Explores W. C. McKern's use of Linnaean taxonomy as the model for development of a pottery classification system

By the early 20th century, North American archaeologists had found evidence of a plethora of prehistoric cultures displaying disparate geographic and chronological distributions. But there were no standards or algorithms for specifying when a culture was distinct or identical to another in a nearby or distant region.

Will Carleton McKern of the Milwaukee Public Museum addressed this fundamental problem of cultural classification beginning in 1929. He modeled his solution—known as the Midwestern Taxonomic Method—on the Linnaean biological taxonomy because he wanted the ability to draw historical and cultural "relationships" among cultures. McKern was assisted during development of the method by Carl E. Guthe, Thorne Deuel, James B. Griffin, and William Ritchie.

This book studies the 1930s correspondence between McKern and his contemporaries as they hashed out the method's nuances. It compares the several different versions of the method and examines the Linnaean biological taxonomy as it was understood and used at the time McKern adapted it to archaeological problems. Finally, this volume reveals how and why the method failed to provide the analytical solution envisioned by McKern and his colleagues and how it influenced the later development of Americanist archaeology.

This compilation of Moore's publications on western and central Florida provides all of his archaeological data on the region's mounds and prehistoric canals in a single volume.

The name Clarence B. Moore is familiar to every archaeologist interested in the southeastern United States. This amateur archaeologist's
numerous scientific expeditions to the region resulted in dozens of well-illustrated publications, the value of which increases daily as many of the sites he investigated continue to be destroyed by modern development.

Moore invested considerable time and effort exploring Florida's archaeological sites, devoting more pages of published reports and articles to Florida than to any other state. Because of the wealth of material on Florida, Moore's Florida expedition publications have been
collected in three separate volumes, all published within the Classics in Southeastern Archaeology series. The thirteen papers reproduced in this
volume present the results of Moore's research in West and Central Florida.

Moore's first and last expeditions were to Florida and spanned almost fifty years of archaeological investigations. Following the eastern river drainages to central and western Florida, in 1900 Moore concentrated his efforts along the Florida Gulf Coast, spurred by the exciting
discoveries of Frank Hamilton Cushing at Key Marco in 1896. Although this region is rich in mound sites, many sites located by Moore in the early
years of this century had already been destroyed by construction and lime processing. In addition to mound groupings—some containing masses of skeletal remains—Moore found a number of sites connected by a network of prehistoric canals. Several of the sites located by Moore contained European trade goods and have been used to trace the early wanderings of the conquistadores in the New World.

Moore's early work on the Florida Gulf Coast succeeded in preserving much of the archaeological record in this area. He is to be credited with remarkable insights concerning mound and earthwork construction, artifact trade networks, and chronology development.

Identifying distinct social groups of the past has always challenged archaeologists because understanding how people perceived their identity is critical to the reconstruction of social organization. Material culture has been the standard measure of distinction between groups, and the distribution of ceramics and other artifacts has often been used to define group boundaries. Western Pueblo Identities argues that such an approach is not always appropriate: demographic and historical factors may affect the extent to which material evidence can define such boundaries. Andrew Duff now examines a number of other factors—relationships among settlement size, regional population densities, the homogeneity of material culture, and local and long-distance exchange—in order to trace the history of interaction and the formation of group identity in east-central Arizona and west-central New Mexico from A.D. 1275 to 1400.

Using comparative data from the Upper Little Colorado and Zuni regions, Duff demonstrates differences in patterns of interaction within and between regions with different population densities. He then links these differences to such factors as occupational history, immigrant populations, the negotiation of social identities, and the emergence of new ritual systems. Following abandonments in the Four Corners area in the late 1200s, immigrants with different historical backgrounds occupied many Western Pueblo regions—in contrast to the Hopi and Zuni regions, which had more stable populations and deeper historical roots.

Duff uses chemical analyses of ceramics to document exchange among several communities within these regions, showing that people in less densely settled regions were actively recruited by residents of the Hopi and Zuni regions to join their settlements. By the time of the arrival of the Spaniards, two distinct social and territorial groups—the Hopi and Zuni peoples—had emerged from this scattering of communities. Duff's new interpretations, along with new data on ceramic exchange patterns, suggest that interaction is a better way to measure identity than more commonly used criteria. His work offers new perspectives on the role of ritual in social organization and on identity formation in Pueblo IV society and is rich in implications for the study of other sedentary, middle-range societies.

