A synthesis of research on earthenware technologies of the Late Archaic Period in the southeastern U.S.

Information on social groups and boundaries, and on interaction between groups, burgeons when pottery appears on the social landscape of the Southeast in the Late Archaic period (ca. 5000-3000 years ago). This volume provides a broad, comparative review of current data from "first potteries" of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains and in the lower Mississippi River Valley, and it presents research that expands our understanding of how pottery functioned in its earliest manifestations in this region.

Included are discussions of Orange pottery in peninsular Florida, Stallings pottery in Georgia, Elliot's Point fiber-tempered pottery in the Florida panhandle, and the various pottery types found in excavations over the years at the Poverty Point site in northeastern Louisiana. The data and discussions demonstrate that there was much more interaction, and at an earlier date, than is often credited to Late Archaic societies. Indeed, extensive trade in pottery throughout the region occurs as early as 1500 B.C.

These and other findings make this book indispensable to those involved in research into the origin and development of pottery in general and its unique history in the Southeast in particular.

A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication

This comprehensive compilation of Moore's archaeological publications on eastern Florida will prove an invaluable primary resource for Florida archaeologists.

Clarence B. Moore (1852-1936), a wealthy Philadelphia socialite, paper company heir, and photographer made the archaeology of the Southeast his passion beginning in the 1870s. This volume collects 17 of Moore's publications on East Florida, originally published between 1892 and 1903. These invaluable and copiously illustrated works document the results of Moore's numerous archaeological expeditions along Florida's eastern coastline from the Georgia border to Lake Okeechobee and focus primarily on sites along the St. Johns River and its tributaries. Moore's archaeological work in East Florida was arguably his best and most thorough research from a modern perspective.

Jeffrey Mitchem's introduction to this volume describes and analyzes Moore's work in East Florida, summarizes what we know about the sites Moore investigated, and surveys subsequent archaeological work conducted in this area since Moore's expeditions. Mitchem's introduction highlights the significance of Moore's work on the shell heaps along the St. Johns River. It led to the earliest recorded instance of a researcher noting the changes in pottery styles in the region, a major key to establishing chronologies.In 1894, Moore wrote of his hope "that the archaeology of Florida may be redeemed from the obscurity that has hitherto characterized it." Over a century later, this Press has aimed to fulfill Moore's wish by reprinting this and other collections of his archaeological publications.

 

Wesler provides an impressive and definitive compilation of more than 70 years of archaeological excavations at one of the most important archaeological sites in Kentucky.

The Wickliffe Mounds site is located on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River in Ballard County, Kentucky, about three miles south of the mouth of the Ohio River. Around A.D. 1100, Mississippian people--farmers and traders with a culture closely related to the historic cultures of the Southeast (Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and others)—created a settlement there on which they lived for approximately 250 years before moving on.

In 1930 road construction cut a channel through the site, revealing archaeological deposits and bringing the area to the attention of Fain King, a local lumberman and entrepreneur. King bought the site in hopes of turning it into an attraction for the education and entertainment of the public, and not incidentally for his own profit. For more than 50 years the area was subjected to excavations ranging from looting to professional research efforts. In 1983, the site was finally turned over to Murray State University to be developed into an academic facility dedicated to research, student training, public education, and preservation of the site and its collections. Fortunately, the Wickliffe collections include all the early excavation records as well as more than 85,000 artifacts, 90% of which had been catalogued. Between 1984 and 1996 excavations were conducted specifically to affirm questionable data and/or fill in gaps in the Wickliffe archaeological record.

In this volume, Wesler and his colleagues have compiled data from almost seven decades of excavations at Wickliffe Mounds, providing the first comprehensive study of this important site. The paperback version of the book is accompanied by a CD-ROM that contains contributions from a wide range of archaeological specialists and includes archaeological data, site maps, database files, plats of excavations, artifact descriptions, and photographs, compiling in one place the entire archaeological record for this very important eastern North American site.