The Woodland Southeast

This collection presents, for the first time, a much-needed synthesis of the major research themes and findings that characterize the Woodland Period in the southeastern United States. The Woodland Period (ca. 1200 B.C. to A.D. 1000) has been the subject of a great deal of archaeological research over the past 25 years. Researchers have learned that in this approximately 2000-year era the peoples of the Southeast experienced increasing sedentism, population growth, and organizational complexity. At the beginning of the period, people are assumed to have been living in small groups, loosely bound by collective burial rituals. But by the first millennium A.D., some parts of the region had densely packed civic ceremonial centers ruled by hereditary elites. Maize was now the primary food crop. Perhaps most importantly, the ancient animal-focused and hunting-based religion and cosmology were being replaced by solar and warfare iconography, consistent with societies dependent on agriculture, and whose elites were increasingly in competition with one another. This volume synthesizes the research on what happened during this era and how these changes came about while analyzing the period's archaeological record. In gathering the latest research available on the Woodland Period, the editors have included contributions from the full range of specialists working in the field, highlighted major themes, and directed readers to the proper primary sources. Of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists, both professional and amateur, this will be a valuable reference work essential to understanding the Woodland Period in the Southeast.

Fourteen in-depth case studies incorporate empirical data with theoretical concepts such as ritual, aggregation, and place-making, highlighting the variability and common themes in the relationships between people, landscapes, and the built environment that characterize this period of North American native life in the Southeast.

Of great significance to everyone interested in Native American Culture, this excellently researched and rendered book is designed to educate as well as entertain. It is filled with fun facts and ready-to-color symbols illustrated from ancient artifacts and designs of the American Indian Tribes of the South East Woodlands of North America. This book will intrigue and captivate people of all ages. An enjoyable collection of drawings and information it can also serve as an important classroom teaching aid.

Papers presented at a symposium at the annual meeting of the South- eastern Archaeological Conference, held in Nashville, Tenn., November 1986, explore the wide range of societal organization during the Late Woodland period (A.D. 600-900) in the Southeast, and address explicitly the kinds of explanatory models useful for understanding social integration by noting the relationships among critical variables (e.g. settlement, subsistence, exchange, demography, etc.) that affect social organization. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Archaeologists across the Midwest have pooled their data and perspectives to produce this indispensable volume on the Native cultures of the Late Woodland period (approximately A.D. 300?1000). Sandwiched between the well-known Hopewellian and Mississippian eras of monumental mound construction, theøLate Woodland period has received insufficient attention from archaeologists, who have frequently characterized it as consisting of relatively drab artifact assemblages. The close connections between this period and subsequent Mississippian and Fort Ancient societies, however, make it especially valuable for cross-cultural researchers. Understanding the cultural processes at work during the Late Woodland period will yield important clues about the long-term forces that stimulate and enhance social inequality. Late Woodland Societies is notable for its comprehensive geographic coverage; exhaustive presentation and discussion of sites, artifacts, and prehistoric cultural practices; and critical summaries of interpretive perspectives and trends in scholarship. The vast amount of information and theory brought together, examined, and synthesized by the contributors produces a detailed, coherent, and systematic picture of Late Woodland lifestyles across the Midwest. The Late Woodland can now be seen as a dynamic time in its own right and instrumental to the emergence of complex late prehistoric cultures across the Midwest and Southeast.

"This book explores changes in houses and households in the southeastern United States from the Woodland to the Historic Indian Period (ca. 200 B.C. to A.D. 1800). Most studies of domestic architecture in the Southeast have been conducted at the single-site scale. As a result, broader spatial and temporal patterns of variation in houses and households are not well understood. To address this problem, Steere constructed a database that catalogues the architectural features of 1,258 structures from 65 sites in the Southern Appalachian region and surrounding areas. Significant trends identified by this comparative study include changes in the size and spacing of houses, changes in architectural investment, and a secular trend toward the increasing segmentation of houses. Using a theoretical framework developed from household archaeology and anthropology, Steere argues that certain aspects of this architectural variation can be explained by changes in household economics and household composition, symbolic behavior, status differentiation, and settlement patterning. More generally, he proposes that large-scale patterns of diachronic and synchronic variation in domestic architecture are best explained by changes in social organization"--Provided by publisher.

Describes the history and culture of the prehistoric Woodland Indians as well as the Central Algonquian, Coastal Algonquian, and Iroquois tribes.

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.