Just published

Books and scholarly articles recently published or about to be published about Southeastern archaeology

The Florida Anthropologist. The March-June 2008 edition (Volume 61, Number 1-2)
is a special issue, "Archaeology in Charlotte Harbor Preserve State Park," by guest editors
George M. Luer and Kevin M. Porter. It carries the following papers:

"Managing Cultural Resources in Charlotte Harbor Preserve State Park," by Mary Glowacki,
George M. Luer, Kevin M. Porter and Charles E. Blanchard.

"Archaeological Salvage and Stabilization at Hooker Key (8LL30), Lee County, Florida," by
George M. Luer, Melissa Memory and Christine Newman.

"Response to Looting on Josslyn Island (8LL32), Lee County, Florida," by George M. Luer.

"Archaeological Profiling at Mason Island (8LL65), Lee County, Florida," by Kevin M. Porter
and Mary Glowacki.

"Matlacha Pass: Perspectives of Aboriginal Canoe Navigation," by Charles E. Blanchard.

"Notes on Florida Shell Artifacts, Including Specimens from Hooker Key and Mason Island," by
George M. Luer.

"Archaeological Salvage at Turtle Bay 2 (8CH37), Charlotte County, Florida," by Christine Newman
and Brenda Swann.

"Archaeological Salvage at Catfish Point (8CH9) and Hollenbeck Key (8CH17), Charlotte County,
Florida," by Kevin M. Porter and Mary Glowacki.

"Topographic Mapping at the Catfish Point Site (8CH9), Placida, Florida," by Corbett McP. Torrence
and Theresa M. Schober.

To obtain a copy of this journal and to learn more about the Florida Anthropological Society Inc.,
visit www.fasweb.org.

American Antiquity. The April 2008 edition (Volume 73, Number 2) carries the following
paper:

"The Mexican Connection and the Far West of the U.S. Southeast," by Nancy Marie White
and Richard A. Weinstein.

Southeastern archeologists have long agreed there were prehistoric interactions between the
Southeast and Mesoamerica. This paper -- an update on the 2005 book "Gulf Coast Archaeology"
(University Press of Florida) -- concludes those interactions were sporadic, for reasons that can
be summed up as that "Southeastern Indians had no chocolate, no cotton, and no beer."

To subscribe to American Antiquity visit www.saa.org

The Florida Anthropologist. The December 2007 edition (Volume 60, Number 4) of
the journal of the Florida Anthropological Society Inc. carries the following papers:

"A Typology of Fluted Points from Florida," by David K. Thulman.

"The Woodland Period in Northeastern Florida: A View from the Tillie Fowler Site,"
by Greg S. Hendryx and Neill J. Wallis.

"Nail Types Used in Dating Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Florida Architecture,"
by Ted M. Payne.

Visit the Florida Anthropological Society on the web at www.fasweb.org

Southeastern Archaeology. The Winter 2007 edition of the journal
of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference (Volume 26, Number 2) contains the
following papers:

"Terminal Middle to Late Archaic Settlement in Coastal Northwest Florida:
Early Estuarine Exploitation on the Northern Gulf Coast," by Gregory A. Mikell and
Rebecca Saunders.

"The Cultural History of Bannerstones in the Savannah River Valley,"
by Kenneth E. Sassaman and Asa R. Randall.

"Defining Swift Creek Interactions: Earthenware Variability at Ring Middens
and Burial Grounds," by Neill J. Wallis.

"On Reconsidering Display Goods Production and Circulation in the Moundville
Chiefdom," by Jon Bernard Marcoux.

"Mississippian and Protohistoric/Early Contact Diet and Health: Biological and
Cultural Continuity and Change in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi," by S. Homes Hogue.

"A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca"

By Andres Resendez. November 2007. 314 pages. A history professor at the University of California–Davis,

the author tells the tale from the Spanish, African and Indian points of view: Native Americans were just as amazed by the original visitors as the visitors were by them, and Reséndez focuses on how the interlopers remade themselves as medicine men and made sense of social worlds other Europeans could not even begin to fathom. Read more about the book on Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Land-Strange-Extraordinary-Shipwrecked-Sixteenth/dp/0465068405/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198416726&sr=1-1

American Antiquity. The October 2007 edition carries the following paper:

"Magnetic Evidence of Ridge Construction and Use at Poverty Point," by Michael L. Hargrave, Tad Britt and Matthew D. Reynolds. "The relatively small-scale magnetic field gradient survey reported here clearly demonstrates that geophysics can provide a wealth of otherwise unobtainable information about subsurface deposits at Poverty Point."

