BiblioVault - Books about Walthall, John A.

French Colonial Archaeology

The Illinois Country and the Western Great Lakes

Edited by John A. Walthall

University of Illinois Press, 1991

      This wide-ranging book is the first to offer---in one volume---detailed
        results of many of the investigations of French colonial sites made in
        the mid-continent during the last decade. It includes work done at Fort
        St. Louis, Fort de Chartres, Fort Massac, French Peoria, Cahokia, Prairie
        du Pont, Prairie du Rocher, and other locations controlled by the French
        during a time when their dominance in North America was more than twice
        that of Britain and Spain combined.
      Five of the book's fifteen chapters summarize major excavations at colonial
        fortifications, four of which are public monuments that currently attract
        thousands of visitors each year. Another five chapters deal with French
        colonial villages, and the remainder of the book is devoted to diet, trade,
        the role of historic documents in the reconstruction of life on the French
        colonial frontier, and other topics.

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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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Prehistoric Indians of the Southeast

Archaeology of Alabama and the Middle South

John A. Walthall

University of Alabama Press, 1990

This book deals with the prehistory of the region encompassed by the present state of Alabama and spans a period of some 11,000 years—from 9000 B.C. and the earliest documented appearance of human beings in the area to A.D. 1750, when the early European settlements were well established. Only within the last five decades have remains of these prehistoric peoples been scientifically investigated.

This volume is the product of intensive archaeological investigations in Alabama by scores of amateur and professional researchers. It represents no end product but rather is an initial step in our ongoing study of Alabama's prehistoric past. The extent of current industrial development and highway construction within Alabama and the damming of more and more rivers and streams underscore the necessity that an unprecedented effort be made to preserve the traces of prehistoric human beings that are destroyed every day by our own progress.

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