North America - Southeast (Geographic Keyword)
501-525 (537 Records)
The nature of Swift Creek design style has been a research focus of the lead authors for a number of years. In this poster, we broaden the discussion to include the full range of carved paddles, originally identified by W. H. Holmes as integral to the South Appalachian pottery tradition. Within the context of the stylistic principles of Swift Creek, as previously defined, we chart paddle stamping from its earliest beginnings ca 600 BC to the ethnographic present. Our concerns include...
Trends and Techniques of Catawba Colonoware, ca. 1760-1800. (2016)
While surficial similarities exist among colonoware assemblages produced by different communities of potters, owing to shared colonial templates, this ceramic tradition, like any other, reflects the specific economic and social contexts in which it is produced, circulated, and used. By the 19th century Catawba potters were well-known producers and itinerant traders of low-fired earthenware across South Carolina, but the origin and character of early Catawba colonoware production has not been...
Tribal Community Engagement and Archaeology: The Story of the Seminole Tribe of Florida’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office (2016)
Like other THPOs across the country, the Seminole Tribe of Florida’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office (STOF THPO) is charged with serving the STOF communities and preserving their cultural heritage. With a staff of 17 individuals, the STOF THPO is heavily involved with both on and off reservation compliance projects ranging from home sites, pasture improvement projects, and wetland mitigations. However, as this paper and the symposium will demonstrate, these projects only make up a percentage...
Uncovered Features: A Spatial Analysis of Late Woodland to Historic Activity Areas at the Topper Site (38AL23) (2016)
Multiple features, ranging from the Woodland through Historic periods, were uncovered and excavated at the Topper Site (38AL23) by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, summer 2015 field school. This paper presents the results of a contextual and spatial analysis of these features utilizing excavation and GPR data from the field and the flotation analysis of the feature fill, which was conducted at UTK during the Fall of 2015. This analysis further illustrates the range of human activity at...
Understanding Archaeological Site Protection at the Local Level in Florida (2016)
Archaeological sites face many threats in Florida. While both natural and cultural forces are at play the most destructive threat might be inaction at the local level from the professional and amateur archaeology communities. Local preservation programs began in earnest with the passage of state laws aimed at managing and regulating growth in the state and have continued largely through the implementation of the Certified Local Government Program. However, an apparent lack of a clear...
Unusual Elements, Special Contexts: Bear Ceremonialism in Context at Feltus, Jefferson County, Mississippi (2017)
During the Coles Creek period (AD 700–1200), people constructed three earthen mounds at the Feltus site in Jefferson County, Mississippi. Before, during, and after the construction of these earthworks, Feltus was a location for ritual gatherings characterized by communal feasts and ritual post activities. Archaeological investigations at Feltus produced not only a large amount of bear bone, but a range of skeletal elements that are unusual at prehistoric sites. The nature of these remains and...
Updates on Current Investigations of the 1559 Luna Fleet (2016)
This presentation focuses on the ongoing investigations of shipwrecks from the Spanish fleet of Tristan de Luna, who attempted to colonize northwest Florida in 1559. Fieldwork conducted during the last year has yielded exciting new insights into the expedition, and the ships that made up the fleet.
The Ups and Downs of Uploading Data to the Eastern Archaic Faunal Database with the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) (2016)
Uploading faunal data from eastern Archaic sites to the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) as members of the Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group (EAFWG) was a very exciting prospect. We are pleased to be involved in a project that will address significant questions about animal use during the Archaic period. However, making the data comparable entailed some challenges and compromises. While most zooarchaeologists agree on taxonomic designations, developing ontologies for elements, portions,...
The Use of Bayesian Statistics to Increase both Precision and Accuracy in Radiocarbon Dating (2015)
Many archaeologists struggle to make sense of radiocarbon dates, especially those with large overlapping sigmas. Even with modern analytical techniques that increase precision, the results can be confusing. Bayesian statistics, which employs prior information to constrain posterior results with sets of radiocarbon dates, can lessen confusion and increase precision without using ad hoc measures, such as averaging or ignoring dates with large errors. The power and utility of Bayesian analyses is...
