Archaeology of the American South: New Directions and Perspectives – serie

Benjamin A. Steere’s compelling study explores the evolution of houses and households in the southeastern United States from the Woodland to the Historic Indian period (ca. 200 BC to AD 1800).The Archaeology of Houses and Households in the Native Southeast contributes enormously to the study of household archaeology and domestic architecture in the region. This significant volume combines both previously published and unpublished data on communities from the Southeast and is the first systematic attempt to understand the development of houses and households as interpreted through a theoretical framework developed from broad-ranging studies in cultural anthropology and archaeology.Steere’s major achievement is the compilation of one of the largest and most detailed architectural datasets for the Southeast, including data for 1,258 domestic and public structures from sixty-five archaeological sites in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and the southern parts of Missouri, Indiana, and Illinois. Rare data from hard-to-find cultural resource management reports is also incorporated, creating a broad temporal and geographic scope and serving as one of many remarkable features of the book, which is sure to be of considerable value to archaeologists and anthropologists interested in comparative studies of architecture.Similar to other analyses, Steere’s research uses multiple theoretical angles and lines of evidence to answer archaeological questions about houses and the people who built them. However, unlike other examinations of household archaeology, this project spans multiple time periods (Woodland, Mississippian, and Historic); is focused squarely on the Southeast; features a more unified approach, using data from a single, uniform database; and privileges domestic architecture as a line of evidence for reconstructing daily life at major archaeological sites on a much broader scale than other investigations.

Critical new discoveries and archaeological patterns increase understanding of early Mississippian culture and society.The reasons for the rise and fall of early cities and ceremonial centers around the world have been sought for centuries. In the United States, Cahokia has been the focus of intense archaeological work to explain its mysteries. Cahokia was the first and exponentially the largest of the Mississippian centers that appeared across the Midwest and Southeast after AD 1000. Located near present-day East St. Louis, Illinois, the central complex of Cahokia spanned more than 12 square kilometers and encompassed more than 120 earthen mounds.As one of the foremost experts on Cahokia, Susan M. Alt addresses long-standing considerations of eastern Woodlands archaeology—the beginnings, character, and ending of Mississippian culture (AD 1050–1600)—from a novel theoretical and empirical vantage point. Through this case study on farmers’ immigration and resettling, Alt’s narrative reanalyzes the relationship between administration and diversity, incorporating critical new discoveries and archaeological patterns from outside of Cahokia.Alt examines the cultural landscape of the Cahokia flood plain and the layout of one extraordinary upland site, Grossman, as an administrative settlement where local farmers might have seen or participated in Cahokian rituals and ceremonies involving a web of ancestors, powers, and places. Alt argues that a farming district outside the center provides definitive evidences of the attempted centralized administration of a rural hinterland.

Analyses of big datasets signal important directions for the archaeology of religion in the Archaic to Mississippian Native North America.Across North America, huge data accumulations derived from decades of cultural resource management studies, combined with old museum collections, provide archaeologists with unparalleled opportunities to explore new questions about the lives of ancient native peoples. For many years the topics of technology, economy, and political organization have received the most research attention, while ritual, religion, and symbolic expression have largely been ignored. This was often the case because researchers considered such topics beyond reach of their methods and data.In Archaeology and Ancient Religion in the American Midcontinent, editors Brad H. Koldehoff and Timothy R. Pauketat and their contributors demonstrate that this notion is outdated through their analyses of a series of large datasets from the midcontinent, ranging from tiny charred seeds to the cosmic alignments of mounds, to explore new questions about the religious practices and lives of native peoples. At the core of this volume are case studies that explore religious practices from the Cahokia area and surrounding Illinois uplands. Additional chapters explore these topics using data collected from sites and landscapes scattered along the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys.This innovative work facilitates a greater appreciation for, and understanding of, ancient native religious practices, especially their seamless connections to everyday life and livelihood. The contributors do not advocate for a reduced emphasis on technology, economy, and political organization; rather, they recommend expanding the scope of such studies to include considerations of how religious practices shaped the locations of sites, the character of artifacts, and the content and arrangement of sites and features. They also highlight analytical approaches that are applicable to archaeological datasets from across the Americas and beyond.

