Rewriting Narratives by Challenging Old Ideas: The Potential in Applying Recent Innovations in Archaeology to Legacy Collections.

Summary

This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Army Corp of Engineers Mobile District funded excavations in Mississippi to salvage a number of Native American sites along the Tombigbee River from the construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee River lock and dam complex. Three of these sites, Tibbee Creek (22Lo600), Kellogg (22Cl527), and Yarborough (22Cl814) are multi-component farmstead collections that have been housed at the Cobb Curation Laboratory at Mississippi State University for decades. Aside from site reports, the collections have not received in-depth research inquiries. However, advancements in theoretical approaches and new concepts coupled by methodological and technological innovations offer ideal opportunities to pull these collections off the shelves and "re-excavate" to mine fresh research regarding cultural patterns and drivers of change in the area during the Late Woodland and Early Mississippian Periods. At the time excavations were conducted, migration was rejected by most as a means for explaining culture change because of its unpredictable nature and the difficulties it presented in the archaeological record. Using the assemblages from the three sites, this preliminary paper examines what new research questions and analyses could potentially reveal regarding the migration of Mississippian peoples into the area during the Early Mississippian Period (A.D. 1000-1100).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• "Re-excavating" Legacy Collections   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24595