The Florida Anthropologist. The June-September 2007 edition (Volume 60, Number 2-3) carries the following papers:

South Carolina Antiquities. The just-published 2000 edition (Volume 32, No. 1 & 2) is titled "The Daw's Island Volume: A Tribute To The Career Of James L. Michie."

Southeastern Archaeology. The 167-page, Summer 2007 edition of the journal of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference is jam-packed with interesting papers:

"Reflections on Paddle Stamped Pottery: Symmetry Analysis of Swift Creek Paddle Designs", by Thomas J. Pluckhahn.

"Cahokia's Mound 31: A Short-Term Construction at a Long-Term Site", by Lynne P. Sullivan and Timothy R. Pauketat.

"A Model of Distribution and Preservation of Archaeological Sites Along Piedmont Streams: The Deep River, North Carolina", by Keith C. Seramur, Ellen A. Cowan, Loretta Lautzenheiser, and Jane M. Eastman.

"Frequency Seriation, Correspondence Analysis, and Woodland Period Ceramic Assemblage Variation in the Deep South", by Karen Y. Smith and Fraser D. Neiman.

"Analysis of a Paleoindian Stone Tool Assemblage from the Pasquotank Site (31Pk1) in Northeastern North Carolina", by I. Randolph Daniel Jr., William H. Morre, and James Pritchard.

"Articulating Activity Areas and Formation Processes at the Sapelo Island Shell Ring Complex", by Victor D. Thompson.

"1973 Excavations at the Upper Nodena Site", by Robert C. Mainfort Jr., J. Matthew Compton, and Kathleen H. Cande.

"The Ocmulgee/Blackshear People and the Middleman Hypothesis: An Isotopic Evaluation", by Bryan D. Tucker.

"Proto-Iroquoian Divergence in the Late Archaic-Early Woodland Period Transition of the Appalachian Highlands", by Thomas R. Whyte.

"Antiquarians' Perspectives on Pinson Mounds Revisited: A Response to McNutt", by Mary L. Kwas and Robert C. Mainfort Jr.

"A Reply to Kwas's and Mainfort's Response to the Pinson Observatory", by Charles H. McNutt.

For more info on the Southeastern Archaeological Conference visit www.southeasternarchaeology.org


New from the University of Alabama Press!
"Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Chronology, Content, Context", by Adam King, University of Alabama Press, August 2007, 424 pages, $42.50.
From the publisher:
"One of the most venerable concepts in Southeastern archaeology is that of the Southern Cult. The idea has its roots in the intensely productive decade (archaeologically) of the 1930s and is fundamentally tied to yet another venerable concept—Mississippian culture. The last comprehensive study of the melding of these two concepts into the term Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC) is more than two decades old, yet our understanding of the objects, themes, and artistic styles associated with the SECC have changed a great deal. New primary data have come to light that bear directly on the complex, requiring a thorough reanalysis of both concepts and dating. Recent publications have ignited many debates about the dating and the nature of the SECC."

"This work presents new data and new ideas on the temporal and social contexts, artistic styles, and symbolic themes included in the complex. It also demonstrates that engraved shell gorgets, along with other SECC materials, were produced before A.D. 1400."

"A fascinating review of native American myths. Modern Westerners say the lights in the sky are stars, but culturally they are whatever we humans say they are. Some say they are Forces that determine human lives, some declare they are burning gaseous masses, and some see them as reminders of a gloried past by which elders can teach and guide the young—mnemonics for narratives. Lankford's volume focuses on the ancient North Americans and the ways in which they identified, patterned, ordered, and used the stars to light their culture and illuminate their traditions. They knew them as regions that could be visited by human spirits, and so the lights for them were not distant points of light, but "reachable stars." Guided by the night sky and its constellations, they created oral traditions, or myths, that contained their wisdom and which they used to pass on to succeeding generations their particular world view.

