North America: Southeast United States (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Sassaman. Asa R. Randall. Neill J. Wallis.

Archaeological contexts of the American Southeast are rife with ash deposits that go beyond the residues of mundane burning activities. Burials and other pits at Stallings Island have layers of wood ash sandwiched between charcoal and shell; some rockshelters of the Cumberland Plateau contain successive layers of ash, each capped with earth; freshwater shell was mixed with ash to fill a massive pit on Silver Glen Run; and in north-central Florida, a dried sink filled with peat was burned to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Nelson.

Ethnographic sources indicate that fire and its alternate forms—smoke and ash—are powerfully symbolic substances for many historic period southeastern Indian groups. The remains of fire are frequently deposited in ways that amplify its power, or alternatively, attempt to neutralize it. This paper examines ash deposition at Parchman Place, a late Mississippi period (AD 1300-1541) site located in the northern Yazoo Basin. Here, and elsewhere in the Southeast, Mississippian people incorporated ash...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marvin Kay.

Sediment of varied textures and colors, ash among them, is highlighted from deliberately burnt Harlan-style charnel houses. These were erected in sub-mound pits. In one rendition that followed an earlier house burning, light gray ash alternates in the superior, or upward, position with the black charcoal layer of a collapsed burnt thatch and cane roof. The ash was levelled as a platform. This completed a mortuary cycle linked lineally to subsequent pyramidal mound construction. In other cases...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Cranford. Chris Southerly. Kim Kenyon. Stephen Atkinson.

This is an abstract from the "What’s Canoe? Recent Research on Dugouts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent discoveries of dugout canoes from North Carolina and elsewhere have renewed public interest in these types of artifacts as well as interest from several local Indigenous communities, while also highlighting the increasing threats to this type of cultural heritage. North Carolina’s abundance of coastal lakes and rivers have yielded a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Tune.

Various methods have been developed to assess the use-life of Paleoindian bifaces by focusing on morphological attributes. Comparative studies have often proven difficult in part because of the diverse nature of Paleoindian biface technologies in North America. While morphological ratios such as length-to-width vary considerably throughout biface use-lives, technological ratios related to fluting and lateral grinding typically remain more constant. In turn, technological variables may be more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Perkins. Ian Beggen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Interobserver variation is a known phenomenon within macroscopic and microscopic lithic analyses. Thus far, many researchers have conducted extensive studies of variation between experts and novices in lithic analyses, and these studies have shown the importance of careful supervision and repetition of measurements. Here, we present findings from a study...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Stauffer.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. First detected by Charles Bareis in 1969 in Cahokia’s Ramey Field tract, Mound 17 (the Bareis Mound) was partially exposed beneath artificially mixed plaza fills, immediately west of the palisade wall that bounds the eastern extremity of the site core. Following an analysis of Bareis’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Wright.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2020, Choctaw Nation Historic Preservation (CNHP) began a project to identify and document Choctaw homesteads in Southeastern Oklahoma. Although these sites are an essential part of Choctaw cultural heritage, the locations of many of these sites remain unknown. To assist CNHP's goals of locating these culturally important sites, a "pilot study" was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Miller. Laura Clark.

The Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) launched the citizen science-based Heritage Monitoring Scout (HMS Florida) program statewide during the fall of 2016 in part to assist Florida’s Division of Historical Resources, which currently does not have the budget or policy permissions in place for climate change concerned initiatives. During the first year, 233 volunteers signed up and submitted over 312 monitoring forms from across the state. This paper will provide affordances and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robbyn McKellop.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located in the east Texas Pineywoods, Boxed Springs (41UR30) is a lesser-known Early Caddo mound center characterized by a diverse and distinctive archaeological assemblage. Recently, Wichita State University has been granted permission to access the eastern portion of the site which was previously restricted. Excavation findings during the 2021 and 2022...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Austin Cross.

This is an abstract from the "First Floridians to La Florida: Recent FSU Investigations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Schott and Ballenger’s (2007) work analyzing the expended utility of Dalton bifaces looked at the difference between the potential utility of an artifact and its residual utility to understand the use-wear and resharpening processes that shaped the artifact, and applied their findings to reconstructing the population-level use of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Johnson.

Yamasees worked as non-missionized laborers in Spanish Florida, raided for Charleston traders, fought to expand Georgia, lived with Creek Indians, and worked as diplomats and traders in Pensacola. Letters, speeches, and testimony demonstrate that this mobility— often leading them to outnumber local occupants— allowed Yamasees to dictate terms to and take vengeance against other Native Americans as well as Europeans. Despite such authority, pottery assemblages demonstrate the frequent adoption of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Elizabeth Ibarrola. Lori Lee.

