North America - Southeast (Geographic Keyword)
426-450 (537 Records)
Middle Woodland sites of the Deptford period on the Atlantic Coastal Plain first received archaeological attention during the Great Depression. Aspects of Deptford settlement organization and its socio-political economies have been debated ever since. Models developed for interior-riverine sites in the Coastal Plain indicate that occupation differed between floodplain sites and those of the upland, inter-fluvial areas. Two extensive blocks with Deptford components were excavated at the Savannah...
A Regional Perspective on Mud Glyph Cave Art in Southeastern North America. (2015)
We provide an overview of a signature prehistoric cave art form in the Southeast of North America: "Mud Glyph" images traced and/or carved into plastic sediments inside the dark zones of caves. Today, we know of 21 such mud glyph caves in Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and Virginia. Sometimes, mud glyphs form elaborate cave art compositions. While this art form has roots in the Archaic Period more than 3000 years ago, its greatest frequency occurs during the Mississippian Period after AD...
Reinterpreting the Battle of Cowpens, 1781 (2016)
In August 2015, the Southeast Archeological Center undertook a large-scale systematic survey of the core battlefield and surrounding environs of Cowpens National Battlefield. The survey covered over 50 acres using Federal and State archaeologists in conjunction with volunteers from throughout the southeastern United States. The project nearly doubled the footprint of the battle, in addition to uncovering several artifacts that are key to interpreting troop movements and actions across the...
Relationality, Circularity, and Monumentality: Ontological Materializations in the Belle Glade Monumental Landscape (2017)
The Belle Glade monumental landscape exhibits a high level of monumentality, with architectural features ranging from large circular ditches to massive geometric arrays of earthen architecture. However, this unique architecture has seen few archaeological interpretations. Those that have been put forth have largely emphasized economic explanations, many of which have been refuted with the acquisition of new archaeological data. Additionally, recent ecological studies show that the physical...
Removing the Present to model the Past: DEM and Paths in the Sandhills of South Carolina (2017)
Modern infrastructure and development have created problems for reconstructing prehistoric landscapes which adversely affects the accuracy of tools designed to determine trail networks. The attempts to reconstruct prehistoric networks and trail systems between Mississippian period mound sites along different river valleys in the Sandhills region of South Carolina is hampered by even low amounts of development of the landscape. This paper employs some common methods of removing modern...
Reptiles Rule: Patterns of Prehistoric Consumption in the Interior of Southern Florida (2016)
This poster discusses patterns of prehistoric consumption in light of results from recent archaeological investigations at black earth middens in the interior of southern Florida. The amount of faunal remains recovered from these sites may represent the largest single zooarchaeological project ever conducted for this region. More than 350,000 animal bones were identified from six sites, whose occupation dates ranged from the Archaic to Historic periods. Identified fauna revealed the overwhelming...
Residue Analysis of Archaeological Smoking Pipes from the Southeastern US (2016)
Chemical analyses of organic residues from smoking pipes excavated from archaeological sites in the southeastern United States provide insight into ritualistic smoking traditions of indigenous peoples. This study examined residues scraped from pipes and pipe sherds in collections at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta, Georgia, and the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture in Knoxville, Tennessee. One of the primary goals was to determine whether nicotine was present in the...
Resilience, Hierarchy, and the Native American Cultural Landscapes of the Yazoo Basin and the Mississippi Delta (2016)
Within the field of ecology, resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to withstand change and to regenerate itself after disturbance. Adapted to the archaeological study of past cultural systems, the concept of resilience refers to the capacity of a cultural system or a cultural landscape to endure change. Archaeologists have primarily recognized resiliency in cultural systems of regions characterized by arid conditions, either permanently or periodically. This paper considers prehistoric...
Resistance and Intersectionality in Maroon Archaeology (2017)
We define Maroons by their overt resistance; theirs was one of the most extreme forms of anti-slavery opposition in the Americas and for many scholars is representative of the human desire to be free. However, defining Maroons by the act of marronage is isolating and limits attempts to study cultural continuities and ethnogenesis amongst the wider African Diaspora. This paper will look at the potential for, and advantages of, an intersectional maroon archaeology. Through the lens of marronage in...
