East Tennessee for several years. In 2011, we added luminescence dating to this work. We discuss how luminescence dating has added robust chronological resolution to our work and how it has informed our hypothesis-building efforts. We address the protohistory of the region and the identification of early Cherokee towns here. Before adding luminescence dating as an integral facet of our work, we believed these...
Luminescence Dating of Prehistoric Ceramic Vessel Sherds From the North Central Hills of Mississippi (2016)
Data recovery investigations at site 22CH698, located in Choctaw County, Mississippi, employed luminescence dating of ceramic vessel sherds to complement radiocarbon dates and establish cultural stratigraphy within the site’s thick Holocene alluvium. The dating results, along with diagnostic artifacts, indicate that the site components, representing some 2,000 years of occupation, are mixed. Yet the luminescence dates underscore a strong Miller I through Miller III phase occupation (ca. 100 B.C....
Making Communities Work: Organizational Diversity in the Eastern Woodlands of North America (2015)
Stephen Kowalewski has advanced a number of conceptual frameworks for the comparative study of organizational complexity. His multiscalar, cross-cultural approach permits the recognition of broad patterns while incorporating meaningful variation. In a 2013 paper, Steve explores the "work" involved in the formation of large, co-residential communities. He suggests that we might productively focus on the labor process, as community members purposefully redirected people’s time, energy, and...
Making Mounds Out of Midden: A Behavioural Analysis (2016)
The contents of shell-bearing sites are routinely used to make inferences regarding resource availability, subsistence practices, technology, and as proxies for past environments. Variability in the genesis of shell matrix within an archaeological site and the cultural context of its use and reuse can introduce bias into these interpretations. The authors previously developed a model of shell matrices inferred as midden, mound, and feasting deposits based on visual characteristics, artifact...
Manasota Key Cemetery: New Burial Pattern Interpretations from the Florida Gulf Coast (2016)
The Manasota Culture prospered from around 500 B.C. to A.D. 800 along the Florida coastline that stretches from Tampa Bay to the northern end of Charlotte Harbor. The Manasota Key Cemetery in Englewood, Florida, is one of the largest known Manasota burial sites with one hundred and twenty-two documented burials. Wilbur "Sonny" Cockrell excavated the site along with a team of Florida archaeologists and local volunteers from 1988 to 1989. Very few publications discuss the Manasota Key Cemetery. Of...
Mapping the Homelands: A Collaborative Effort of Auburn University, the National Park Service, and Native American Tribes (2015)
Native American land ownership underwent significant geographic changes following European settlement. This intensified after the American Revolution due to demographic changes, tribal migration, and aggressive Euro-American expansion. This paper presents the results of a collaboration between Auburn University, the National Park Service, and federally recognized tribes to plot land loss from ca. 1790 through the 1850s, with particular emphasis on the impact of the War of 1812 on native...
Marking the (Under) Ground: Civil War Soldier Graffiti in the Mammoth Cave Region of Kentucky (2017)
During the American Civil War, numerous Union and Confederate soldiers visited dozens of caves in the major karst areas of the border and Confederate states, often marking the subterranean walls with graffiti. In the most important karst area of all, the Mammoth Cave region of Kentucky, caves were significant (and famous) features of the landscape, possession of which was bitterly contested, especially in the military campaigns of 1862. A preliminary study of extant historic graffiti at several...
Materialities of Religious Transformation from Coast to Coast in Pre-Columbian Florida (2016)
During the 7th century in Florida, a decisive shift is apparent in the ways people were positioned in relation to burial sites and how they manufactured and interacted with portable objects. The transition ushered in the Weeden Island archaeological culture, well-known for the prevalence of exquisitely crafted pottery vessels and a characteristic mortuary regime widely adopted across the Gulf coastal plain and beyond. This paper examines the historical moment of change in terms of shifting...
Materialized Landscapes of Practice: Exploring Native American Ceramic Variability in the Historic-Era Southeastern United States (2016)
Despite the fact that archaeological ceramics have long been viewed as a proxy for ethno-political identity, recent research exploring the precise relationship between ceramics and identity during the historic-era southeastern United States provides increasing support for the conclusion that geographic variability in archaeological ceramics is best viewed through the lens of practice, and that archaeological phases correspond better to communities of practice than communities of identity. When...
Maxillary Lateral Incisor Agenesis: A Case Study of Hypodontia from the Smith Creek Site, Mississippi. (2015)
Human skeletal remains recovered from the Smith Creek Site in Adams County, Mississippi came to the Louisiana Department of Justice for analysis. Twenty-six individuals recovered required a full bioarchaeological analysis to inventory and document as much information as possible before final disposition. Of particular interest, one individual displayed the relatively uncommon trait of missing permanent maxillary lateral incisors. In order to determine whether the agenesis resulted from...
Measuring Cultural Relatedness Using Multiple Seriation Ordering Algorithms (2016)
Seriation is a long-standing archaeological method for relative dating that has proven effective in probing regional-scale patterns of inheritance, social networks, and cultural contact in their full spatiotemporal context. The orderings produced by seriation are produced by the continuity of class distributions and unimodality of class frequencies, properties that are related to social learning and transmission models studied by evolutionary archaeologists. Linking seriation to social learning...
Mi Datos Su Datos? Opportunities and Challenges Posed by Data Sharing (2015)
Rapid technological advancements and increased availability of hardware and software are boons to archaeologists gathering and interpreting spatial data from anthropogenic landscapes. These datasets are increasingly unmatched in quality and quantity, allowing for visualization, analysis, and explication of built and modified environments reflecting human behavior. While these advancements are clearly well-received by individual archaeologists, the enduring question remains: When (and how) should...