However, they did not all tell the same stories. This study uses that fact—patterns of agreement and disagreement—to discover prehistoric relationships between Indian groups. Which groups saw a constellation in the same way and told the same story? How did that happen? Although these preliterate societies left no written records, the mythic patterns across generations and cultures enable contemporary researchers to examine the differences in how they understood the universe—not as early scientists, but as creators of cosmic order. In the process of doing that, the myth-tellers left the footprints of their international cultural relationships behind them. Reachable Stars is the story of their stories.

George E. Lankford is Professor Emeritus at Lyon College where he served as endowed professor and chair of Social Sciences. He has authored numerous books and articles, including Looking for Lost Lore: Studies in Folklore, Ethnology, and Iconography. "

To order visit http://www.uapress.ua.edu/ or call 1-773-702-7000.

Special Issue: Miami Circle
The Florida Anthropologist. The September-December 2006 edition of the Florida Anthropological Society carries the third special issue dedicated to research on the Miami Circle site. Here's a description from the Editor's Page of the 268-page report: "Volume 53(4), published in 2000, presented some of the first scientific writing on the Miami Circle site, which was discovered in 1998 in downtown Miami and became the focus of a grass-roots effort to save the carved limestone feture and surrounding midden deposits from the onslaught of redevelopment in the City of Miami. Volume 57 (1-2), published in 2004, followed with additional articles and specialized analyses about the site. With this issue, the Miami Circle becomes one of the best studied archaeological sites in southern Florida." To order or learn more about the Florida Anthropological Society visit www.fasweb.org

Early Georgia. The Fall 2006 edition of the journal of The Society For Georgia Archaeology is dedicated to an indepth report on a survey of an 1136-acre tract in the coastal plain of Georgia. "Prehistory of the Stuckey Tract, Bleckley County, Georgia", by Scott J. Keith of South Research, Historic Preservation Consultants Inc. details prehistoric Native American use of the area, which is located on the Ocmulgee River south of the fall line in south central Georgia. Relatively few archaeological investigations have been conducted in the area. For more info on The Society for Georgia Archaeology visit www.thesga.org


May 2007
"Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions", by Timothy R. Pauketat, Altamira Press. 244 pages. From the catalog: "This book sweeps away the last vestiges of social-evolutionary explanations of 'chiefdoms' by rethinking the history of Pre-Columbian Southeast peoples and comparing them to ancient peoples in the Southwest, Mexico, Mesoamerica, and Mesopotamia." $29.95 paper, $70 cloth. Visit www.altamirapress.com for more info.

South Carolina Antiquities. The just-published 1999 edition (Volume 31, Nos. 1 and 2) of the journal of the Archaeological Society of South Carolina is a 184-page report titled "The Bear Creek Site (38FA204/205): Paleoindian and Archaic Occupation in the Lower Piedmont of South Carolina", by Lisa O'Steen. For more info on the Society visit www.assc.net .

Southeastern Archaeology. American Bottom is an archaeologically famous area of the Mississippi River flood plain near St. Louis where extensive archaeological sites were excavated as part of the construction of Interstate 270. The Winter 2006 issue of the journal of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference is a special issue entitled "Contributions of Transportation Archaeology to American Bottom Prehistory". Following are the contents:

"Advances in American Bottom Prehistory: Illinois Transportation Archaeology Two Decades after I-270", by Thomas E. Emerson, John A. Walthall, Andrew C. Fortier, and Dale L. McElrath.

"Calibrating and Reassessing American Bottom Culture History", by Andrew C. Fortier, Thomas E. Emerson, and Dale L. McElrath.

"Prehistoric Plant Use in the American Bottom: New Thoughts and Interpretations", by Mary L. Simon and Kathryn E. Parker.

"Late Cahokian Subsistance and Health: Stable Isotope and Dental Evidence", by Kristin M. Hedman.

"Late Woodland Frontiers in the American Bottom Region", by Brad Koldehoff and Joseph M. Galloy.

"Perspectives from the Edge of Looking Glass Prairie: The Scott Joint-Use Archaeological Project", by George R. Holley.

