BiblioVault - Books about Brown, Ian W.

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

[more]

Forging Southeastern Identities

Social Archaeology, Ethnohistory, and Folklore of the Mississippian to Early Historic South

Gregory A. Waselkov

University of Alabama Press, 2017

Forging Southeastern Identities explores the many ways archaeologists and ethnohistorians define and trace the origins of Native Americans’ collective social identity.

Forging Southeastern Identities: Social Archaeology and Ethnohistory of the Mississippian to Early Historic South, a groundbreaking collection of ten essays, covers a broad expanse of time—from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries—and focuses on a common theme of identity. These essays represent the various methods used by esteemed scholars today to study how Native Americans in the distant past created new social identities when old ideas of the self were challenged by changes in circumstance or by historical contingencies.

Archaeologists, anthropologists, and folklorists working in the Southeast have always recognized the region’s social diversity; indeed, the central purpose of these disciplines is to study peoples overlooked by the mainstream. Yet the ability to define and trace the origins of a collective social identity—the means by which individuals or groups align themselves, always in contrast to others—has proven to be an elusive goal. Here, editors Gregory A. Waselkov and Marvin T. Smith champion the relational identification and categorical identification processes, taken from sociological theory, as effective analytical tools.

Taking up the challenge, the contributors have deployed an eclectic range of approaches to establish and inform an overarching theme of identity. Some investigate shell gorgets, textiles, shell trade, infrastructure, specific sites, or plant usage. Others focus on the edges of the Mississippian world or examine colonial encounters between Europeans and native peoples. A final chapter considers the adaptive malleability of historical legend in the telling and hearing of slave narratives.

[more]

Gifts of the Great River

Arkansas Effigy Pottery from the Edwin Curtiss Collection

John H. House

Harvard University Press, 2005

In 1879 Edwin Curtiss set out for the wild St. Francis River region of northeastern Arkansas to collect archaeological specimens for the Peabody Museum. By the time Curtiss completed his fifty-six days of Arkansas fieldwork, he had sent nearly 1,000 pottery vessels to Cambridge and had put the Peabody on the map as the repository of one of the world's finest collections of Mississippian artifacts. John House brings us a lively account of the work of this nineteenth-century fieldworker, the Native culture he explored, and the rich legacies left by both. The result is a vivid re-creation of the world of Indian peoples in the Mississippi River lowlands in the last centuries before European contact. The volume's focus is Curtiss's collection of charming and expressive effigy vessels: earthenware bowls and bottles that incorporate forms of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians, and humans, including the Peabody's famous red-and-white head vase.

[more]

The Hall of the North American Indian

Change and Continuity

Hillel S. Burger

Harvard University Press, 1990

In 1990, the Peabody Museum reopened its Hall of the North American Indian, which since the late nineteenth century has displayed the most signifcant objects from the museum's vast Native American collections. In stunning full-page color photographs by Hillel Burger, this catalog captures the extraordinary richness of the collections.

[more]

Plaquemine Archaeology

Edited by Mark A. Rees and Patrick Livingood, with a preface by Stephen Williams

University of Alabama Press, 2006

First major work to deal solely with the Plaquemine societies.

Plaquemine, Louisiana, about 10 miles south of Baton Rouge on the banks of the Mississippi River, seems an unassuming southern community for which to designate an entire culture. Archaeological research conducted in the region between 1938 and 1941, however, revealed distinctive cultural materials that provided the basis for distinguishing a unique cultural manifestation in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Plaquemine was first cited in the archaeological literature by James Ford and Gordon Willey in their 1941 synthesis of eastern U.S. prehistory.

Lower Valley researchers have subsequently grappled with where to place this culture in the local chronology based on its ceramics, earthen mounds, and habitations. Plaquemine cultural materials share some characteristics with other local cultures but differ significantly from Coles Creek and Mississippian
cultures of the Southeast. Plaquemine has consequently received the dubious distinction of being defined by the characteristics it lacks, rather than by those it possesses.

The current volume brings together eleven leading scholars devoted to shedding new light on Plaquemine and providing a clearer understanding of its relationship to other Native American cultures. The authors provide a thorough yet focused review of previous research, recent revelations, and directions for future research. They present pertinent new data on cultural variability and connections in the Lower Mississippi Valley and interpret the implications for similar cultures and cultural relationships. This volume finally places Plaquemine on the map, incontrovertibly demonstrating the accomplishments and importance of Plaquemine peoples in the long history of native North America.

[more]

Salt in Eastern North America and the Caribbean

History and Archaeology

Edited by Ashley A. Dumas and Paul N. Eubanks

University of Alabama Press, 2021

Case studies examining the archaeological record of an overlooked mineral

Salt, once a highly prized trade commodity essential for human survival, is often overlooked in research because it is invisible in the archaeological record. Salt in Eastern North America and the Caribbean: History and Archaeology brings salt back into archaeology, showing that it was valued as a dietary additive, had curative powers, and was a substance of political power and religious significance for Native Americans. Major salines were embedded in collective memories and oral traditions for thousands of years as places where physical and spiritual needs could be met. Ethnohistoric documents for many Indian cultures describe the uses of and taboos and other beliefs about salt.

The volume is organized into two parts: Salt Histories and Salt in Society. Case studies from prehistory to post-Contact and from New York to Jamaica address what techniques were used to make salt, who was responsible for producing it, how it was used, the impact it had on settlement patterns and sociopolitical complexity, and how economies of salt changed after European contact. Noted salt archaeologist Heather McKillop provides commentary to conclude the volume.
.

[more]

Time's River

Archaeological Syntheses from the Lower Mississippi Valley

Edited by Janet Rafferty and Evan Peacock

University of Alabama Press, 2008

An archaeologically rich region, in advance of impending disturbance

This volume stands as a key general resource for archaeologists working in the region extending from Louisiana through Mississippi north to Missouri and Kentucky, and it represents an opportunity to influence for decades a large part of the archaeological work to take place in the Southeast.

The book responds to a need for a comprehensive archaeological overview of the Lower Mississippi Valley that forms a portion of an interstate corridor spanning nine states that will run from southern Michigan to the Texas-Mexico border. The culturally sensitive Mississippi Delta is one of the richest archaeological areas in North America, and it is crucial that research designs be comprehensive, coordinated, and meet current preservation and future research needs. The authors are well-respected researchers from both within and outside the region with expertise in the full range of topics that comprise American archaeology. They examine matters of method and theory, the application of materials science, geophysics, and other high-tech tools in archaeology that provide for optimum data-recovery.

[more]

Towns and Temples Along the Mississippi

Edited by David H. Dye and Cheryl Anne Cox

University of Alabama Press, 1990

A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication

Specialists from archaeology, ethnohistory, physical anthropology, and cultural anthropology bring their varied points of view to this subject in an attempt to answer basic questions about the nature and extent of social change within the time period. The scholars' overriding concerns include presentation of a scientifically accurate depiction of the native cultures in the Central Mississippi Valley prior and immediately subsequent to European contact and the need to document the ensuing social and biological changes that eventually led to the widespread depopulation and cultural reorientation. Their findings lead to three basic hypotheses that will focus the scholarly research for decades to come.

Contributors include:

George J. Armelagos, Ian W. Brown, Chester B. DePratter, George F. Fielder, Jr., James B. Griffin, M. Cassandra Hill, Michael P. Hoffman, Charles Hudson, R. Barry Lewis, Dan F. Morse, Phyllis A. Morse, Mary Lucas Powell, Cynthia R. Price, James F. Price, Gerald P. Smith, Marvin T. Smith, and Stephen Williams

[more]