Presents archaeological data to explore the concept of glocalization as applied in the Hopewell world.Originally coined in the context of twentieth-century business affairs, the term glocalization describes how the global circulation of products, services, or ideas requires accommodations to local conditions, and, in turn, how local conditions can significantly impact global markets and relationships. Garden Creek: The Archaeology of Interaction in Middle Woodland Appalachia presents glocalization as a concept that can help explain the dynamics of cross-cultural interaction not only in the present but also in the deep past.Alice P. Wright uses the concept of glocalization as a framework for understanding the mutual contributions of large-scale and small-scale processes to prehistoric transformations. Using geophysical surveys, excavations, and artifact analysis, Wright shows how Middle Woodland cultural contact wrought changes in religious practices, such as mound building and the crafting of ritual objects for exchange or pilgrimage.Wright presents and interprets original archaeological data from the Garden Creek site in western North Carolina as part of a larger study of the Hopewell Interaction Sphere, a well-known but poorly understood episode of cross-cultural interaction that linked communities across eastern North America during the Middle Woodland period. Although Hopewellian culture contact did not encompass the entire planet, it may have been 'global' to those who experienced and created it, as it subsumed much of the world as Middle Woodland people knew it. Reimagining Hopewell as an episode of glocalization more fully accounts for the diverse communities, interests, and processes involved in this 'global' network.

Archaeological case studies consider material evidence of religion and ritual in the pre-Columbian Eastern Woodlands.Archaeologists today are interpreting Native American religion and ritual in the distant past in more sophisticated ways, considering new understandings of the ways that Native Americans themselves experienced them. Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief: Materials of Ritual and Religion in Eastern North America broadly considers Native American religion and ritual in the eastern North America and focuses on practices that altered and used a vast array of material items as well as how physical spaces were shaped by religious practices.Unbound to a single theoretical perspective of religion, contributors approach ritual and religion in diverse ways. Importantly, they focus on how people in the past practiced religion by altering and using a vast array of material items, from smoking pipes, ceremonial vessels, carved figurines, and iconographic images, to sacred bundles, hallucinogenic plants, revered animals, and ritual architecture. Contributors also show how physical spaces were shaped by religious practice, and how rock art, monuments, soils and special substances, and even land- and cityscapes were part of the active material worlds of religious agents.Case studies, arranged chronologically, cover time periods ranging from the Paleoindian period (13,000-7900 BC) to the late Mississippian and into the protohistoric/contact periods. The geographical scope is much of the greater southeastern and southern Midwestern culture areas of the Eastern Woodlands, from the Central and Lower Mississippi River Valleys to the Ohio Hopewell region, and from the greater Ohio River Valley down through the Deep South and across to the Carolinas.

Considers the Native American abandonment of the South Carolina coast.A prevailing enigma in American archaeology is why vast swaths of land in the Southeast and Southwest were abandoned between AD 1200 and 1500. The most well-known abandonments occurred in the Four Corners and Mimbres areas of the Southwest and the central Mississippi valley in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and in southern Arizona and the Ohio Valley during the fifteenth century. In Megadrought in the Carolinas: The Archaeology of Mississippian Collapse, Abandonment, and Coalescence, John S. Cable demonstrates through the application of innovative ceramic analysis that yet another fifteenth-century abandonment event took place across an area of some 34.5 million acres centered on the South Carolina coast.  Most would agree that these sweeping changes were at least in part the consequence of prolonged droughts associated with a period of global warming known as the Medieval Climatic Anomaly. Cable strengthens this inference by showing that these events correspond exactly with the timing of two different geographic patterns of megadrought as defined by modern climate models.  Cable extends his study by testing the proposition that the former residents of the coastal zone migrated to surrounding interior regions where the effects of drought were less severe. Abundant support for this expectation is found in the archaeology of these regions, including evidence of accelerated population growth, crowding, and increased regional hostilities. Another important implication of immigration is the eventual coalescence of ethnic and/or culturally different social groups and the ultimate transformation of societies into new cultural syntheses. Evidence for this process is not yet well documented in the Southeast, but Cable draws on his familiarity with the drought-related Puebloan intrusions into the Hohokam Core Area of southern Arizona during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to suggest strategies for examining coalescence in the Southeast. The narrative concludes by addressing the broad implications of late prehistoric societal collapse for today's human-propelled global warming era that portends similar but much more long-lasting consequences.

