Following the Mississippian Spread
Following the Mississippian Spread

Author: Robert A. Cook

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-06-29

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 3030890821

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This book is the first to specifically trace the movement of Mississippian maize farmers throughout the US Midwest and Southeast. By providing a backdrop of shifting climatic conditions during the period, this volume also investigates the relationship between farmers and their environments. Detailed regional overviews of key locations in the Mississippi Valley, the Ohio Valley, and the peripheries of the Mississippian culture area reveal patterns and variation in the expression of Mississippian culture and interactions between migrants and local communities. Methodologically, the case studies highlight the strengths of integrating a variety of data sets to identify migration. The volume provides a broader case study of the links between climate change, migration, and the spread of agriculture that is relevant to archaeologists and anthropologists studying early agricultural societies throughout the world. Key patterns of adaptation to and mitigation of the effects of droughts, for example, provide a framework for understanding the options available to societies in the face of climate change afforded by the time-depth of an archaeological perspective.

Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians
Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians

Author: Timothy R. Pauketat

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-06-17

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780521520669

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Using a wealth of archaeological evidence, this book outlines the development of Mississippian civilization.

SunWatch
SunWatch

Author: Robert A. Cook

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 081731590X

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Focuses on the development of village social structure within a broad geographic and temporal framework, recognizing border areas as particularly dynamic contexts of social change The last prehistoric cultures to inhabit the Middle Ohio Valley (ca. A.D. 1000–1650) are referred to as Fort Ancient societies, which exhibited a wide variety of Mississippian period characteristics. What is less well-known and little understood are the social processes by which Mississippian characteristics spread to Fort Ancient communities. Through a comprehensive study of SunWatch, one of the few thoroughly excavated Fort Ancient settlements, the author focuses on the development of village social structure within a broad geographic and temporal framework, recognizing border areas as particularly dynamic contexts of social change. As a fundamental study of social patterning of Fort Ancient villages, this work reveals the interrelationships of small social units in culture change and social structure development and provides a full reconsideration of the Mississippian dimensions of Fort Ancient societies and a model for future investigations of larger patterning in the lateprehistory of the region.

Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone
Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone

Author: Robbie Franklyn Ethridge

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 0803226144

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During the two centuries following European contact, the world of late prehistoric Mississippian chiefdoms collapsed and Native communities there fragmented, migrated, coalesced, and reorganized into new and often quite different societies. The editors of this volume, Robbie Ethridge and Sheri M. Shuck-Hall, argue that such a period and region of instability and regrouping constituted a "shatter zone."

Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America
Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America

Author: Cheryl Claassen

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2023-03-31

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1789259312

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In the long history of documenting the material culture of the archaeological record, meaning and actions of makers and users of these items is often overlooked. The authors in this book focus on rituals exploring the natural and made landscape stages, the ritual directors, including their progression from shaman to priesthood, and meaning of the rites. They also provide comments on the end or failure of rites and cults from Paleoindian into post-DeSoto years. Chapters examine the archaeological records of Cahokia, the lower Ohio Valley, Aztalan Wisconsin, Vermont, Florida, and Georgia, and others scan the Eastern US, investigating tobacco/datura, color symbolism, deer symbolism, mound stratigraphy, flintknapping, stone caching, cults and their organization, and red ochre. These authors collectively query the beliefs that can be gleaned from mortuary practices and their variation, from mound construction, from imagery, from the choice of landscape setting. While some rituals were short-lived, others can be shown to span millennia as the ritual specialists modified their interpretations and introduced innovations.

Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
Southeastern Ceremonial Complex

Author: Adam King

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2007-08-26

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0817354093

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How certain Southern indigenous viewed themselves from prehistory to decimation by Europeans was already a significant subject of study fifty years ago, but more recent scholarship has proven that what was once considered a single cult was actually a complex of cults, with myriad adaptations of myths and artifacts. This collection of 12 articles details archeological findings and analysis of how this warrior-based set of precepts and practices developed and grew into elaborate ceremonial places and burial grounds. Topics include the implications of recent analysis of sites, early evidence of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC) and its contexts, the role of time in development of the SECC, material and iconographic evidence of the SECC in Erowah culture, evidence from Moundville potsherds, SECC ritual regalia in the southern Appalachians and other regions, the role of sex in SECC, and future directions of research.

Archaeology of the Mississippian Culture
Archaeology of the Mississippian Culture

Author: Peter N. Peregrine

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-04-11

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1136508627

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First published in 1996. In recent years there has been a general increase of scholarly and popular interest in the study of ancient civilizations. Yet, because archaeologists and other scholars tend to approach their study of ancient peoples and places almost exclusively from their own disciplinary perspectives, there has long been a lack of general bibliographic and other research resources available for the non-specialist. This series is intended to fill that need.

South Carolina
South Carolina

Author: Charles F Kovacik

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-26

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1000312275

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Although small in land area, South Carolina boasts rich geographical diversity. From the mountains to the sea, from the Savannah River to the Pee Dee River, the state features an array of settings and habitats, all formed over long periods of geologic time and human history. Each stage of the state's history has witnessed the creation of a distinctive environment, and this book explores those changing landscapes and the effect they have on South Carolina today. The authors emphasize the spatial patterns of South Carolina's economic and cultural geography since the first humans occupied the area. The book is divided into three parts–the physical setting, the historical setting, and contemporary South Carolina–and concludes with the identification of ten regional subdivisions based on the state's human geography. In this manner, the book provides a panorama of a distinctive region, an area where Old South meets New South and where the landscape is a product of the state's long history.

Feast, Famine or Fighting?
Feast, Famine or Fighting?

Author: Richard J. Chacon

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-01-20

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 3319484028

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The advent of social complexity has been a longstanding debate among social scientists. Existing theories and approaches involving the origins of social complexity include environmental circumscription, population growth, technology transfers, prestige-based and interpersonal-group competition, organized conflict, perennial wartime leadership, wealth finance, opportunistic leadership, climatological change, transport and trade monopolies, resource circumscription, surplus and redistribution, ideological imperialism, and the consideration of individual agency. However, recent approaches such as the inclusion of bioarchaeological perspectives, prospection methods, systematically-investigated archaeological sites along with emerging technologies are necessarily transforming our understanding of socio-cultural evolutionary processes. In short, many pre-existing ways of explaining the origins and development of social complexity are being reassessed. Ultimately, the contributors to this edited volume challenge the status quo regarding how and why social complexity arose by providing revolutionary new understandings of social inequality and socio-political evolution.