ABOUT THIS BOOK

Research into a millennium of Native American architecture in the Southeast

Some of the most visible expressions of human culture are illustrated architecturally. Unfortunately for archaeologists, the architecture being studied is not always visible and must be inferred from soil inconsistencies or charred remains. This study deals with research into roughly a millennium of Native American architecture in the Southeast and includes research on the variation of construction techniques employed both above and below ground. Most of the architecture discussed is that of domestic houses with some emphasis on large public buildings and sweat lodges. The authors use an array of methods and techniques in examining native architecture including experimental archaeology, ethnohistory, ethnography, multi-variant analysis, structural engineering, and wood science technology. A major portion of the work, and probably the most important in terms of overall significance, is that it addresses the debate of early Mississippian houses and what they looked like above ground and the changes that occurred both before and after the arrival of Europeans.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Cameron H. Lacquement is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The University of Alabama.

REVIEWS

“This volume will become a standard reference for Southeastern archaeologists by filling a void in our knowledge of Mississippian domestic architecture.”
—Paul Welch, University of Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
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“Although archaeologists have been recording houses for decades, with the exception of the flexed pole/rigid pole debate, there has been until now no real focus on what the structures mean or what they can tell us about prehistoric cultures. By emphasizing the importance of domestic architecture, this volume lays the groundwork for addressing this neglected subject in Eastern archaeology.”
—David Hally, University of Georgia

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents
List of Illustrations	000
Acknowledgments	000
1. Introduction to Architectural Variability in the Southeast
Cameron H. Lacquement	000
2. Evidence of Curved Roof Construction in Mississippian Structures
Nelson A. Reed	000
3. An Experimental Perspective on Mississippian Small Pole Structures
Dennis B. Blanton and Tom H. Gresham	000
4. Typology, Chronology, and Technological Changes of Mississippian Domestic 
Architecture in West-Central Alabama
Cameron H. Lacquement	000
5. In-Ground Evidence of Above-Ground Architecture at Kincaid Mounds
Tamira K. Brennan	000
6. A Comparison of Burned Mississippian Houses from Illinois
Mark A. McConaughy	000
7. A WPA Deja Vu on Mississippian Architecture
Lynne P. Sullivan	000
8. An Architectural Grammar of Late Mississippian Houses in Northwest Georgia
Ramie A. Gougeon	000
9. A Mississippian Sweat Lodge
Robert H. Lafferty, III	000
10. Interpreting Changes in Historic Creek Household Architecture at the Turn 
of the Nineteenth Century
Robert J. Scott	000
11. Conclusions: Taking Architecture Seriously
Vernon J. Knight, Jr.	000
References Cited	000
Contributors 000
Index	000