Download or read book Archaeology of the Moundville Chiefdom written by Vernon James Knight and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2007-01-28 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brings together nine Moundville specialists who trace the site’s evolution and eventual decline Built on a flat terrace overlooking the Black Warrior River in Alabama, the Moundville ceremonial center was at its height a densely occupied town of approximately 1,000 residents, with at least 29 earthen mounds surrounding a central plaza. Today Moundville is not only one of the largest and best-preserved Mississippian sites in the United States but also one of the most intensively studied. This volume brings together nine Moundville specialists who trace the site’s evolution and eventual decline.
Download or read book Rethinking Moundville and Its Hinterland written by Vincas P. Steponaitis and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moundville, near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is one of the largest pre-Columbian mound sites in North America. Comprising twenty-nine earthen mounds that were once platforms for chiefly residences and public buildings, Moundville was a major political and religious center for the people living in its region and for the wider Mississippian world. A much-needed synthesis of the rapidly expanding archaeological work that has taken place in the region over the past two decades, this volume presents the results of multifaceted research and new excavations. Using models deeply rooted in local ethnohistory, it ties Moundville and its people more closely than before to the ethnography of native southerners and emphasizes the role of social memory, iconography, and ritual practices both at the mound center and in the rural hinterland, providing an up-to-date and refreshingly nuanced interpretation of Mississippian culture. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Download or read book Moundville written by John A. Walthall and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Archaeology of Everyday Life at Early Moundville written by Gregory D. Wilson and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defines household composition and social relationships at Moundville
Download or read book Mound Excavations at Moundville written by Vernon James Knight and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2010-06-09 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is a state-of-the-art, data-rich study of excavations undertaken at the Moundville site in west central Alabama, one of the largest and most complex of the mound sites of pre-contact North America.
Download or read book Ceramics Chronology and Community Patterns written by Vincas P. Steponaitis and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2009-05-06 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moundville, located on the Black Warrior River in west-central Alabama, is one of the best known and most intensively studied archaeological sites in North America. Yet, in spite of all these investigations, many aspects of the site's internal chronology remained unknown until the original 1983 publication of this volume. The author embarked on a detailed study of Moundville ceramics housed in museums and collections, and hammered out a new chronology for Moundville.This volume is a clearly written description of the analytical procedures employed on these ceramic samples and the new chronology this study revealed. Using the refined techniques outlined in this volume, it was possible for the author to trace changes in community patterns, which in turn shed light on Moundville's internal development and its place among North America's ancient cultures. This volume is a clearly written description of the analytical procedures employed on these ceramic samples and the new chronology this study revealed. Using the refined techniques outlined in this volume, it was possible for the author to trace changes in community patterns, which in turn shed light on Moundville's internal development and its place among North America's ancient cultures.
Download or read book Mound Sites of the Ancient South written by Eric E. Bowne and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From approximately AD 900 to 1600, ancient Mississippian culture dominated today’s southeastern United States. These Native American societies, known more popularly as moundbuilders, had populations that numbered in the thousands, produced vast surpluses of food, engaged in longdistance trading, and were ruled by powerful leaders who raised large armies. Mississippian chiefdoms built fortified towns with massive earthen structures used as astrological monuments and burial grounds. The remnants of these cities—scattered throughout the Southeast from Florida north to Wisconsin and as far west as Texas—are still visible and awe-inspiring today. This heavily illustrated guide brings these settlements to life with maps, artists’ reconstructions, photos of artifacts, and historic and modern photos of sites, connecting our archaeological knowledge with what is visible when visiting the sites today. Anthropologist Eric E. Bowne discusses specific structures at each location and highlights noteworthy museums, artifacts, and cultural features. He also provides an introduction to Mississippian culture, offering background on subsistence and settlement practices, political and social organization, warfare, and belief systems that will help readers better understand these complex and remarkable places. Sites include Cahokia, Moundville, Etowah, and many more. A Friends Fund Publication
Download or read book Moundville written by John H. Blitz and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2008-09-21 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the thirteenth century, Moundville was one of the largest Native American settlements north of Mexico. Spread over 325 acres were 29 earthen mounds arranged around a great plaza, a mile-long stockade, and dozens of dwellings for thousands of people. Moundville, in size and complexity second only to the Cahokia site in Illinois, was a heavily populated town, as well as a political and religious center." "Moundville was sustained by tribute of food and labor provided by the people who lived in the nearby floodplain as well as other smaller mound centers. The immediate area appears to have been thickly populated, but by about 1350 a.d., Moundville retained only ceremonial and political functions. A decline ensued, and by the 1500s the area was abandoned. By the time the first Europeans reached the Southeast in the 1540s, the precise links between Moundville's inhabitants and what became the historic Native American tribes were a mystery." "Illustrated with 50 color photos, maps, and figures, Moundville tells the story of the ancient people who lived there, the modern struggle to save the site from destruction, and the scientific saga of the archaeologists who brought the story to life."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions written by Timothy R. Pauketat and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2007-05-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades anthropology, especially ethnography, has supplied the prevailing models of how human beings have constructed, and been constructed by, their social arrangements. In turn, archaeologists have all too often relied on these models to reconstruct the lives of ancient peoples. In lively, engaging, and informed prose, Timothy Pauketat debunks much of this social-evolutionary theorizing about human development, as he ponders the evidence of 'chiefdoms' left behind by the Mississippian culture of the American southern heartland. This book challenges all students of history and prehistory to reexamine the actual evidence that archaeology has made available, and to do so with an open mind.