The Uses of Platform-Mound Summits at a Coles Creek Site in Southwest Mississippi (2015)
Excavations at Feltus (Jefferson County, Mississippi) have yielded considerable evidence on how the summits of platform mounds constructed during the middle Coles Creek period (AD 900-1100) were used. These summits showed multiple veneers of black and yellow sediments, portions of which were heavily burned. Also present were small pits that may have been votive deposits, as well as large, bathtub-shaped cooking pits. The summits were kept clean, but dense middens accumulated on their flanks....
Using 3D Laser and 3D Sonar as Tools for Mapping, Analyzing Site Formation Processes, and Long Term Monitoring of Shipwrecks (2015)
3D imaging creates a permanent digital record that allows scientists to study minute site details and also serves an important outreach role by allowing the public to virtually explore archaeological resources. While 3D imaging of archaeological sites using laser and lidar is a growing trend in terrestrial archaeology, its application in marine archaeology has only recently emerged. Marine archaeologists are now beginning to use 3D laser- and sonar-derived models as new tools for interpreting...
Using Site Condition Data to Manage Heritage Sites for Climate Change Impacts (2016)
Heritage sites worldwide are threatened by human action and inaction; archaeologists are observers of the era of human-induced global change. We are specially positioned to use our data to examine such change through the material record. Additionally, archaeologists have been recording observations about the condition of sites for many years, even if those observations are not always intended to monitor site condition or integrity. Archaeologists in the National Park Service have, in maintaining...
Using Species Richness To Examine Paleoenvironmental Conditions Of The Northern Everglades: A Preliminary Faunal Analysis Of Wedgworth Midden (8PB16175) And The Bryant Site (8PB46) (2016)
The Wedgworth Midden Site (8PB16175) is a newly identified pop-up tree island site southeast of Lake Okeechobee, in Belle Glade, Florida. It is the last stratified muck site to be excavated in Palm Beach County since Belle Glade Mound in 1977. The site presents with cultural occupations from the Late Archaic into the Woodland Period and is considered a part of the Belle Glade Culture. We compared Wedgworth to the nearby Bryant Site (8PB46) specifically because the ceramic types present at the...
Validation of a Non-Destructive DNA Extraction Protocol for Ancient DNA Analyses (2015)
The destructive nature of traditional DNA extraction techniques presents one of the primary obstacles to accessing genetic information from museum and archaeological collections. Here we assess a recently published "non-destructive" DNA extraction protocol by Bolnick and colleagues in terms of the amount and quality of DNA extracted from a set of samples of even greater antiquity than those tested in the original analysis. DNA was successfully extracted from archaic period samples from the Eva...
Vertebral Wedging: A potential tool for the determination of parity in archaeological samples? (2016)
During pregnancy, women experience lordotic posturing to compensate for the weight of the growing fetus. Biomechanical stress from lordotic posturing causes bone remodeling of the lumbar spine during pregnancy resulting in lumbar wedging, which may persist after giving birth. Persistence of lumbar wedging in skeletal samples has potential applications for estimating parity in the archaeological record. This research analyzes the possibility that lumbar wedging is observable in the skeletal...
Vertebrate Fauna from Fusihatchee (1EE191) (1997)
Vertebrate evidence for animal use by native groups of the interior southeastern United States during the Protohistoric and early Historic periods are rare. Additional data for this time period from the Fusihatchee site are reported here. Fusihatchee vertebrate remains are from two Protohistoric structures (Structures 6 and 8) and a Historic feature (Feature 320/335). Data from two other features (Features 390 and 2232) are commented upon briefly. The Protohistoric component includes 4,218...
Vertebrate Fauna from the Grand Mound Shell Ring site (8Du1), Florida (2016)
The Grand Mound Shell Ring (8Du1) is a Mississippi-period site on the southern end of Big Talbot Island in Duval County, Florida. The site consists of an annular shell midden, composed primarily of oyster, with a sand burial mound deposited over the western ring arc. Excavations by faculty of the University of North Florida recovered a large vertebrate faunal sample marked by the presence of numerous avian species, some of which today are extinct. This paper presents the vertebrate faunal data...
