Prehistoric Indians of the Southeast

Prehistoric Indians of the Southeast PDF

Author: John A. Walthall

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 1990-01-30

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 0817305521

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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.

Arrowheads and Spear Points in the Prehistoric Southeast

Arrowheads and Spear Points in the Prehistoric Southeast PDF

Author: Linda Crawford Culberson

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2009-11-12

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 160473485X

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The Native American tribes of what is now the southeastern United States left intriguing relics of their ancient cultural life. Arrowheads, spear points, stone tools, and other artifacts are found in newly plowed fields, on hillsides after a fresh rain, or in washed-out creek beds. These are tangible clues to the anthropology of the Paleo-Indians, and the highly developed Mississippian peoples. This indispensable guide to identifying and understanding such finds is for conscientious amateur archeologists who make their discoveries in surface terrain. Many are eager to understand the culture that produced the artifact, what kind of people created it, how it was made, how old it is, and what its purpose was. Here is a handbook that seeks identification through the clues of cultural history. In discussing materials used, the process of manufacture, and the relationship between the artifacts and the environments, it reveals ancient discoveries to be not merely interesting trinkets but by-products from the once vital societies in areas that are now Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, the Carolinas, as well as in southeastern Texas, southern Missouri, southern Illinois, and southern Indiana. The text is documented by more than a hundred drawings in the actual size of the artifacts, as well as by a glossary of archeological terms and a helpful list of state and regional archeological societies.

Sun Circles and Human Hands

Sun Circles and Human Hands PDF

Author: Emma Lila Fundaburk

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2001-02-22

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0817310770

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From utilitarian arrowheads to beautiful stone effigy pipes to ornately-carved shell disks, the photographs and drawings in Sun Circles and Human Hands present the archaeological record of the art and native crafts of the prehistoric southeastern Indians, painstakingly compiled in the 1950s by two sisters who traveled the eastern United States interviewing archaeologists and collectors and visiting the major repositories. Although research over the last 50 years has disproven many of the early theories reported in the text—which were not the editors' theories but those of the archaeologists of the day—the excellent illustrations of objects no longer available for examination have more than validated the lasting worth of this popular book.

Light on the Path

Light on the Path PDF

Author: Thomas J. Pluckhahn

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2006-02-12

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0817352872

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Social history of the native peoples of the American South, bridging prehistory and history 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 paradigm 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. The scholarship underlying this shift comes from many directions, but much of the groundwork can be attributed to Charles Hudson. The papers in this volume were contributed by Hudson’s colleagues and former students (many now leading scholars themselves) in his honor. The assumption links these papers is that of a historical transformation between Mississippian societies and the Indian societies of the historic era that requires explanation and critical analysis. In all of the chapters, the legacy of Hudson’s work is evident. Anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians are storming the bridge that connects prehistory and history in a manner unimaginable 20 years ago. While there remains much work to do on the path toward understanding this transformation and constructing a complete social history of the Southeastern Indians, the work of Charles Hudson and his colleagues have shown the way.

Early Art of the Southeastern Indians

Early Art of the Southeastern Indians PDF

Author: Susan C. Power

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780820325019

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Early Art of the Southeastern Indians is a visual journey through time, highlighting some of the most skillfully created art in native North America. The remarkable objects described and pictured here, many in full color, reveal the hands of master artists who developed lapidary and weaving traditions, established centers for production of shell and copper objects, and created the first ceramics in North America. Presenting artifacts originating in the Archaic through the Mississippian periods--from thousands of years ago through A.D. 1600--Susan C. Power introduces us to an extraordinary assortment of ceremonial and functional objects, including pipes, vessels, figurines, and much more. Drawn from every corner of the Southeast--from Louisiana to the Ohio River valley, from Florida to Oklahoma--the pieces chronicle the emergence of new media and the mastery of new techniques as they offer clues to their creators’ widening awareness of their physical and spiritual worlds. The most complex works, writes Power, were linked to male (and sometimes female) leaders. Wearing bold ensembles consisting of symbolic colors, sacred media, and richly complex designs, the leaders controlled large ceremonial centers that were noteworthy in regional art history, such as Etowah, Georgia; Spiro, Oklahoma; Cahokia, Illinois; and Moundville, Alabama. Many objects were used locally; others circulated to distant locales. Power comments on the widening of artists’ subjects, starting with animals and insects, moving to humans, then culminating in supernatural combinations of both, and she discusses how a piece’s artistic “language” could function as a visual shorthand in local style and expression, yet embody an iconography of regional proportions. The remarkable achievements of these southeastern artists delight the senses and engage the mind while giving a brief glimpse into the rich, symbolic world of feathered serpents and winged beings.