Responding to Regional Collapse: A Late Mississippian Community on the Georgia Coast (2016)
Communities are social fulcrums, situated within multiple scales of interactivity. Understanding the discursive relationship between regions and households through the lens of the community can allow for a better understanding of social transformations. In the decades preceding 1400 C.E., chiefdoms in the Savannah River Valley collapsed and the region became depopulated. Settlement evidence suggests large scale population movements from the valley to the Georgia Coast, with significant social...
Results of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference Sexual Harassment Survey (2016)
In the Fall of 2014, the Southeastern Archaeological Conference sponsored a sexual harassment survey of its membership. Goals of the survey were to identify frequency and types of sexual harassment in field situations and identify consequences of such incidences for perpetrators and victims. The survey was also designed to identify if victims of sexual harassment had suffered adverse effects to their career, and to collect longitudinal data on changes in sexual harassment over time. The poster...
Rethinking Population Dynamics of the Belle Glade Prehistoric Culture (2016)
The Belle Glade prehistoric culture of central peninsular Florida is very poorly known. Through standard osteological analyses of 78 individuals from Belle Glade Mound (8PB41), type site for the culture, estimates for age, sex, and stature were calculated and observations of dental and skeletal pathologies were noted. Sex could be estimated for 26 males and 25 females. Age distributions varied stratigraphically but were dominated by young adults aged 20-35 and middle adults aged 35-50. The age...
Reverse Engineering Dart Point Design Requirements Using Whole Points from a Middle Woodland Site in Mississippi (2017)
Reverse engineering involves using products of a technology, in the absence of documentation, to determine design parameters. A set of 46 whole hafted bifaces from 22OK746 in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi, which contained a Middle Woodland occupation, were studied. They were determined to be projectile points based on shared size, shape, and hafting traits with bifaces from the site that displayed impact fractures. The whole points were analyzed using parameters derived theoretically,...
Revisiting Variation in Colonoware Manufacture and Use (2016)
Previous analyses (Cooper and Smith 2007, Smith and Cooper 2011) of Colonoware from 33 sites occupied during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by enslaved peoples in South Carolina and Virginia have revealed significant inter-regional variation in vessel abundance over time. Additionally, analyses of attributes such as soot residue and vessel thickness identified intra-regional homogeneity and heterogeneity in use and manufacturing techniques. This study tests whether these trends continue...
Right Place, Right Time: Paleoindian Landscapes on the Gulf of Mexico, Outer Continental Shelf (2015)
Archaeologists have been conducting prehistoric archaeological research on the world’s continental shelves for the last 40 years, with a general consensus that remote sensing combined with physical sampling is the best method for identifying sites. Following the conclusion of a US federally-funded (BOEM) study in the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico, two promising Paleoindian landscapes have been verified 20 and 30 miles offshore, at depths of between 16 and 32 m BSL. Remote sensing and physical...
Rising Sea Level and Sea Turtle Nesting on St. Catherines Island, GA; What the Present and Past tell about the Future!" (2015)
Geologists involved in sea turtle conservation have documented deterioration of sea turtle nesting habitat during sea level rise in The Modern Transgression on a "Sentinel Island," Deterioration of habitat has resulted in rapid erosion of backbeach nesting habitat at ~ 3.0 m per year (declining from 25% to 12% adequate habitat in a decade), including fragmentation of three beaches in 1990 into eight beaches in 2013, formation of washover fans and wash-in fans onto backbeach marsh meadows and...
The Role of Ritual in Early Food Producing Economies: Seed Keepers and Seed Exchange in Ethnography and in the Archaeological Record of Eastern North America (2017)
The ethnographic record is replete with examples of farming societies for whom the maintenance and exchange of seed stock was imbued with ritual significance. Seed keeping is often an institutionalized role for families or individuals: a matter of pride, as aspect of identity, and a heavy responsibility. The establishment of these rituals and institutions may have been crucial to the domestication of annual plants and the development of food producing economies. What would seed keeping and seed...