The archaeology of four New Orleans neighborhoods that were replaced by public housing projects Uprooted: Race, Public Housing, and the Archaeology of Four Lost New Orleans Neighborhoods uses archaeological research on four neighborhoods that were razed during the construction of public housing in World War II-era New Orleans. Although each of these neighborhoods was identified as a 'slum' historically, the material record challenges the simplicity of this designation. D. Ryan Gray provides evidence of the inventiveness of former residents who were marginalized by class, color, or gender and whose everyday strategies of survival, subsistence, and spirituality challenged the city's developing racial and social hierarchies.These neighborhoods initially appear to have been quite distinct, ranging from the working-class Irish Channel, to the relatively affluent Creole of Color-dominated Lafitte area, to the former location of Storyville, the city's experiment in semi-legal prostitution. Archaeological and historical investigations suggest that race was the crucial factor in the areas' selection for clearance. Each neighborhood manifested a particular perceived racial disorder, where race intersected with ethnicity, class, or gender in ways that defied the norms of Jim Crow segregation.Gray's research makes use of both primary documents-including census records, city directories, and even the brothel advertising guides called 'Blue Books'-and archaeological data to examine what this entailed at a variety of scales, reconstructing narratives of the households and communities affected by clearance. Public housing, both in New Orleans and elsewhere, imposed a new kind of control on urban life that had the effect of making cities both more segregated and less equal. The story of the neighborhoods that were destroyed provides a reminder that their erasure was not an inevitable outcome, and that a more equitable and just city is still possible today. A critical examination of the rise of public housing helps inform the ongoing debates over its demise, especially in light of the changing face of post-Katrina New Orleans.

How religious institutions used landscapes and architecture to express their religious and social ideologiesThe Archaeology of Protestant Landscapes focuses on three religious institutions in the US South in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: St. Paul’s Parish Church in coastal South Carolina, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in central Alabama, and Cane Hill College in Northwest Arkansas. Drawing from archaeological surveys and excavations, artifact analysis, archival research, geophysical testing, and architectural information on religious structures, Kimberly Pyszka offers case studies of these institutions, which were located in developing communities that varied socially, politically, and economically.Pyszka uses these case studies to demonstrate that select religious institutions used and modified natural landscape features to create cultural landscapes to express their ideology, identity, goals, and social, religious, and political power. She notes that where those structures were constructed, how they sat on the landscape, their architectural style, and their overall visual appearance were well-considered decisions made by religious leaders to benefit their organizations, communities, and, sometimes, themselves.Pyszka also uses these case studies to highlight the social roles that religious organizations played in the development of communities. She points to landscape decisions—specifically to how the architectural design of religious structures was used, intentionally or not, to unite people, often those of differing religious backgrounds—as contributing to the creation of a common identity among people living in new and still-growing settlements, aiding in community development. This book contributes to the growing body of work within historical archaeology on churches, churchyards, and cemeteries and to the increasing awareness among archaeologists of how these sites contribute to questions of identity, consumerism, trade, and colonialism.

The Archaeology of Arcuate Communities is an edited collection of ten essays that illuminate how Indigenous communities of the Eastern Woodlands, from 10,000 BC to the 1550s, are analyzed and interpreted by archaeologists today. Volume editors Martin Menz, Analise Hollingshead, and Haley Messer define the persistent circular or “arcuate” pattern of Native settlements in this region as a spatial manifestation of community activities that reinforced group identity alongside plazas, mounds, and other architectural features.The varied case studies in this volume focus on specific communities, how they evolved, and the types of archaeological data that have been used to assess them. Part I, “Defining the Domestic Unit in Arcuate Communities,” reveals social distinctions between households and household clusters in arcuate communities, how they differ in terms of stylistic patterns and exchange, and how they combined to form distinct social groups at different scales within a broader community. Part II, “Organizing Principles of Arcuate Communities,” broadens the scope to identify the organizing principles of entire arcuate communities, such as the central role of plazas in structuring their development, how the distribution of households and central features within communities was contested and reorganized, and the importance of mounds in both delineating arcuate communities and marking their position on the landscape. Part III, “Comparison and Change in Arcuate Communities,” comprises case studies that examine changes in the organization of arcuate communities over time. Rounding out the volume is a concluding chapter that assesses how and why communities around the world formed in circular patterns.A valuable resource for archaeologists, this collection will also be of interest to those seeking to learn about Native North American settlement, ceremony, and community organization.

Explores the embodiment of religion in the Cahokia land and how places create, make meaningful, and transform practices and beliefsCahokia, the largest city of the Mississippian mound cultures, lies outside present-day East St. Louis. Land of Water, City of the Dead reconceptualizes Cahokia’s emergence and expansion (ca. 1050–1200), focusing on understanding a newly imagined religion and complexity through a non-Western lens. Sarah E. Baires argues that this system of beliefs was a dynamic, lived component, based on a broader ontology, with roots in other mound societies. This religion was realized through novel mortuary practices and burial mounds as well as through the careful planning and development of this early city’s urban landscape.Baires analyzes the organization and alignment of the precinct of downtown Cahokia with a specific focus on the newly discovered and excavated Rattlesnake Causeway and the ridge-top mortuary mounds located along the site axes. Land of Water, City of the Dead also presents new data from the 1954 excavations of the ridge-top mortuary Wilson Mound and a complete analysis of the associated human remains. Through this skeletal analysis, Baires discusses the ways that Cahokians processed and buried their ancestors, identifying unique mortuary practices that include the intentional dismemberment of human bodies and burial with marine shell beads and other materials.

