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6 books match the query 'Drooker, Penelope Ballard'

cover of Bottle Creek: A Pensacola Culture Site in South Alabama

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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cover of Forging Southeastern Identities: Social Archaeology, Ethnohistory, and Folklore of the Mississippian to Early Historic South

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.

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cover of Mississippian Village Textiles at Wickliffe

Mississippian Village Textiles at Wickliffe

Penelope Ballard Drooker

University of Alabama Press, 1992

Because textiles rarely are preserved in the archaeological record outside of deserts and permafrost areas, in many regions of the world very little is known about their characteristics, functions, production technology, or socioeconomic importance. While this fact is also true of organic fabrics produced during the Mississippian period in southeastern North Anerica, a wide variety of Mississippian textiles has been preserved in the form of impressions on large pottery vessels. From attribute analysis of 1,574 fabrics impressed on Wickliffe pottery sherds and comparison of the impressions with extant Mississippian textile artifacts, Drooker presents the first comparative analysis of these materials and the most inclusive available summary of information on Mississippian textiles.

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cover of Societies in Eclipse: Archaeology of the Eastern Woodlands Indians, A.D. 1400-1700

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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cover of The View from Madisonville: Protohistoric Western Fort Ancient Interaction Patterns

The View from Madisonville

Protohistoric Western Fort Ancient Interaction Patterns

Penelope Ballard Drooker

University of Michigan Press, 1997

Madisonville was one of the key settlements of the Ohio Valley Fort Ancient people and was the subject of James Griffin’s 1943 classic, The Fort Ancient Aspect. It is a site rich in burials and artifacts documenting the earliest European influences. Drooker re-explores a century of excavation to explain how Contact Period events affected Madisonville inhabitants and their links to eastern Fort Ancient, northern Ohio, Iroquoian, Oneota, and Mississipian groups.

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cover of Zoom-In to Madisonville

Zoom-In to Madisonville

Penelope Ballard Drooker

University of Michigan Press, 0

A companion to The View from Madisonville (Memoir 31) by Penelope Ballard Drooker, this CD-ROM contains all the unpublished reports, databases, and more than 1000 artifact photographs from Madisonville.
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