Mica Symbolism from a Late Irene Mortuary Site (2017)
Recent excavations at the Fallen Tree Mortuary Complex (9Li8) on St. Catherines Island, GA have recovered over 20 shaped mica artifacts and dozens of fragments associated within three Late Mississippian adult male burials. This non-local material was purposely shaped and interred with the individuals. In this poster, I will discuss what the symbolism of the mica and examine the location and orientation of the mica discs on the individuals. In addition, I will compare the mica to several other...
Midden among the mounds: An Ongoing Study of Faunal Remains from a Platform Mound and Adjacent Midden at the Garden Patch Site (8DI4) (2016)
This paper presents the faunal composition of a platform mound and adjacent village midden as a means of understanding subsistence, feasting, and ceremony at the pre-Columbian Garden Patch site, a Middle Woodland (ca. AD 100 to 500) multi-mound center located on the northwest gulf coast of Florida. The vertebrate faunal remains from the dense midden of Area X are compared to those of adjacent Mound II, a platform mound constructed of alternating lenses of shell midden and sand. The results of...
Midden Muddle (2017)
Archaeologists occasionally find inconstant artifact assemblages between sites that appear similar. These variations in artifact frequency and diversity can hinder efforts to establish a one-to-one correlation between artifacts and cultural behaviors. However, coastal shell middens can provide important information regarding past habitation and social organization. By using shell and artifact distribution data, this research examines how Woodland cultures utilized coastal sites between 1000 B.C....
Midden, Mounds, and Mortuary Cults - Excavations at the Swift Creek and Weeden Island Byrd Hammock Site in Wakulla County, Florida (2016)
Recent investigations of Swift Creek and Weeden Island mound-midden complexes at Byrd Hammock in Wakulla County, Florida, and on Tyndall Air Force Base in Bay County, Florida, and show that there were direct and/or indirect interactions among these Woodland sites. Geophysical surveys of village plazas, comparisons of ceramic stamped patterns, and other data show the presence of a intraregional social network with shared expressions of ideology and settlement patterning that underwent similar...
Migration Terminus? Late Pleistocene/and Early Holocene Archaeology at Rock Creek Mortar Shelter, Upper Cumberland Plateau, Tennessee (2015)
Rock Creek Mortar Shelter (40Pt209), in Pickett State Forest on the Upper Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee, possesses a more or less continuous 11,600 year occupation history. This history may be consistent with previous ideas of first colonization of upland rock shelter zones at the end of the Younger Dryas with significant climatic amelioration. However, we have not yet encountered culturally sterile deposits and believe the site may be older still. We focus here on the late Pleistocene and...
A Missing Person Body Recovery Case: Maintaining Professionalism & Best Practices as a Forensic Archaeologist Amidst Escalated Tensions (2015)
In Fall 2012, I was contacted by a county sheriff's department in South Carolina and their Coroner as well as by the family members of a missing person, to request my assistance as a forensic archaeologist in a body recovery. A 54 year old male had been missing for nearly two years until a timber worker stumbled upon a human bone in the course of marking trees for harvest. What followed was a body recovery wherein I witnessed growing tensions between family members towards law enforcement...
The Mississippi Paleoindian and Early Archaic point database redux (2016)
The Mississippi Paleoindian and Archaic Point Survey was initiated in 1968 by archaeologists at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and due largely to the efforts of Sam McGahey over the next 30 years, grew to include over 2,100 points at the time of his retirement in 2003. The survey was idle for a decade, but was recently reinstituted with the help of numerous avocational "citizen scientists" who share an interest in Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene hunter-gatherers. Intact...
Mississippian Communities and Households from a Bird’s-Eye View (2016)
In the twenty years since the publication of Mississippian Communities and Households, improvements in GIS and database software have enabled archaeologists to analyze and compare the material remains of past communities and households at spatial scales that were once infeasible. In this paper I use a database of over 1200 Native American structures from 65 sites across the Southeast to compare changes in the architecture of Mississippian houses and settlements at a broader temporal and spatial...
Mississippian Communities in the Northern Yazoo Basin: Bridging the Protohistoric Divide (2017)
Late Mississippi period (AD 1350-1541) archaeological sites in the northern Yazoo Basin typically consist of one or more earthen platform mounds adjacent to a large plaza surrounded by multiple residential areas. Sites are closely spaced throughout the region and evidence for smaller non-mound settlements is lacking. These observations suggest a distinctive Mississippian settlement pattern for the northern Yazoo, but they only partially address questions about past communities and the people who...
The Mississippian Community at Town Creek (2016)
Archaeological uses of the term “community” incorporate elements of the physical environment, which often include a particular place on the landscape, and elements of the built environment, such as the structures and spaces that people created there. In addition to being a place, the concept of “community” also entails the social, economic, and political relationships that existed among the individuals and groups that lived there. This paper presents an overview of the Mississippian community at...
Mississippian Conflict and the Role of the Fission-Fusion Process: An Example from East Tennessee (2015)
Increasing intensity and frequency of conflict over time is a noted characteristic of the Mississippian Period in the southeastern United States. To examine the question of why violence increases, researchers have examined many cultural institutions and environmental mechanisms that can defuse tensions as well as those that exacerbate chances for warfare. A key theoretical construct is the use of bufferzones that help to lower tensions by creating separation between competing groups. However...
Mississippian Occupations at the Ravensford and Iotla Sites (2017)
Recent large-scale excavations at the Ravensford and Iotla sites, and elsewhere in western North Carolina’s Cherokee "heartland", have documented Mississippian components that include architectural remains as well as artifact assemblages. But while Late Mississippian occupations have been found on many sites, Early and Middle Mississippian households and settlements have been difficult to isolate. Increased numbers of systematic surveys and excavations in recent years have uncovered evidence of...