The edition also carries reviews of a number of recent archaeological publications: "Colonial Virginia's Cooking Dynasty", "Light on the Path: The Anthropology and History of the Southeastern Indians", "Mississippi Archaeology Q&A", "Recreating Hopewell", "The Myth of Syphilis: The Natural History of Treponematosis in North America", and "X Marks the Spot: The Archaeology of Piracy".

For more info on the Southeastern Archaeological Conference visit www.southeasternarchaeology.org .


January 2007 American Antiquity. The latest issue of the journal of the Society For American Archaeology carries several articles related to Southeastern archaeology:

"Deerskins and Domesticates: Creek Subsistence and Economic Strategies In The Historic Period", by Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman, Arizona State Museum.

"Palynological Evidence Of The Effects Of The Deerskin Trade On Forest Fires During The Eighteenth Century in Southeastern North America," by H. Thomas Foster II, Northern Kentucy University; and Arthur D. Cohen, University of South Carolina.

"Biface Reduction And The Measurement Of Dalton Curation: A Southeastern United States Case Study", by Michael J. Shott of the University of Akron; and Jesse A.M. Ballenger of the University of Arizona.

For more information visit www.saa.org


Attention lithics lovers!
"Knife and Hammer". The Florida Anthropological Society has just published a 221-page monograph on the Interstate 75 Highway Archaeological Project. Entitled "Knife And Hammer: An Exercise in Positive Deconstruction", this publication by Robert J. Austin reports on one of the largest long-term archaeological projects in Florida's history, the work conducted between 1978 and 1985 for the proposed interstate bypass around Tampa. Thirteen sites were excavated, most of them paleoindian and archaic lithic scatters (stone tool workshops). This is the first detailed synthesis of the excavation results. For more info visit www.fasweb.org


Kentucky Archaeological Survey's newest publication now available
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 20, 2006) – Long before Europeans arrived in the New World and Daniel Boone blazed a path through the Cumberland Gap, Kentucky was home to many indigenous cultures, including hunter-gatherer-farmers who settled in what is now Boone County beginning around A.D. 1000. A new booklet about this culture with information gleaned from extensive research and archaeological investigations has recently been published by the Kentucky Archaeological Survey (KAS), a joint program of the Kentucky Heritage Council/State Historic Preservation Office and the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences Department Of Anthropology. "The Prehistoric Farmers of Boone County, Kentucky," the eighth volume in the KAS Education Series, is authored by A. Gwynn Henderson of the UK Department of Anthropology. Read the full release at http://news.uky.edu/news/display_article.php?category=2&artid=1848 .



South Carolina Antiquities, Volume 38, Nos. 1 & 2, 2006

The new edition (published in October 2006) of the journal of the Archaeological Society of South Carolina contains the following articles:

Beyond Subsistence: Prehistoric Lifeways on the South Carolina Coast as Reflected by Zooarchaeological Analysis, by Dawn M. Reid.

A History of the Phosphate Mining Industry in the South Carolina Lowcountry with a Focus on Ashley Phosphate Company, by Kristina A. Shuler, Ralph Bailey Jr., and Charles Philips Jr.

Place, Place-making, and African-American Archaeology: Considerations for Future Work, by Andrew Agha

The Towne Before the City: The Caribbean Influence at 1760 Charles Town, by Michael J. Stoner.

Archaeology on the Roanoke by Stanley South

The Research Laboratories of Archaeology at the University of North Carolina has published as Monograph No. 4, Stanley South's survey of the Roanoke Rapids basin. For more info see http://www.sc.edu/usctimes/articles/2005-03/south_book.html and  http://rla.unc.edu/Publications/Monographs.html

Coming January 2007 from the University of Texas Press; $50 hardcover; web special available now for $33.50!

Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography

Edited by F. Kent Reilly III and James F. Garber

American Antiquity, April 2006

The new issue contains the following paper about Southeastern archaeology:

"Climate Change And The Archaic To Woodland Transition (3000-2500 cal B.P.) In The Mississippi River Basin", by Tristam R. Kidder. "Global climate changes led to greatly increased flood frequencies and magnitudes in the Mississippi River watershed during the shift from Late Archaic to Early Woodland. In northeast Louisiana, increased flooding led to major fluvial reorganization that caused settlement abandonment and is associated with the demise of Poverty Point culture. Climate change and associated flooding is implicated as one cause of major cultural reorganization at the end of the Archaic throughout much of eastern North America.

