Archaeology of the Mid-Holocene Southeast

Description

From the foreword:
“With this important volume| the editors serve notice that old characterizations of the cultures of the Archaic period have been buried under the back dirt of new excavations and new interpretations. . . . It places the Archaic cultures squarely at the forefront of archaeological theory.”

This volume summarizes our archaeological knowledge of natives who inhabited the American Southeast from 8|000 to 3|000 years ago and examines evidence of many of the native cultural expressions observed by early European explorers| including long-distance exchange| plant domestication| mound building| social ranking| and warfare.

Contents
Section I. Mid-Holocene Environments

1. Geoarchaeology and the Mid-Holocene Landscape History of the Greater Southeast| by Joseph Schuldenrein

2. Mid-Holocene Forest History of Florida and the Coastal Plain of Georgia and South Carolina| by William A. Watts| Eric C. Grimm| and T. C. Hussey

Section II. Technology

3. Changing Strategies of Lithic Technological Organization| by Daniel S. Amick and Philip J. Carr

4. Technological Innovations in Economic and Social Contexts| by Kenneth E. Sassaman

5. Middle and Late Archaic Architecture| by Kenneth E. Sassaman and R. Jerald Ledbetter

Section III. Subsistence and Health

6. The Paleoethnobotanical Record for the Mid-Holocene Southeast| by Kristen J. Gremillion

7. Mid-Holocene Faunal Exploitation in the Southeastern United States| by Bonnie W. Styles and Walter E. Klippel

8. Biocultural Inquiry into Archaic Period Populations of the Southeast: Trauma and Occupational Stress| by Maria O. Smith

Section IV. Regional Settlement Variation

9. Approaches to Modeling Regional Settlement in the Archaic Period Southeast| by David G. Anderson

10. Southeastern Mid-Holocene Coastal Settlements| by Michael Russo

11. Accounting for Submerged Mid-Holocene Archaeological Sites in the Southeast: A Case Study from the Chesapeake Bay Estuary| Virginia| by Dennis B. Blanton

Section V. Regional Integration and Organization

12. The Emergence of Long-Distance Exchange Networks in the Southeastern United States| by Richard W. Jefferies

13. A Consideration of the Social Organization of the Shell Mound Archaic| by Cheryl P. Claassen

14. Southeastern Archaic Mounds| by Michael Russo

15. Poverty Point and Greater Southeastern Prehistory: The Culture That Did Not Fit| by Jon L. Gibson

Kenneth E. Sassaman is archaeologist with the Savannah River Archaeological Research Program| South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology| and instructor in the Department of History and Anthropology at Augusta College| Augusta| Georgia. He is the author of “Early Pottery in the Southeast: Tradition and Innovation in Cooking Technology.” David G. Anderson is archaeologist with the Southeast Archaeological Center| National Park Service| Tallahassee| Florida. He is the author of “The Savannah River Chiefdoms: Political Change in the Late Prehistoric Southeast.” They are coeditors of “The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast.”