Pinson Mounds


Book Description

Pinson Mounds: Middle Woodland Ceremonialism in the Midsouth is a comprehensive overview and reinterpretation of the largest Middle Woodland mound complex in the Southeast. Located in west Tennessee about ten miles south of Jackson, the Pinson Mounds complex includes at least thirteen mounds, a geometric earthen embankment, and contemporary short-term occupation areas within an area of about four hundred acres. A unique feature of Pinson Mounds is the presence of five large, rectangular platform mounds from eight to seventy-two feet in height. Around A.D. 100, Pinson Mounds was a pilgrimage center that drew visitors from well beyond the local population and accommodated many distinct cultural groups and people of varied social stations. Stylistically nonlocal ceramics have been found in virtually every excavated locality, all together representing a large portion of the Southeast. Along with an overview of this important and unique mound complex, Pinson Mounds also provides a reassessment of roughly contemporary centers in the greater Midsouth and Lower Mississippi Valley and challenges past interpretations of the Hopewell phenomenon in the region.




A History of Platform Mound Ceremonialism


Book Description

This book presents a temporally and geographically broad yet detailed history of an important form of Native American architecture, the platform mound. While the variation in these earthen monuments across the eastern United States has sparked much debate among archaeologists, this landmark study reveals unexpected continuities in moundbuilding over many thousands of years. In A History of Platform Mound Ceremonialism, Megan Kassabaum synthesizes an exceptionally wide dataset of 149 platform mound sites from the earliest iterations of the structure 7,500 years ago to its latest manifestations. Kassabaum discusses Archaic period sites from Florida and the Lower Mississippi Valley, as well as Woodland period sites across the Midwest and Southeast, to revisit traditional perspectives on later, more well-known Mississippian-era mounds. Kassabaum’s chronological approach corrects major flaws in the ways these constructions have been interpreted in the past. This comprehensive history exposes nonlinear shifts in mound function, use, and meaning across space and time and suggests a dynamic view of the vitality and creativity of their builders. Ending with a discussion of Native American beliefs about and uses of earthen mounds today, Kassabaum reminds us that this history will continue to be written for many generations to come. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series







Prehistoric Copper Mining in Michigan


Book Description

Isle Royale and the counties that line the northwest coast of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are called Copper Country because of the rich deposits of native copper there. In the nineteenth century, explorers and miners discovered evidence of prehistoric copper mining in this region. They used those “ancient diggings” as a guide to establishing their own, much larger mines, and in the process, destroyed the archaeological record left by the prehistoric miners. Using mining reports, newspaper accounts, personal letters, and other sources, this book reconstructs what these nineteenth-century discoverers found, how they interpreted the material remains of prehistoric activity, and what they did with the stone, wood, and copper tools they found at the prehistoric sites. “This volume represents an exhaustive compilation of the early written and published accounts of mines and mining in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It will prove a valuable resource to current and future scholars. Through these early historic accounts of prospectors and miners, Halsey provides a vivid picture of what once could be seen.” —John M. O’Shea, curator of Great Lakes Archaeology, University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology




Explanations in Iconography


Book Description

Case studies combine archaeological data and oral tradition to illustrate how the archaeological expression of beliefs and meanings passed down in the oral tradition may be interpreted. Explanations in Iconography: Ancient American Indian Art, Symbol, and Meaning is a significant contribution to the field of archaeology – a contribution in iconography studies that has gradually been coming into its own. Iconography is a rich and fascinating field, as applied to the complex, and heretofore enigmatic, imagery on many ancient Pre-Columbian artifacts. When viewed through the lens of early ethnographic records and American Indian oral traditions, as well as information from knowledgeable American Indian elders, it opens a world of understanding and clarity until recently unknown in the field of anthropological archaeology. It brings us closer to the people who created the artifacts and offers a glimpse into the symbols and beliefs that were important to them. Chapters cover a wide variety of artifacts and imagery from several ancient American Indian cultures. These artifacts include petroglyphs and pictographs (rock art), mounds, engraved shell cups and gorgets, burial architecture and grave furniture, pottery, copper repoussé, and other media. Ancient graphics, engravings, mounds, and all were created to deliver a message to the viewer – and many of those messages are finally coming to light. The artifacts included are from a variety of regions, mainly in the Midwest and Eastern United States. We hope that this volume will encourage others to look more deeply into the meaning behind the ancient imagery and arts and give the past a chance to be known.




Hopewell Ceremonial Landscapes of Ohio


Book Description

Nearly 2000 years ago, people living in the river valleys of southern Ohio built earthen monuments on a scale that is unmatched in the archaeological record for small-scale societies. The period from c. 200 BC to c. AD 500 (Early to Middle Woodland) witnessed the construction of mounds, earthen walls, ditches, borrow pits and other earthen and stone features covering dozen of hectares at many sites and hundreds of hectares at some. The development of the vast Hopewell Culture geometric earthwork complexes such as those at Mound City, Chilicothe; Hopewell; and the Newark earthworks was accompanied by the establishment of wide-ranging cultural contacts reflected in the movement of exotic and strikingly beautiful artefacts such as elaborate tobacco pipes, obsidian and chert arrowheads, copper axes and regalia, animal figurines and delicately carved sheets of mica. These phenomena, coupled with complex burial rituals, indicate the emergence of a political economy based on a powerful ideology of individual power and prestige, and the creation of a vast cultural landscape within which the monument complexes were central to a ritual cycle encompassing a substantial geographical area. The labour needed to build these vast cultural landscapes exceeds population estimates for the region, and suggests that people from near (and possibly far) travelled to the Scioto and other river valleys to help with construction of these monumental earthen complexes. Here, Mark Lynott draws on more than a decade of research and extensive new datasets to re-examine the spectacular and massive scale Ohio Hopewell landscapes and to explore the society that created them.




The Mississippian Emergence


Book Description

This collection, addressing a topic of ongoing interest and debate in American archaeology, examines the evolution of ranked chiefdoms in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States during the period A.D. 700–1200. The volume brings together a broad range of professionals engaged in the fieldwork that has vitalized the theoretical debates on the development of Mississippi Valley cultures. The initial chapter provides a general discussion of various explanations for the rise of these distinctive ranked societies in the eastern United States (A.D. 750-1050) and sets the stage for the interdisciplinary analysis from multiple viewpoints that follows. The first section discusses a cluster of individual sites in the Midwest and Southeast and reveals the parallel—and occasionally divergent—paths followed by the inhabitants as they transitioned from Late Woodland into Mississippian lifeways. The chapters in the second half discuss by region the emergence of ranked agricultural societies and examine how these networks played a role in the large-scale and roughly contemporaneous socio-political development. Contributors: C. Clifford Boyd Jr. James A. Brown R. P. Stephen Davis Jr. John House John E. Kelly Richard A. Kerber Dan F. Morse Phyllis Morse Martha Ann Rolingson Gerald F. Schroedl Bruce D. Smith Paul D. Welch Howard D. Winters