New titles just published by University of Florida Press

The prices shown are special through June 30!

"X Marks The Spot: The Archaeology of Piracy", edited by Russell K. Skowronek and Charles R. Ewen. This collection piques the imagination with historical evidence about the actual exploits of pirates as revealed in the archaeological record. The recent discovery of Queen Anne's Revenge, off Beaufort Inlet, N.C., has provoked scientists to ask, what is a pirate? $44 Cloth.

"Interacting With The Dead", edited by Gordon F.M. Rakita, Jane E. Buikstra, Lane A. Beck, and Sloan R. Williams. This collection explores the behavioral and social facets of funerary, mortuary, and burial rites in both past and present societies. $60 Cloth.

"Archaeology of the Middle Green River Region, Kentucky", edited by William H. Marquardt and Patty Jo Watson. This book presents new interpretations of data gathered over a 30-year period about middle Green River peoples from about 4500 to 2000 B.C.

"Recreating Hopewell" edited by Douglas K. Charles and Jane E. Buikstra. This volume is the first comprehensive overview of Hopewell archaeology published in a generation and represents more than two decades of new research into the vast world of the moundbuilders. $60 Cloth.

"People Of The Shoals: Stallings Culture of the Savannah River Valley", by Kenneth E. Sassaman. The author describes the mysterious rise and fall of the Stallings Culture and the research that brought its story to light. ....Sassaman offers several controversial theories about the Stallings people, arguing they arose from interactions between two distinctive ethnic groups, organized themselves around clusters of related women, not men, established permanent villages like their counterparts on the coast, and abandoned the middle Savannah River valleywhen the social costs of traditional living became intolerable. $31.95 Cloth.

Visa, Mastercard orders: 1-800-226-3822 or www.upf.com.

Journal of Alabama Archaeology

The just-published June 2005 edition (Volume 51, Number 1) carries the following articles:

"Fifty Years of the Quad Site," by Mark Cole is a look back at this famous site near Decatur in northwestern Alabama, now largely eroded and destroyed.

"Things Buried Three Feet Down or More: The Archaeology of Removal" by Robert E. Perry using a fusion of history and anthropology to understand  the late prehistoric and historic Southeastern United States, especially for sites related to the Removal period.

"Environmental archaeology" by Evan Peacock describes the practice of environmental archaeology, using plant and animal remains to construct models of what past landscapes looked like.

"Projectile Points From Porter Village, 1CK21, Clarke County, Alabama" by Steven M. Meredith and Matt Grunewald describes a group of Porter phase projectile points recovered from this site by a Works Progress Administration excavation in 1941.

Georgia underwater archaeology program profiled

The State of Georgia has had an underwater archaeology prgram up and running for just over a year. The creation of the program is described in the Society for American Archaeology's "The SAA Archaeological Record" for January 2006.  An article by Jason Burns and David C. Crass (Burns is Georgia's Deputy State Archaeologist-Underwater, and Crass is Georgia's State Archaeologist) entitled "Building A State Underwater Archaeology Program From Scratch" describes how the program was built and provides a case study of how the program is working in one Georgia town, West Point.

Any organization considering creating an underwater archaeology program will no doubt find this article of great interest. For more info on the Society for American Archaeology visit www.saa.org.

What was the function of steatite vessels?

That's the question debated in two articles in the new January 2006 edition of American Antiquity (Volume 71, Number 1).

Kenneth E. Sassaman of the University of Florida resonds to an earlier paper by James Truncer of Stanford University proposing that the most common function of steatite vessels was processing acorns. Sassaman writes that the bulk of the evidence shows soapstone vessels began to be used either at the same time or after pottery and that they were significant for reasons besides domestic economy. Truncer then responds to Sassaman. Anyone interested in early vessel technology in the Southeast will find these articles of interest.

For more info on American Antiquity or the Society for American Archaeology, visit www.saa.org.

Early Georgia, Fall 2005 edition

The new edition of The Society for Georgia Archaeology's journal contains the following articles:

"An Experimental Approach to the Analysis of Two Maize Cob-Filled Features from Etowah," by Mary Theresa Bonhage-Freund.

