Landscapes of Mississippian Rock Art in the Southeast

Summary

Prehistoric rock art has been relatively unknown in the American Southeast until the past few decades. In the 1970's Wellman's catalog of North American rock art contained a handful of sites east of the Mississippi River; today there are hundreds of sites recorded for Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, and areas east of the Appalachian Mountains. The great majority of these sites probably date to the Late Prehistoric period, and there are clear regional variations in how rock art was produced and in its subject matter. In this paper, we review regional variation in late prehistoric rock art in the Southeast and examine how rock art reflects ideological landscapes imposed on natural landforms in at least one major case.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Rock Art and Sacred Spaces: Recent Approaches to the Study of Ritual Landscapes

Keywords

Spatial Coverage