This is an abstract from the "Seeking Freedom in the Borderlands: Archaeological Perspectives on Maroon Societies in Florida" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fort Mose was the first legally sanctioned free Black community in North America. While the direct result of petitions by self-liberated Africans seeking formal emancipation, the policy that generated the settlement reflected political, military, and religious concerns of the Spanish as well....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Rutecki.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Much of the research and scholarship in Southeastern iconography focused on birds and avian or avian anthropomorphic imagery emphasizes connections to warfare, especially raptors and woodpeckers. While some research has discussed how birds relate to broader patterns in iconography, notable gaps in literature exist pertaining to how birds are integrated into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thadra Stanton.

This is an abstract from the "NPS Archeology: Engaging the Public through Education and Recreation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On-going efforts to increase outreach, education, engagement and relevancy for the Southeast Archeological Center (SEAC) over the past 8 years have resulted in the increased visibility of SEAC, the National Park Service, and archeology. SEAC has worked with educators through the Teacher-Ranger-Teacher program to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Jefferies. Christopher Moore.

More than a decade of archaeological investigations at Mission San Joseph de Sapala and its associated Guale village of Sapala on Sapelo Island, Georgia have provided significant new insights into the nature of Spanish-Guale interaction and negotiation. Some of these cultural transactions are reflected by items of clothing or personal adornment that were worn by the Spanish and/or Native Americans who lived in that 17th century Spanish Mission community. This poster explores the nature of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Wright.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of a study that uses x-ray fluorescence (XRF) to examine European glass trade beads from the Chickasawhay Creek Sites (22KE630 & 22KE718) in Kemper County, Mississippi. Together, these two sites present a unique opportunity to examine Choctaw ethnogenesis. Although a combination of archaeological and ethnohistorical research has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Schwartz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the multiple “afterlives” of quarters at Buffalo Forge, an antebellum iron plantation in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. While quarters were initially sited and constructed throughout the plantation to accommodate workers of different genders and work roles, Buffalo Forge’s cessation of iron operations in 1865 initiated new cycles of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Schweikart.

This is an abstract from the "Vicksburg Is the Key: Recent Archaeological Investigations and New Perspectives from the Gibraltar of the South" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Vicksburg National Cemetery, established in 1866, and Vicksburg National Military Park, established in 1899, were created to commemorate the 1862–1863 siege, to honor those who had fought and died here and to preserve these significant places on the very grounds on which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kandace Hollenbach.

This is an abstract from the "Hearths, Earth Ovens, and the Carbohydrate Revolution: Indigenous Subsistence Strategies and Cooking during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Eastern Woodlands of North America, researchers tend to discuss cooking technologies of early foragers at the close of the Pleistocene and early Holocene in terms of nut processing rather than for use of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seth Grooms. Edward Henry. Kelly Ervin. Tristram Kidder.

The origins of Early Woodland cultures have long been poorly understood, but recent data from sites in the Yazoo and Tensas basins, and from sites along the coast are providing new perspectives on the development of the Woodland tradition in the Lower Mississippi Valley. In this paper we summarize Steve Williams’ contributions to understanding Woodland origins and update his work with new data. In contrast to earlier thinking, recent research shows that Woodland peoples in the Lower Mississippi...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Crothers. Justin Carlson. Karen Stevens. Alexander Metz. Katharine Alexander.

This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although it has been 40 years since Julie Stein’s dissertation research in Kentucky, her geoarchaeological work laid the foundation for and inspired much of the interdisciplinary work that continues in the Green River today. This research includes new excavations of shell midden sites in both the lower and upper Green River,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alesha Marcum-Heiman. Diana Greenlee.

The monumental core of Poverty Point (16WC5) has been the focus of considerable archaeological research, particularly since the early 1980s, but the broader spatial context of the site is less well known. Indeed, it has been estimated that < 12% of the Poverty Point Compatible Use Zone (PPCUZ), a nearly 5-km radius catchment area around the site, has been formally surveyed. The PPCUZ, which was established for management purposes, approximates the daily foraging radius for hunter-gatherers in a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Simpson.

This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Debra L. Martin" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Archaic period of the southeastern United States is characterized by major environmental and ecological changes that likely stimulated ideological changes visible in the archaeological record. This period also demonstrates widespread direct violence that transcends ecologically based explanations. In particular, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanne Devlin. Lee Jantz. Michelle Hamilton.

The impact of Walter Klippel’s teaching has provided his students the tools necessary to answer several critical questions faced by forensic anthropologists. Through his classroom tutelage countless numbers of graduates have the skills to recognize and categorize non-human bones. Beyond this zooarchaeological training, his research influence and guidance has also afforded both students and practitioners alike with knowledge to identify and document particular signatures of postmortem damage...