"Ridgeway Road: An Archaeological Survey in West-Central Georgia," by James C. Waggoner Jr.

"A Burned Macon Plateau Period Structure From Brown's Mount, Georgia," by Richard A. Marshall and Mark Williams.

"In Search of Hernando de Soto: Charles Hudson and Paradigm Shifts in Southeastern Archaeology," by Marvin T. Smith.

"400 Years at a Glance: Patterns of Ceramic Style Distribution over Georgia," by Mark Williams.

"And the Sun Did Not Shine: Experimental Archaeology at Macon Earth Lodge, 1938" by Elizabeth C. Shirk.

For more info on The Society For Georgia Archaeology visit www.thesga.org.

New from The University of Alabama Press

March 2006

Light on the Path: The Anthropology and History of the Southeastern Indians, edited by Thomas J. Pluckhahn and Robbie Ethridge. 296 pages. $60 hardcover, $34.95 paper.

From the catalog: "The past 20 years have witnessed a change in the study of the prehistory and history of the native peoples of the American South. This pardigm shift is the bridging of prehistory and history to fashion a seamless social history that includes not only the 16th-century Late Mississippian period and the 18th-century colonial period but also the largely forgotten - and critically important - century in between. The shift is in part methodological, for it involves combining methods from anthropology, history, and archaeology. It is also conceptual and theoretical, employing historical and archaeological data to reconstruct broad patterns of history - not just political history with Native Americans as a backdrop, nor simply an archaeology with added historical specificity, but a true social history of the Southeastern Indians, spanning their entire existence in the American South.

New from Cambridge University Press

The First Americans: Race, Evolution and the Origin of Native Americans, by Joseph F. Powell, University of New Mexico.

2005; 250 pages. Hardback, $110; Paperback $34.99.

From the catalog: "The recent discoveries of 9000-12000 year old skeletal remains in the Americas have begun to change our understanding of who first entered the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age. Discoveries such as Washington state's "Kennewick Man", Brazil's "Luzia", and Alaska's "Prince of Wales Island Man" have challenged the archaeological and geological status quo. The First Americans explores these new discoveries by using racial classifications and micro-evolutionary techniques to better understand the complex relationships between the first Americans and living Native American groups."

For more info visit http://www.cambridge.org/us

Published August 2005

Mississippi Archaeology Q&A

For more than twenty years, Evan Peacock, an archaeologist at Mississippi State University, has been fielding and answering questions such as these from the public. In Mississippi Archaeology Q & A, published by the University Press of Mississippi, he gathers those answers in one place to give landowners, history buffs, arrowhead hunters, and students new to archaeology an invaluable handbook of dos and don'ts. Peacock writes for the lay reader, supplies humorous anecdotes from his years in the field, and never scolds. Instead he respectfully introduces the neophyte to the wonders of the remarkable prehistoric and historic remains throughout the Magnolia State.

For more info and to order visit the University Press of Mississippi.

Revolutionizing First American thinking?

The Winter 2005-2006 issue of American Archaeology published by The Archaeological Conservancy has a great story on the Topper Site and Dr. Al Goodyear. Other stories of interest to Southeastern archaeologists are "Examining Hopewell Earthworks," a story about three investigtions of Hopewell structures; and two stories about mound sites in Arkansas.

Click here for more info on The Archaeological Conservancy.

The Florida Anthropologist

September-December 2005 Special Issue: The Shields Site. New Perspectives on the Early St. Johns II Culture in Northeastern Florida

From the Editor's Page: "Presented here is a special issue dedicated to research on the Shields site in Duval County and associated sites of the Early St. Johns II Period, assembled by Keith Ashley. These papers grew out of a symposium held at the 2001 Southeastern Archaeological Conference annual meeting, also organized by Ashley. The main focus of the issue is the Shields Mound, which was initially studied by antiquarian Clarence B. Moore. The first four articles summarize Ashley's recent excavations at Shields, as well as studies of zooarchaeology by Rochelle Marrinan, a study of ceramics by Vicki Rolland, and a study of bone and shell artifacts by Tom Penders. Buzz Thunen's paper on his excavations at the Grant Mound and Ashley's synthesis on the Mt. Royal site broaden the perspective of the issue and provide a welcome visit to these well-known St. Johns River area sites. Ashley summarizes some of this information and discusses the ways in which these sites are connected in the issue's final article. This issue concludes with two book reviews by Bob Austin and Brian Yates. I think that many readers will find the Shields Mound and Early St. Johns II Period focus to be especially interesting." - Ryan J. Wheeler.

