BiblioVault - Books about Brose, David S.

The Archaeology of Summer Island

Changing Settlement Systems in Northern Lake Michigan

David S. Brose

University of Michigan Press, 1970

This work interprets some aspects of the prehistory of the basin of northern Lake Michigan based on the excavation and analysis of the Summer Island site. Brose describes the excavation and the geomorphology of the site, and reports on the site’s features and artifacts, including ceramics, lithics, copper, and bone. The site contained three components: Middle Woodland, Late Woodland, and protohistoric. Brose analyzed these components in terms of material culture, economic adaptation, and social organization.

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Bottle Creek

A Pensacola Culture Site in South Alabama

Edited by Ian W. Brown, with a foreword by David S. Brose

University of Alabama Press, 2002

The first comprehensive study and analysis of the most important Mississippian mound site on the north-central Gulf coast

Consisting of 18 earthen mounds and numerous additional habitation areas dating to A.D. 1250-1550, the Bottle Creek site was first professionally investigated in 1932 when David L. DeJarnette of the Alabama Museum of Natural History began work there to determine if the site had a cultural relationship with Moundville, connected to the north by a river system. Although partially mapped in the 1880s, Bottle Creek's location in the vast Mobile-Tensaw Delta of Baldwin County completely surrounded by swamp made it inaccessible and protected it from most of the plunder experienced by similar sites in the Southeast.

This volume builds on earlier investigations to present extensive recent data from major excavations conducted from 1991 to 1994 and supported in part by an NEH grant. Ten anthropologists examine various aspects of the site, including mound architecture, prehistoric diet, pottery classification, vessel forms, textiles used to make pottery impressions, a microlithic stone tool industry, water travel, the persistence of mound use into historic times, and the position of Bottle Creek in the protohistoric world.

The site is concluded to be the best remaining example of Pensacola culture, an archaeological variant of the widespread Mississippian tradition identified by a shell-tempered pottery complex and by its geographic association with the north-central coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Occupied for three centuries by a thriving native culture, Bottle Creek is an important remnant of North American peoples and as such is designated a National Historic Landmark. This published compilation of the research data should establish a base for future scholarly investigation and interpretation.

A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication

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The Development of Southeastern Archaeology

Edited by Jay K. Johnson

University of Alabama Press, 1993

Ten scholars whose specialties range from ethnohistory to remote sensing and lithic analysis to bioarchaeology chronicle changes in the way prehistory in the Southeast has been studied since the 19th century. Each brings to the task the particular perspective of his or her own subdiscipline in this multifaceted overview of the history of archaeology in a region that has had an important but variable role in the overall development of North American archaeology.

Some of the specialties discussed in this book were traditionally relegated to appendixes or ignored completely in site reports more than 20 years old. Today, most are integral parts of such reports, but this integration has been hard won. Other specialties have been and will continue to be of central concern to archaeologists. Each chapter details the way changes in method can be related to changes in theory by reviewing major landmarks in the literature. As a consequence, the reader can compare the development of each subdiscipline.

As the first book of this kind to deal specifically with the region, it be will valuable to archaeologists everywhere. The general reader will find the book of interest because the development of southeastern archaeology reflects trends in the development of social science as a whole.

Contributors include:

Jay K. Johnson, David S. Brose, Jon L. Gibson, Maria O. Smith, Patricia K. Galloway, Elizabeth J. Reitz, Kristen J. Gremillion, Ronald L. Bishop, Veletta Canouts, and W. Fredrick Limp

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Histories of Southeastern Archaeology

Edited by Shannon Tushingham, Jane Hill, and Charles H. McNutt

University of Alabama Press, 2002

This volume provides a comprehensive, broad-based overview, including first-person accounts, of the development and conduct of archaeology in the Southeast over the past three decades.

Histories of Southeastern Archaeology originated as a symposium at the 1999 Southeastern Archaeological Conference (SEAC) organized in honor of the retirement of Charles H. McNutt following 30 years of teaching anthropology. Written for the most part by members of the first post-depression generation of southeastern archaeologists, this volume offers a window not only into the archaeological past of the United States but also into the hopes and despairs of archaeologists who worked to write that unrecorded history or to test scientific theories concerning culture.

The contributors take different approaches, each guided by experience, personality, and location, as well as by the legislation that shaped the practical conduct of archaeology in their area. Despite the state-by-state approach, there are certain common themes, such as the effect (or lack thereof) of changing theory in Americanist archaeology, the explosion of contract archaeology and its relationship to academic archaeology, goals achieved or not achieved, and the common ground of SEAC.

This book tells us how we learned what we now know about the Southeast's unwritten past. Of obvious interest to professionals and students of the field, this volume will also be sought after by historians, political scientists, amateurs, and anyone interested in the South.