A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication

Until recently, archaeological projects that included analysis of human remains had often lacked active collaboration between archaeologists and physical anthropologists from the planning stages onward. During the 1980s, a conjunctive approach developed; known as "bioarchaeology," it draws on the methodological and theoretical strengths of the two subdisciplines to bridge a perceived communications gap and promote a more comprehensive understanding of prehistoric and historic cultures.
 

This volume addresses questions of human adaptation in a variety of cultural contexts, with a breadth not found in studies utilizing solely biological or artifactual data. These nine case studies from eight Southeastern states cover more than 4,000 years of human habitation, from Archaic hunter-gatherers in Louisiana and Alabama to Colonial planters and slaves in South Carolina. Several studies focus upon variations in health between or within late prehistoric agricultural societies. For example, the discovery that reliance upon maize as a dietary staple did not result invariably in poor health, as claimed by earlier studies, either for entire populations or, in ranked societies, for the non-elite majority, has fostered a new appreciation for the managerial wisdom of the Mississippian peoples, as well as for their agricultural skills.


 

Archaeologist Watson Smith participated in such important excavations as the Lowry Ruin, the Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition, and Awatovi. This volume gathers ten of his essays on archaeological topics--especially on Anasazi and Hopi prehistory.

Contents:
The Vitality of the Hopi Way: Mural Decorations from Ancient Hopi Kivas
Pit House and Kiva Pitfalls: When Is a Kiva?
D-Shaped Features: The Kiva at Site 4
The Kiva Beneath the Altar: Room 788
"Ethnology Itself Carried Back": Extent of Ethnographic Studies Among the Pueblos
Birds of a Feather: Feathers
Pots on the Kiva Wall: Ceremonial Bowls
The Potsherd Paradigm: Analysis of Hooks, Scrolls, and Keys
A School for Cracked Pots: Schools, Pots, and Potters; The Jeddito School

Where the Wind Blows Us unites critical practice with a community-based approach to archaeology. Author Natasha Lyons describes an inclusive archaeology that rests on a flexible but rigorous approach to research design and demonstrates a responsible, ethical practice. She traces the rise and application of community archaeologies, develops a wide-ranging set of methods for community practice, and maps out a “localized critical theory” that is suited to the needs of local and descendant communities as they pursue self-defined heritage goals. Localized critical theory aims to decenter the focus on global processes of capitalism in favor of the local processes of community dynamics. Where the Wind Blows Us emphasizes the role of individuals and the relationships they share with communities of the past and present.
 
Lyons offers an extended case study of her work with the Inuvialuit community of the Canadian Western Arctic. She documents the development of this longstanding research relationship and presents both the theoretical and practical products of the work to date. Integrating knowledge drawn from archaeology, ethnography, oral history, and community interviews, Lyons utilizes a multivocal approach that actively listens to Inuvialuit speak about their rich and textured history.
 
The overall significance of this volume lies in outlining a method of practicing archaeology that embraces local ways of knowing with a critically constructed and evolving methodology that is responsive to community needs. It will serve as a handbook to mine for elements of critical practice, a model of community-based archaeology, and a useful set of concepts and examples for classroom study.

Maya sacbeob, or raised “white roads,” are often considered a single class of features, with a sole purpose. In this first systematic examination of their functions, meanings, arrangements, and construction styles, Justine Shaw reveals that these causeways served a variety of cultural and natural functions. In White Roads of the Yucatán, author Justine Shaw presents original field data collected with the Cochuah Regional Archaeological Survey at two ancient Maya sites, Ichmul and Yo’okop. Both centers chose to invest enormous resources in the construction of monumental roadways during a time of social and political turmoil in the Terminal Classic period. Shaw carefully examines why it was at this point—and no other—that the settlements made such a decision. She argues that both settlements used the sacbeob as a method of socially integrating the largest, most diverse and dispersed population in the Cochuah region. She further demonstrates that their use of the sacbeob, in concert with other innovative strategies, allowed Ichmul and Yo’okop to outlast many of the sites that they may have sought to emulate and to flourish during a time of tremendous sociopolitical and economic change. In addition to her detailed discussion of these two sites, Shaw provides an exhaustive review of the literature of Maya sacbeob archaeology, describing various interpretations of construction, features, and variability. This synthetic and interpretive treatment will aid researchers working on a variety of complex civilizations with road systems, as well as those interested in core-periphery relationships, cultural collapse, and social integration.

The Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona is a peer-reviewed monograph series sponsored by the School of Anthropology. Established in 1959, the series publishes archaeological and ethnographic papers that use contemporary method and theory to investigate problems of anthropological importance in the southwestern United States, Mexico, and related areas.

 

The first comprehensive study of the meaning of pottery as a social activity in coastal North Carolina.

Pottery types, composed of specific sets of attributes, have long been defined for various periods and areas of the Atlantic coast, but their relationships and meanings have not been explicitly examined. In exploring these relationships for the North Carolina coast, this work examines the manner in which pottery traits cross-cut taxonomic types, tests the proposition that communities of practice existed at several scales, and questions the fundamental notion of ceramic types as ethnic markers.

Ethnoarchaeological case studies provide a means of assessing the mechanics of how social structure and gender roles may have affected the transmission of pottery-making techniques and how socio-cultural boundaries are reflected in the distribution of ceramic traditions. Another very valuable source of information about past practices is replication experimentation, which provides a means of understanding the practical techniques that lie behind the observable traits, thereby improving our understanding of how certain techniques may have influenced the transmission of traits from one potter to another. Both methods are employed in this study to interpret the meaning of pottery as an indicator of social activity on the North Carolina coast.

This collection presents, for the first time, a much-needed synthesis of the major research themes and findings that characterize the Woodland Period in the southeastern United States.

The Woodland Period (ca. 1200 B.C. to A.D. 1000) has been the subject of a great deal of archaeological research over the past 25 years. Researchers have learned that in this approximately 2000-year era the peoples of the Southeast experienced increasing sedentism, population growth, and organizational complexity. At the beginning of the period, people are assumed to have been living in small groups, loosely bound by collective burial rituals. But by the first millennium A.D., some parts of the region had densely packed civic ceremonial centers ruled by hereditary elites. Maize was now the primary food crop. Perhaps most importantly, the ancient animal-focused and hunting-based religion and cosmology were being replaced by solar and warfare iconography, consistent with societies dependent on agriculture, and whose elites were increasingly in competition with one another. This volume synthesizes the research on what happened during this era and how these changes came about while analyzing the period's archaeological record.

In gathering the latest research available on the Woodland Period, the editors have included contributions from the full range of specialists working in the field, highlighted major themes, and directed readers to the proper primary sources. Of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists, both professional and amateur, this will be a valuable reference work essential to understanding the Woodland Period in the Southeast.

This major summary of the current state of archaeological research on the Swift Creek culture is the first comprehensive collection ever published concerning the Swift Creek people.

The Swift Creek people, centered in Georgia and surrounding states from A.D. 100 to 700, are best known from their pottery, which was decorated before firing with beautiful paddle-stamped designs--some of the most intricate and fascinating in the world.

Comprehensive in scope, this volume details the discovery of this culture, summarizes what is known about it at the present time, and shows how continued improvements in the collection and analysis of archaeological data are advancing our knowledge of this extinct society.

Although they know nothing of Swift Creek language and little about its society, archaeologists have collected valuable information about the
economic strategies of Swift Creek inhabitants. What archaeologists know best, however, is that the Swift Creek people were some of the best wood carvers the world has seen, and their pottery will stand as their lasting legacy for all time. This book presents and preserves their legacy.

 

Winner, Illinois State Historical Society Superior Achievement, 2016

Flatboats were the most prolific type of vessel on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers during the early 1800s. Thousands of these boats descended the two rivers each year, carrying not only valuable cargo to New Orleans but also western-bound emigrants to newly opened territories. By the late 1800s, flatboats had completely disappeared, and no intact examples were known to exist. Our knowledge of these historic vessels had been limited to illustrations, memoirs, and traveler accounts.

       That changed in 2000 after local residents found a wreck on the Ohio River shoreline in Illinois. Archaeologist Mark J. Wagner and his colleagues from Southern Illinois University Carbondale investigated extensively and established that the wreck was a pre–Civil War flatboat, which they named America, after a nearby town.

       In The Wreck of the America in Southern Illinois: A Flatboat on the Ohio River, Wagner provides a brief description and general history of flatboats and the various reasons they wrecked—such as poor workmanship and encounters with pirates, storms, rocks, and floating trees. Wagner describes the remains of the America, how it was constructed, the artifacts found nearby and inside—including pewter spoons, utensils with bone handles, metal buttons, and an iron felling axe—and the probable cause of its sinking. Wagner concludes with a history of the America since its discovery in 2000 and a plea that the boat be removed from the riverbank and preserved before the Ohio washes it away.