Reassesses the ancient Indigenous McKeithen site in northern Florida in light of new data, analyses, and theoriesRevisiting McKeithen Weeden Island further illuminates an Indigenous Late Woodland (ca. AD 200–900) mound-and-village community in northern Florida that was first excavated in the late 1970s. Since then, some artifacts received additional analyses, and the topic of prechiefdom societies has been broadly reconsidered in anthropology and archaeology. These developments allow new perspectives on McKeithen’s history and significance.Prudence M. Rice, a Mayanist who began her career at the University of Florida, revisits what is known about McKeithen and recontextualizes the 1970s excavations. Weeden Island and McKeithen are best known through mortuary mounds and mortuary ritual, mainly involving unusual pottery bird effigies. Rice discusses current theoretical trends in studies of ritual and belief systems and their relation to mound-building at McKeithen in early stages of developing societal complexity. Revisiting McKeithen Weeden Island serves as a masterful example of an esteemed archaeologist advancing the field through rethought and updated interpretations of the site and its significance, primarily through its pottery. Rice’s case study ultimately also fosters understanding of later Mississippian society and other civilizations around the world at this time period. Archaeologists, anthropologists, and social historians as well as students and avocational readers will welcome Rice’s insight.

In Materializing Colonial Identities in Clay, Jon Bernard Marcoux, Corey A. H. Sattes, and contributors examine colonoware to explore the active roles that African Americans and Indigenous people played in constructing southern colonial culture and part of their shared history with Europeans.Colonoware was most likely produced by African and Indigenous potters and used by all colonial groups for cooking, serving, and storing food. It formed the foundation of colonial foodways in many settlements across the southeastern United States. Even so, compared with other ceramics from this period, less has been understood about its production and use because of the lack of documentation. This collection of essays fills this gap with valuable, recent archaeological data from which much may be surmised about the interaction among Europeans, Indigenous, and Africans, especially within the contexts of the African and Indigenous slave trade and plantation systems.The chapters represent the full range of colonoware research: from the beginning to the end of its production, from urban to rural contexts, and from its intraregional variation in the Lowcountry to the broad patterns of colonialism across the early American Southeast. The book summarizes current approaches in colonoware research and how these may bridge the gaps between broader colonial American studies, Indigenous studies, and African Diaspora studies.A concluding discussion contextualizes the chapters through the perspectives of intersectionality and Black feminist theory, drawing attention to the gendered and racialized meanings embodied in colonoware, and considering how colonialism and slavery have shaped these cultural dimensions and archaeologists’ study of them.

The Archaeology of Arcuate Communities is an edited collection of ten essays that illuminate how Indigenous communities of the Eastern Woodlands, from 10,000 BC to the 1550s, are analyzed and interpreted by archaeologists today. Volume editors Martin Menz, Analise Hollingshead, and Haley Messer define the persistent circular or “arcuate” pattern of Native settlements in this region as a spatial manifestation of community activities that reinforced group identity alongside plazas, mounds, and other architectural features.The varied case studies in this volume focus on specific communities, how they evolved, and the types of archaeological data that have been used to assess them. Part I, “Defining the Domestic Unit in Arcuate Communities,” reveals social distinctions between households and household clusters in arcuate communities, how they differ in terms of stylistic patterns and exchange, and how they combined to form distinct social groups at different scales within a broader community. Part II, “Organizing Principles of Arcuate Communities,” broadens the scope to identify the organizing principles of entire arcuate communities, such as the central role of plazas in structuring their development, how the distribution of households and central features within communities was contested and reorganized, and the importance of mounds in both delineating arcuate communities and marking their position on the landscape. Part III, “Comparison and Change in Arcuate Communities,” comprises case studies that examine changes in the organization of arcuate communities over time. Rounding out the volume is a concluding chapter that assesses how and why communities around the world formed in circular patterns.A valuable resource for archaeologists, this collection will also be of interest to those seeking to learn about Native North American settlement, ceremony, and community organization.