Download or read book Ancient Chiefdoms of the Tombigbee written by John H. Blitz and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 1993-03-30 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses on both the small- and large-scale Mississippian societies in the Tombigbee-Black Warrior River region of Alabama and Mississippi
Download or read book Political Structure and Change in the Prehistoric Southeastern United States written by John F. Scarry and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We now realize that to understand the origin of the state, we must first understand the development of the chiefdom. And nowhere in the world is the study of chiefdoms being pursued as vigorously as in the Southeast. Combining tantalizing bits of ethnohistory with painstaking archaeology, the scholars of this region are adding greatly to our understanding of the chiefdom as a political form. The present volume, which is the work of outstanding specialists in the region, is a striking example of the rich fruit being yielded by this research."--Robert L. Carneiro, Curator of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History "A major step forward in the history of work on Mississippian culture. . . . This book is a must for those interested in the period--and highly recommended for archaeologists who are not southeasterners."--James A. Brown, Northwestern University "will do blurb after seeing page proofs"--Robert Carneiro, American Museum of Natural History The great societies that flourished during the late Precolumbian period--called Mississippian chiefdoms--disappeared shortly after European contact, leaving a legacy across the southeastern United States. This book presents up-to-date information about their political structures, offering new perspectives on "cycling"--the growth, collapse, and reappearance of chiefdoms. Using archaeological discoveries and historical documents, the book documents the dynamic and varied nature of chiefdoms and explains why they evolved the way they did. It illustrates the value of studies of the Mississippian societies for addressing general anthropological questions. Contents Part I. Introduction 1. Looking for and at Mississippian Political Change, by John F. Scarry 2. The Nature of Mississippian Societies, by John F. Scarry Part II. Structure and Change in Mississippian Societies 3. Development and Dissolution of a Mississippian Society in the American Bottom, Illinois, by George R. Milner 4. Markers of Social Integration: The Development of Centralized Authority in the Spiro Region, by J. Daniel Rogers 5. Control over Goods and the Political Stability of the Moundville Chiefdom, by Paul D. Welch 6. Platform-Mound Construction and the Instability of Mississippian Chiefdoms, by David J. Hally 7. Mississippian Political Dynamics in the Oconee Valley, Georgia, by Mark Williams and Gary Shapiro 8. Chiefly Cycling and Large-Scale Abandonments as Viewed from the Savannah River Basin, by David G. Anderson 9. Stability and Change in the Apalachee Chiefdom, by John F. Scarry Part III. Chiefly Politics and the Mississippian Societies 10. Fluctuations Between Simple and Complex Chiefdoms: Cycling in the Late Prehistoric Southeast, by David G. Anderson John F. Scarry is research associate and research assistant professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the coauthor of San Pedro y San Pablo de Patale: A Seventeenth-Century Spanish Mission in Leon County, Florida, and has written numerous book chapters and articles for publications such as The Florida Anthropologist, Southeastern Archaeology, and Southeastern Archaeological Conference Bulletin.
Download or read book Architectural Energetics in Archaeology written by Leah McCurdy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-25 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeologists and the public at large have long been fascinated by monumental architecture built by past societies. Whether considering the earthworks in the Ohio Valley or the grandest pyramids in Egypt and Mexico, people have been curious as to how pre-modern societies with limited technology were capable of constructing monuments of such outstanding scale and quality. Architectural energetics is a methodology within archaeology that generates estimates of the amount of labor and time allocated to construct these past monuments. This methodology allows for detailed analyses of architecture and especially the analysis of the social power underlying such projects. Architectural Energetics in Archaeology assembles an international array of scholars who have analyzed architecture from archaeological and historic societies using architectural energetics. It is the first such volume of its kind. In addition to applying architectural energetics to a global range of architectural works, it outlines in detail the estimates of costs that can be used in future architectural analyses. This volume will serve archaeology and classics researchers, and lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses related to social power and architecture. It also will interest architects examining past construction and engineering projects.