Video Games, Virtual Reconstructions, and other Digital Avenues to Engage Children of All Ages in a Cosmopolitan Past (2016)
For talented story-tellers, the past can be conjured up and presented through thrilling narrative arcs and vivid imagery. The result can make the listener feel like they are in an ancient place. But the audience listens, with only awe as the result. With expanding digital technologies, the archaeological past can be animated. Students can immerse themselves in reconstructed buildings and landscapes and move through ancient places, examine material culture from multiple angles, and even engage in...
The View from Mazique (22Ad502): Reconsidering the Coles Creek / Plaquemine Cultural Transition from the Perspective of the Natchez Bluffs Region of the Lower Mississippi Valley (2015)
Around A.D. 1000 Mississippian culture emerged in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. Originating around the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, Mississippian culture rapidly spread south and east, radically transforming Late Woodland societies in its wake. Although Mississippian culture had come to dominate much of the interior of the Southeast by A.D. 1100, its advance into the Lower Mississippi Valley was impeded. Here, Mississippian societies encountered the Late Woodland...
The view from one thousand houses: a macro-regional approach to household archaeology in the Southeastern United States: (2015)
In this paper I reflect on Steve Kowalewski’s influence on my research on houses and households in the native Southeast. In the early days of my graduate training, Steve encouraged me to move away from a single-site focus and instead think about household archaeology as a broadly comparative anthropological enterprise undertaken at a macro-regional scale. It was a good idea. To meet Steve’s challenge, I constructed a database that catalogs the architectural features of 1258 structures from 65...
Virtual curation as an integral part of the conservation strategy at the Camp Lawton Confederate POW site (2015)
The Confederate POW facility, Camp Lawton, was constructed in the summer of 1864 to relieve the horrendous conditions at Andersonville. Camp Lawton, a 42-acre stockade housing over 10,000 Union prisoners, was only open during October and November 1864. It was abandoned in late November as Sherman’s men marched towards Savannah. Recent archaeological excavations by Georgia Southern University (GSU) students and faculty located the prisoner encampment. The area includes intact prisoners’ hut...
The Warfare Paradox, or All Quiet on the Western Tennessee Valley Archaic (2017)
The complex hunter-gatherers of the Middle and Late Archaic periods in the Tennessee River Valley of the American Southeast are well-known for displaying evidence of intergroup violence, including scalping and trophy taking. On the other hand, these time periods are also known for the emergence of exchange networks centered on items including bone pins and bifaces. I argue that the co-occurrence of exchange networks and intergroup violence was likely the result of iterated "live and let live" or...
A Way Forward with Public and Professional Archaeology: The Exploring Joara Foundation in North Carolina. (2015)
The Exploring Joara Foundation, Inc. is a not-for profit, 501(c)3, organization whose mission is to support public archaeology in the western Piedmont region of North Carolina. Formed in 2008, the foundation has grown around the long-term research project at the Berry site, near Morganton, NC; now known to be the location of the Native town of Joara and the Spanish Fort San Juan built by Juan Pardo in 1567. Archaeological investigations at the Berry site since 2001 have involved the public in...
Weediness: Modern, Historic, and Prehistoric Plants at Poverty Point, LA (2015)
With construction beginning about 3,700 years ago, Poverty Point (16WC5) in northeast Louisiana is one of the earliest and largest sites of its kind in the United States. What were conditions like when people began constructing the mounds? What kind of environment did they live in? How did this change (or not change) over time? This poster presents lithological and palynological evidence covering the period before, during, and after prehistoric occupation at this site. Comparing and...
A WEIRd Tale: 2,500 Years of Fishing in an Everglades Slough (2016)
In 1968, a dredging project alongside the Anhinga Trail in Taylor Slough, Florida unearthed an unusually large collection of worked bone objects. Peat deposits in the slough afforded excellent preservation conditions – some of the bone tools still contain wooden shafts and pitch. Sometime after its discovery, the collection was split between different institutions and lost. This important collection has recently been relocated and rejoined and is described in this paper. The assemblage consists...