Additional reviews:

"A unique publication that presents numerous historical, topical, and personal perspectives on the archaeological heritage of the Southeast."—Southeastern Archaeology

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Killarney Bay

The Archaeology of an Early Middle Woodland Aggregation Site in the Northern Great Lakes

David Brose, Patrick Julig, and John O’Shea

University of Michigan Press, 2021

The archaeological site at Killarney Bay, on the northeast side of Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada, has attracted and mystified archaeologists for decades. The quantities of copper artifacts, exotic cherts, and long-distance trade goods all highlight the importance of the site during its time of occupation. Yet researchers have struggled to date the site or assign it to a particular cultural tradition, since the artifacts and mortuary components do not precisely match those of other sites and assemblages in the Upper Great Lakes. The history of archaeological investigation at Killarney Bay stretches across parts of three centuries and involves field schools from universities in two countries (Laurentian University in Canada and the University of Michigan in the United States). This volume pulls together the results from all prior research at the site and represents the first comprehensive report ever published on the excavations and finds at Killarney Bay. Heavily illustrated.

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The Northwest Florida Expeditions of Clarence Bloomfield Moore

Clarence Bloomfield Moore

University of Alabama Press, 1999

A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication

This comprehensive compilation of Moore's archaeological reports on northwest Florida and southern Alabama and Georgia presents the earliest documented investigations of this region.

When Clarence Bloomfield Moore cruised the rivers of Florida in search of prehistoric artifacts a century ago, he laid the groundwork for archaeological investigations to follow. This volume reflects Moore's fieldwork along the northwest Florida coast, the most archaeologically rich area of the state, as well as Southern Alabama and Georgia.

Here readers will share Moore's first look at the area in 1901-1903 and additional observations made in 1918 during what was to be his last field season. Moore's works reveal ceramics, tools, skeletal remains, and exotic artifacts excavated from the earthen mounds and shell middens built by native peoples over the last two millennia.

In the introduction to this edition, David Brose and Nancy Marie White place Moore's investigations within the context of the science, natural history, and antiquarianism of his day. They document what happened to the sites he explored, tell how his findings fit into the body of his research, and explain how those findings should be interpreted in the context of Southeastern culture history and modern archaeological theory.

Moore was the most knowledgeable Southeastern archaeologist of his time; his writings are a benchmark for anyone studying those areas today.

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Societies in Eclipse

Archaeology of the Eastern Woodlands Indians, A.D. 1400-1700

Edited by David S. Brose, C. Wesley Cowan, and Robert C. Mainfort

University of Alabama Press, 2001

Combines recent research with insights from anthropology, historiography, and oral tradition to examine the cultural landscape preceding and immediately following the arrival of Europeans

After establishing the distribution of prehistoric and historic populations from the northeastern Appalachian forests to the southern trans-Mississippian prairies, the contributors consider the archaeological and cultural record of several specific groups, including Mohawk and Onondaga, Monacan, Coosa, and Calusa. For each, they present new evidence of cultural changes prior to European contact, including populations movements triggered by the Little Ice Age (AD 1550–1770), shifting exchange and warfare networks, geological restriction of effective maize subsistence, and use of empty hunting territories as buffers between politically unstable neighbors. The contributors also trace European influences, including the devastation caused by European-introduced epidemics and the paths of European trade goods that transformed existing Native American-exchange networks.

While the profound effects of European explorers, missionaries, and traders on Eastern Woodlands tribes cannot be denied, the archaeological evidence suggests that several indigenous societies were already in the process of redefinition prior to European contact. The essays gathered here show that, whether formed in response to natural or human forces, cultural change may be traced through archaeological artifacts, which play a critical role in answering current questions regarding cultural persistence.

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Woodland Period Systematics in the Middle Ohio Valley

Edited by Darlene Applegate and Robert C. Mainfort Jr.

University of Alabama Press, 2005

This collection provides a comprehensive vocabulary for defining the cultural manifestation of the term “Woodland”

The Middle Ohio Valley is an archaeologically rich region that stretches from southeastern Indiana, across southern Ohio and northeastern Kentucky, and into northwestern West Virginia. In this area are some of the most spectacular and diverse Woodland Period archaeological sites in North America, but these sites and their rich cultural remains do not fit easily into the traditional Southeastern classification system. This volume, with contributions by most of the senior researchers in the field, represents an important step toward establishing terminology and taxa that are more appropriate to interpreting cultural diversity in the region.

The important questions are diverse. What criteria are useful in defining periods and cultural types, and over what spatial and temporal boundaries do those criteria hold? How can we accommodate regional variation in the development and expression of traits used to delineate periods and cultural types? How does the concept of tradition relate to periods and cultural types? Is it prudent to equate culture types with periods? Is it prudent to equate archaeological cultures with ethnographic cultures? How does the available taxonomy hinder research? Contributing authors address these issues and others in the context of their Middle Ohio Valley Woodland Period research

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