To learn more about the Florida Anthropological Society visit www.fasweb.org

American Antiquity, October 2005

Watson Brake, a Middle Archaic Mound Complex in Northeast Louisiana

"Middle Archaic earthen mound complexes in the lower Mississippi valley are remote antecedents of the famous but much younger Poverty Point earthworks," notes the abstract of this 36-page article by 15 researchers. "Watson Brake is the largest and most complex of these early mound sites. Very extensive coring and stratigraphic studies, aided by 25 radiocarbon dates and six luminescence dates, show that minor earthworkswere begun here at ca. 3500 B.C. in association with an oval arrangement of burned rock middens at the edge of a stream terrace. The full extent of the first earthworks is not yet known...."

For more information about the Society for American Archaeology and American Antiquity visit

Available July 2006

Folsom: New Archaeological Investigations of a Classic Paleoindian Bison Kill

By David J. Meltzer. 488 pp., 63 b/w photos, 53 maps, 64 tables. $55 cloth. ISBN 24644-4

From the University of California Press: "Although Folsom is justly famous in the history of archaeology for resolving decades of bitter controversy over whether the first Americans had arrived in the New World in Ice Age time, for decades little was known of the site except that it was very old. This book for the first time tells the full story of Folsom. "

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/catalogs/discounts/antdiscount.html

1491: Discovering what Americas were like before Columbus

A review in the August 12 edition of The Seattle Times of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" by Charles C. Mann.

Mann is a science writer for Science and The Atlantic Monthly. His book is a popularization of much of the anthropology of the past 35 years. Part of it is science travelogue: He begins his book by visiting large man-made mounds in northeastern Bolivia. He travels to Incan digs in Peru and Chile, Mayan ruins in the jungles of Yucatan, and a man-made hill east of St. Louis called Monks Mound that marked a town of at least 15,000 corn farmers. He ends his account at the mouth of the Amazon, where he says there was once an Indian city of as many as 100,000.

This is not ancient-astronaut stuff. It may not be completely true — it will be a miracle if everything believed today is believed 50 years hence — but it is no doubt more accurate than the version today's adults learned in high school.

Ancient Sarasota, Florida

The March-June 2005 issue of The Florida Anthropologist is a special issue devoted to Safety Harbor Period mounds. The Safety Harbor culture (circa A.D. 1000-1500) was the culture of people who greeted the first Spanish explorers.

The main focus is the Sarasota Bay Mound, which was excavated by archaeologist Ripley Bullen in the late 1960s.

Chapters include:

Sarasota Bay Mound: A Safety Harbor Period Burial Mound with notes on additional sites in the City of Sarasota, by George M. Luer;

Osteological Analysis of Sarasota Bay Mound: A Safety Harbor Period Site, by Laurel Freas and Michael W. Warren;

Variability in the Sarasota Bay Mound Pottery Assemblage, by Ann S. Cordell;

Sarasota County's Stone Effigy, by Daniel Hughes;

Notes on Pottery from the Myakka Valley Ranches Mound, by Ann S. Cordell;

Revisiting the Aqui Esta Mound: Paste Variability in the Pottery Assemblage, by Ann S. Cordell;

Revisiting the Aqui Esta Mound's Shell Vessels, by George M. Luer and Daniel Hughes.

Visit the Florida Anthropological Society on the web at www.fasweb.org

Prehistoric decline of freshwater mussels tied to rise in maize cultivation

USDA Forest Service research suggests that a decline in the abundance of freshwater mussels about 1000 years ago may have been caused by the large-scale cultivation of maize by Native Americans.

In the April 2005 issue of Conservation Biology, Wendell Haag and Mel Warren, researchers with the Forest Service Southern Research Station unit in Oxford , Miss., report results from a study of archaeological data from 27 prehistoric sites in the southeastern United States.