Download or read book The Savannah River Chiefdoms written by David G. Anderson and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 1994-11-30 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores political change in chiefdoms, specifically how complex chiefdoms emerge and collapse, and how this process—called cycling—can be examined using archaeological, ethnohistoric, paleoclimatic, paleosubsistence, and physical anthropological data. The focus for the research is the prehistoric and initial contact-era Mississippian chiefdoms of the Southeastern United States, specifically the societies occupying the Savannah River basin from ca. A.D. 1000 to 1600. This regional focus and the multidisciplinary nature of the investigation provide a solid introduction to the Southeastern Mississippian archaeological record and the study of cultural evolution in general.
Download or read book Native Nations written by Kathleen DuVal and published by Random House. This book was released on 2024-04-09 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today “A feat of both scholarship and storytelling.”—Claudio Saunt, author of Unworthy Republic Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed. A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans showed up in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand—those having developed differently from their own—and whose power they often underestimated. For centuries afterward, Indigenous people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests. In Native Nations, we see how Mohawks closely controlled trade with the Dutch—and influenced global markets—and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. Power dynamics shifted after the American Revolution, but Indigenous people continued to command much of the continent’s land and resources. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa forged new alliances and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S. ambitions. The Cherokees created institutions to assert their sovereignty on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory. In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centered on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal shows how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant—and will continue far into the future.
Download or read book The Archaeology of Town Creek written by Edmond A. Boudreaux and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2007-11-04 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides new insights into the community pattern and leadership roles at a major Mississippian archaeological site The sequence of change for public architecture during the Mississippian period may reflect a centralization of political power through time. In the research presented here, some of the community-level assumptions attributed to the appearance of Mississippian mounds are tested against the archaeological record of the Town Creek site—the remains of a town located on the northeastern edge of the Mississippian culture area. In particular, the archaeological record of Town Creek is used to test the idea that the appearance of Mississippian platform mounds was accompanied by the centralization of political authority in the hands of a powerful chief. A compelling argument has been made that mounds were the seats and symbols of political power within Mississippian societies. While platform mounds have been a part of Southeastern Native American communities since at least 100 B.C., around A.D. 400 leaders in some communities began to place their houses on top of earthen mounds—an act that has been interpreted as an attempt to legitimize personal authority by a community leader through the appropriation of a powerful, traditional, community-oriented symbol. Platform mounds at a number of sites were preceded by a distinctive type of building called an earthlodge—a structure with earth-embanked walls and an entrance indicated by short, parallel wall trenches. Earthlodges in the Southeast have been interpreted as places where a council of community leaders came together to make decisions based on consensus. In contrast to the more inclusive function proposed for premound earthlodges, it has been argued that access to the buildings on top of Mississippian platform mounds was limited to a much smaller subset of the community. If this was the case and if ground-level earthlodges were more accessible than mound-summit structures, then access to leaders and leadership may have decreased through time. Excavations at the Town Creek archaeological site have shown that the public architecture there follows the earthlodge-to-platform mound sequence that is well known across the South Appalachian subarea of the Mississippian world. The clear changes in public architecture coupled with the extensive exposure of the site's domestic sphere make Town Creek an excellent case study for examining the relationship among changes in public architecture and leadership within a Mississippian society.
Download or read book Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions written by Timothy R. Pauketat and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2007 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sweeps away the last vestiges of social-evolutionary explanations of 'chiefdoms' by rethinking the history of Pre-Columbian Southeast peoples and comparing them to ancient peoples in the Southwest, Mexico, Mesoamerica, and Mesopotamia.
Download or read book The Oxford Companion to Archaeology written by Neil Asher Silberman and published by . This book was released on 2012-11 with total page 2130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of The Oxford Companion to Archaeology is a thoroughly up-to-date resource with new entries exploring the many advances in the field since the first edition published in 1996. In 700 entries, the second edition provides thorough coverage to historical archaeology, the development of archaeology as a field of study, and the way the discipline works to explain the past. In addition to these theoretical entries, other entries describe the major excavations, discoveries, and innovations, from the discovery of the cave paintings at Lascaux to the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics and the use of luminescence dating. Recent developments in methods and analytical techniques which have revolutionized the ways excavations are performed are also covered; as well as new areas within archeology, such as cultural tourism; and major new sites which have expanded our understanding of prehistory and human developments through time. In addition to significant expansion, first-edition entries have been thoroughly revised and updated to reflect the progress that has been made in the last decade and a half.
