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.

1993 Choice Outstanding Academic Book, sponsored by Choice Magazine.

The De Soto expedition was the first major encounter of Europeans with North American Indians in the eastern half of the United States. De Soto and his army of over 600 men, including 200 cavalry, spent four years traveling through what is now Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. For anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians the surviving De Soto chronicles are valued for the unique ethnological information they contain. These documents, available here in a two volume set, are the only detailed eyewitness records of the most advanced native civilization in North America—the Mississippian culture—a culture that vanished in the wake of European contact.


 

1993 Choice Outstanding Academic Book, sponsored by Choice Magazine.

The De Soto expedition was the first major encounter of Europeans with North American Indians in the eastern half of the United States. De Soto and his army of over 600 men, including 200 cavalry, spent four years traveling through what is now Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. For anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians the surviving De Soto chronicles are valued for the unique ethnological information they contain. These documents, available here in a two volume set, are the only detailed eyewitness records of the most advanced native civilization in North America—the Mississippian culture—a culture that vanished in the wake of European contact.


 

1993 Choice Outstanding Academic Book, sponsored by Choice Magazine.

The De Soto expedition was the first major encounter of Europeans with North American Indians in the eastern half of the United States. De Soto and his army of over 600 men, including 200 cavalry, spent four years traveling through what is now Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. For anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians the surviving De Soto chronicles are valued for the unique ethnological information they contain. These documents, available here in a two volume set, are the only detailed eyewitness records of the most advanced native civilization in North America—the Mississippian culture—a culture that vanished in the wake of European contact.


 

A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication

Lamar Archaeology provides a comprehensive and detailed review of our knowledge of the late prehistoric Indian societies in the Southern Appalachian area and its peripheries. These Lamar societies were chiefdom-level groups who built most of the mounds in this large region and were ancestors of later tribes, including the Creeks and Cherokees. This book begins with a history of the last 50 years of archaeological and historical research and brings together for the first time all the available data on this early culture. It also provides an invaluable model for books about Southeastern Indian societies by combining purely descriptive information with innovative analyses, advancing our knowledge of the past while remaining firmly grounded in the archaeological evidence as fact.


Contributors include:

Frankie Snow, Chad O. Braley, James B. Langford Jr., Marvin T. Smith, Daniel T. Elliott, Richard R. Polhemus, C. Roger Nance, Gary Shapiro, Mark Williams, John F. Scarry, David G. Anderson, andCharles M. Hudson

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