Read about it in the June 7 issue of Red NOVA news at

http://www.rednova.com/news/science/154445/prehistoric_decline_of_freshwater_mussels_tied_to_rise_in_maize/

The full text version of the study is at

http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/9281

Recreating Hopewell

In 2006 the University Press of Florida will publish an exciting new book certain to be of tremendous interest to Southeastern archaeologists, "Recreating Hopewell," by Douglas K. Charles (Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology, Chair and Director of Collections, Archaeology Program,Wesleyan University) and Jane E. Buikstra.

The North Alabama Project: An Alabama Archaeological Society Excavation Scrapbook

The December 2004 edition of the Journal of Alabama Archaeology provides an in-depth, 71-page history by Eugene M. Futato of the "North Alabama Project" conducted from 1960 to 1976. One goal of the research was to locate undisturbed remains of Paleoindian occupantion. This led to the now famous excavations of the Stanfield-Worley Bluff shelter, among others. The report is well illustrated with photos collected from members of the AAS of the excavations and artifacts.

Ever wondered what the folks who built Hopewell sites and Cahokia ate?

The April 2005 edition of American Antiquity carries an article by Richard W. Yerkes entitled "Bone chemistry, body parts, and growth marks: Evaluating Ohio Hopewell and Cahokia Mississippian seasonality, subsistence, ritual and feasting."

American Antiquity has in recent editions published a number of other articles of interest to Southeastern archaeologists:

October 2004 Edition:

"Reevaluating Late Prehistoric Coastal Subsistence and Settlement Strategies: New Data from Grove's Creek Site, Skidaway Island, Georgia," by Deborah A. Keene.

"The Bat Creek Stone Revisited: A Fraud Exposed," by Robert C. Mainfort Jr. and Mary L. Kwas.

July 2004 edition:

"Steatite Vessel Age and Occurrence in Temperate Eastern North America," by James Truncer.

"Plazas as Architecture: An Example from the Raffman Site, Northeast Louisiana," by Tristam R. Kidder.

"Chronology and Stratigraphy at Dust Cave, Alabama," by Sarah C. Sherwood, Boyce N. Driskell, Asa R. Randall and Scott C. Meeks.

Learn more about SAA at

The Mexican connection

Almost as long as there have been Southeastern archaeologists, people have speculated about contacts between the prehistoric Southeastern U.S. and the advanced cultures of Mexico.

A new book published recently by University Press of Florida, "Gulf Coast Archaeology: The Southeastern United States and Mexico," edited by Nancy Marie White, "initiates and renews dialogue on the subject, specifically focusing on details of the prehistoric archaeological record around the Gulf of Mexico and the potential for such interaction."

Although a bit pricy ($65 harcover), this is an important and long-overdue volume. Especially interesting are the contributions from Mexican archaeologists.

The book's chapters are:

1. Prehistoric Connections around the Gulf Coast.

2. Rivers in the Sea: The Gulf of Mexico as a Cultural Corridor.

3. A New Look at the Gulf Coast Formative.

4. Mound Builders along the Coast of the Gulf of Mexico and the Eastern United States.

5. Sea-Level Rise and Fluctuations on the Central Texas Coast: Exploring Cultural and Ecological Correlates.

6. Dumps and Piles: Site Structure and Settlement Patterning on the Mid and Upper Texas Gulf Coast.

7. Late Holocene Environments and the Archaeological Record of the South Texas Coast.

8. Broader Continental Connections through the Gulf Coastal Plain of Texas.

9. Paleoagriculture on the Gulf Coast: Two Possible Cases of the Classic Period, Central Veracruz, Mexico.

10. Perspectives on Variation in Olmec Settlement and Polity Using Mississippian Models.

11. Characteristic Elements Shared by Northeastern Mexico and the Southeastern United States.

12. Wind Jewels and Paddling Gods: The Mississippian Southeast in the Postclassic Mesoamerican World.

13. The American Formative Revisited.

14. Discontinuities, Common Foundations, Short-Distance Interactions, and Sporadic Long-Distance Connections around the Gulf of Mexico.

Order this and the many other archaeological volumes available from UPF at