A Prehistory of Houston and Southeast Texas

A Prehistory of Houston and Southeast Texas PDF

Author: Dan M. Worrall

Publisher: Concertina Press (www.concertinapressbooks.com)

Published: 2021-01-02

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 0982599633

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Houston and Southeast Texas have an ancient, storied prehistory. Using data from hundreds of archeological site reports, a changing coastal landscape modeled through time in 3D, historical information on Native Americans taken from the accounts of the earliest European visitors, and digital GIS mapping to weave it all together, this book recounts the development of the physical landscape of this region and the cultures of its Native American inhabitants from the peak of the last ice age until the Spanish colonial era. Its 504 pages are illustrated with nearly 350 full color maps, charts, drawings and photographs.

Antiquities of the Southern Indians, Particularly of the Georgia Tribes

Antiquities of the Southern Indians, Particularly of the Georgia Tribes PDF

Author: Charles C. Jones

Publisher: University Alabama Press

Published: 1999-09-20

Total Pages: 582

ISBN-13: 9780817310042

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A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication This reissue of Charles Jones’s classic investigations of the Mound Builders will be an invaluable resource for archaeologists today Long a classic of southeastern archaeology, Charles Jones’s Antiquities of the Southern Indians was a groundbreaking work that linked historic tribes with prehistoric “antiquities.” Published in 1873, it predated the work of Cyrus Thomas and Clarence Moore and remains a rich resource for modern scholars. Jones was a pioneer of archaeology who not only excavated important sites but also related his findings to other sites, to contemporary Indians, and to artifacts from other areas. His work covers all of the southeastern states, from Virginia to Louisiana, and is noted for its insights into the De Soto expedition and the history of the Creek Indians. Best known for refuting the popular myth of the Mound Builders, Jones proposed a connection between living Native Americans of the 1800s and the prehistoric peoples who had created the Southeast’s large earthen mounds. His early research and culture comparisons led to the eventual demise of the Mound Builder myth. For this reissue of Jones’s book, a new introduction by Frank Schnell places Jones’s work in the context of his times and relates it to current research in the Southeast. An engagingly written work enhanced by numerous maps and engravings, Antiquities of the Southern Indians will serve today’s scholars and fascinate all readers interested in the region’s prehistory.

Indians of the Greater Southeast

Indians of the Greater Southeast PDF

Author: Bonnie G. McEwan

Publisher:

Published: 2001-01-01

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780813020860

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"If you have ever wondered about the Indian tribes who lived in the American Southeast at the time of European settlement, this book is for you. . . . Eleven of the nation's top historical archaeologists tackle eleven of the Indian nations that occupied the territory from Florida to Texas. They include some of the best known but little-understood American tribes--the Cherokee, the Natchez, and the Caddo."--American Archaeology "A critically needed summary of current knowledge of southeastern Native Americans during the colonial encounter. . . . For historians, archaeologists, and ethnohistorians, this is a valuable source of information which was previously hard to find."--Elizabeth J. Reitz, University of Georgia "This important volume will be of interest to anyone, whether scholar or layman, who wants to learn about the Indians of the southeastern United States. The authors are among the most respected authorities on the Indian societies chosen for inclusion."--Chester B. DePratter, University of South Carolina This volume brings together a stellar group of scholars to summarize what we know of the development of native American cultures in the southeastern United States after 1500. The authors integrate archaeological, documentary, and ethnohistorical evidence in the most comprehensive examination of diverse southeastern Indian cultures published in decades. Contents Introduction by Bonnie G. McEwan 1. The Timucua Indians of Northern Florida and Southern Georgia, by Jerald T. Milanich 2. The Guale Indians of the Lower Atlantic Coast: Change and Continuity, by Rebecca Saunders 3. The Apalachee Indians of Northwest Florida, by Bonnie G. McEwan 4. The Chickasaws, by Jay K. Johnson 5. The Caddo of the Trans-Mississippi South, by Ann M. Early 6. The Natchez of Southwest Mississippi, by Karl G. Lorenz 7. The Quapaw Indians of Arkansas, 1673-1803, by George Sabo III 8. Cherokee Ethnohistory and Archaeology, by Gerald F. Schroedl 9. Upper Creek Archaeology, by Gregory A. Waselkov and Marvin T. Smith 10. The Lower Creeks: Origins and Early History, by John E. Worth 11. Archaeological Perspectives on Florida Seminole Ethnogenesis, by Brent R. Weisman This title is published in conjunction with the Society for Historical Archaeology Bonnie G. McEwan is director of archaeology at Mission San Luis in Tallahassee, Florida. Her publications include The Spanish Missions of La Florida, The Apalachee Indians and Mission San Luis (with John H. Hann), and numerous monographs and journal articles.