Reassesses the ancient Indigenous McKeithen site in northern Florida in light of new data, analyses, and theories

Revisiting 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.

 

 

Prudence M. Rice is distinguished professor emerita in anthropology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. A specialist in Maya archaeology, she is author of numerous books, including Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook, Maya Political Science: Time, Astronomy, and the Cosmos, and Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos: Middle Preclassic Lowland Maya Figurines, Ritual, and Time.
 

“This is a thoroughly enjoyable read and exceptional work. There is so much richness here in terms of the discussion of ideology, costly signaling, schizmogenesis, and so on, and the weaving together of these topics is done masterfully. It will be a must-read because it answers a call from researchers to focus more on the role of ideology and social practices in culture change and understanding the archaeological record.”
—Philip Carr, coeditor of Investigating the Ordinary: Everyday Matters in Southeast Archaeology

“[Revisiting McKeithen Weeden Island] significantly updates the published book-length treatments on McKeithen by incorporating analyses completed since then and published in journal articles, theses, and so forth. It also puts this site, and Weeden Island, into a larger comparative framework that includes societies in Europe, Asia, Mesoamerica, and South America.”
—Timothy Kohler, coeditor o​f Ten Thousand Years of Inequality: The Archaeology of Wealth Differences— -