Brings together the nation's leading scholars on the prehistory and early history of Alabama and the southeastern US

This fascinating collection was born of a concern with Alabama's past and the need to explore and explain that legacy, so often hidden by the veils of time, ignorance, or misunderstanding. In 1981 The University of Alabama celebrated its 150th anniversary, and each College contributed to the celebration by sponsoring a special sym­posium. The College of Arts and Sciences brought together the nation's leading scholars on the prehistory and early history of Alabama and the Southeastern United States, and for two memora­ble days in September 1981 several hundred interested listeners heard those scholars present their interpretations of Alabama's remarkable past.

The organizers of the symposium deliberately chose to focus on Alabama's history before statehood. Alabama as a constituent state of the Old South is well known. Alabama as a home of Indian cultures and civilizations of a high order, as an object of desire, exploration, and conquest in the sixteenth century, and as a border­land disputed by rival European nationalities for almost 300 years is less well known. The resulting essays in this collection prove as interesting, enlightening, and provocative to the casual reader as to the profes­sional scholar, for they are intended to bring to the general reader artifacts and documents that reveal the reali­ties and romance of that older Alabama.

Topics in the collection range from the Mississippian Period in archaeology and the de Soto expedition (and other early European explorations and settlements of Alabama) to the 1780 Siege of Mobile.