Salt Production and Economic Specialization at Drake’s Salt Works (2015)
The Drake’s Salt Works Site Complex in northwestern Louisiana was one of the most intensively-utilized salt production sites in the south-central United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to the historic record, the Caddo salt makers at this saline were capable of producing hundreds of pounds of salt each year to sell to nearby European and American Indian groups. Given the limited availability of salt away from coastal areas, participating in the production and...
Sclerochronology of the Tiger Lucine Clam (Codakia orbicularis): Implications for Florida Keys and Northern Caribbean Archaeological Site Seasonality (2017)
The Tiger Lucine (Codakia orbicularis) is a large bivalve native to the West Indies. This tropical species is a common constituent of late prehistoric (AD 800-1500) shell middens in the Florida Keys, the Lucayan Archipelago, and the Greater Antilles (e.g., Jamaica). C. orbicularis’ prominence in the archaeological deposits of these regions is the predictable result of its abundance, relative ease of access, and widespread efficacy as both a subsistence resource and raw material for tools (e.g.,...
Searching for Shell Mounds in Southwest Florida:An Automated Approach (2016)
This paper will explore using automated Object Based Image Analysis (OBIA) to search for archaeological shell mound sites in thick mangrove forest. This is accomplished by combining available data from multiple remote sensing sources, integrating them using several software programs, and training the computer to search for a particular set of parameters - including height (LIDAR) and spectral qualities (Color Near-infrared). The newest software programs will be reviewed, as well as the source...
Searching For Spanish Footprints: Recent Geophysical Prospection On Sapelo Island, Georgia (2017)
The Sapelo Island Mission Period Archaeological Project (SIMPAP) has been conducting research on Sapelo Island, Georgia since 2003 in search of the Mission San Joseph de Sapala. Previous test excavations have produced potential architectural features and Spanish artifacts, while previous geophysical feasibility surveys hint at the presence of unique anomalies warranting further investigation. During the summer of 2016, University of Kentucky personnel conducted new ground-penetrating radar and...
Second Line Resources? Evaluating the Relationship Between Human Demography and Aquatic Resource Use During the Eastern Archaic (2017)
As part of its investigations the Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group (EAFWG) has been examining multiple explanatory models for Archaic variability and change in aquatic resource use. One traditional model argues that the intensified use of aquatic animals can be attributed to population growth and aggregation. In order to test this model the EAFWG explored possible methods for reconstructing Archaic population demographics. Until recently broad-scale Archaic population reconstruction has...
Secrets from Within the Shell: Exploring the Differences between Shell-Bearing and Shell-Free Deposits at 40DV307 along the Cumberland River, Tennessee, USA. (2016)
The Bell Site is a multicomponent prehistoric site located along the Cumberland River in Central Tennessee. Archaeological fieldwork conducted in the summer of 2010 and 2012, including riverbank profiling, auger testing, unit excavation, and column sampling, revealed a long and dynamic occupational history of the site. Here, we integrate multiple lines of evidence including paleoethnobotany, zooarchaeology, and geoarchaeology, to unravel the site's complex (pre)history and explore the functional...
Section 106 @ Fifty – A Look Back and A Glimpse Ahead (2016)
My first job in cultural resource management was in 1976, the American bicentennial. While I thus missed the first decade of the National Historic Preservation Act and Section 106, I have been actively engaged since. The first fifty years of Section 106 resulted in profound changes to the field of archaeology. From the growth of the cultural resource industry and private sector cultural resource management firms; to NAGPRA and the treatment of human remains; to the creation of Tribal Historic...
Seeding Colonialism; European trade Beads within Native American Contexts (2017)
The typological and scientific study of trade beads in Native American contexts has contributed a great deal to understanding contact period sites (ca. 1607–1783). The Cape Creek site, NC is a perfect example of British-indigenous connectivity in the contact period and is important for understanding interaction in the Southeast. Unlike other studies of this type that mostly focus on mortuary sites, Cape Creek is a village settlement and will therefore provide a different ...