The Analysis of Stone Tool Procurement, Production, and Maintenance

Researchers who analyze stone tools and their production debris have made significant progress in understanding the relationship between stone tools and human organizational strategies. Stone tools are understood to be morphologically dynamic throughout their use-lives; the ever-changing morphology of stone tools is intimately associated with the needs of tool users. It also has become apparent to researchers that interpretations of lithic analysis are more productive when the unique contexts and situations for which lithic artifacts were made, used, modified, and ultimately discarded are considered. This article reviews the recent literature on stone tool production with an emphasis on raw material procurement, manufacturing techniques, and tool maintenance processes as they relate to adaptive strategies of toolmakers and users.     

The late prehistoric Cahokia cultural system of the Mississippi River valley: Foundations,florescence, and fragmentation

The development, florescence, and subsequent demise of an organizationally complex cultural system in the American Bottom, part of the central Mississippi River valley, spanned a little over half a millennium. Cahokia, the largest Precolumbian site in the United States, is located within this segment of fertile floodplain, as are many other subsidiary settlements that varied greatly in terms of their size, internal structure, and occupational histories. Numerous projects over the past 30 years have resulted in the rapid accumulation of considerable information and divergent interpretations about the nature of the societies represented archaeologically by a series of superimposed settlement systems.     

An iconographic exploration of the “rattlesnake” gorgets of eastern Tennessee

ABSTRACT

Compared to other gorget styles and themes made during the Mississippian period, the so-called rattlesnake gorgets of eastern Tennessee have been found in fairly large numbers. Stylistically, Muller assigned these gorgets to the temporally related Lick Creek and Citico styles, while Crawford’s recent work has argued for substyles within. While their style has been studied extensively, the idea that these gorgets depict rattlesnakes generally has been accepted without further consideration. In this paper, we present the results of a systematic iconographic study of rattlesnake gorgets. Ultimately, we conclude that the image’s original referent is not just a snake but instead is intended to be a model of the cosmos at night.     

Evaluating indices of curation for Archaic North American bifacial projectile points

Abstract

This paper addresses the definitions of the term “curation” and the utility of various techniques for its quantification based on morphometric, isometric, and geometric characteristics of bifacial projectile points. The definitions were evaluated through the comparative application of curation indices to a collection of Archaic projectile points from the Southwestern United States. Bifacial projectile points from the Walt Jones Farm site (10Br9), Georgia, were analyzed with the accompanying debitage using curation indices and non-indexical measures. Comparisons of the curation indices with non-indexical measures allow an examination of the utility of the term “curation,” and we argue that indices of curation cannot operate in a vacuum without additional information concerning an assemblage.     

Agency in a Postmold? Physicality and the Archaeology of Culture-Making

Architecture embodies human agency in all of its dimensions and effective scales. Specifically, the wooden posts of Mississippian peoples in the American mid-continent were simultaneously spatial, material, and corporeal dimensions of the process of cultural construction and contestation. Our reconsideration of the lowly postmold is based on the principle of physicality that, in turn, alters the ways in which we pose research questions and interpret archaeological data. A historical-processual methodology involves three procedural fundamentals: identifying practical variability, comparing genealogies of practices, and tacking between lines of evidence at multiple scales of analysis.     

Refiguring the Archaeology of Greater Cahokia

Revised theoretical constructs and an enlarged database allow substantive revisions to a processual accounting of greater Cahokia. Measures of political consolidation, demographic nucleation, central transformations, and centrifugal dispersions reveal the form, scale, and developmental trajectory of greater Cahokia to have been highly centralized, regional, and punctuated by abrupt and pervasive social changes, respectively. Social restructuring, political rituals, and large-scale labor mobilizations are recognizable among the archaeological remains, as are the pre-Mississippian traditions that tempered regional government. Greater Cahokia was a product of local agricultural populations dominated and accommodated over three centuries. The processes of domination and accommodation, occurring at a time when regional administration was not yet commonplace, left unmistakable regional and panregional signatures.     

A FRESH LOOK AT A LITTLE-KNOWN SOUTHEASTERN COPPER PLATE

Abstract

Chauga (38OC47) is a mound site now under Lake Hartwell at the head of the Savannah River in Oconee County, South Carolina. Excavations in 1958–1959 by the University of Georgia recovered a Mississippian copper plate. Upon comparison to others of its kind, it is clear that this lesser-known plate encompasses some interesting design features, most notably the presence of the only known depiction of a chunkey stone on copper. We have recently created a more accurate representation of its design. The plate appears to portray many similarities to depictions of Birdman dancers: kilted dancers and dancing elders within the “Stack” style. Birdman themes are common in Mississippian iconography. Given the importance that copper plates have for interpreting Mississippian art and belief systems, this updated examination provides useful new information for researchers studying Mississippian iconography.     

Cooking Pots as Burial Urns

Abstract

Large ceramic vessels used as burial urns occasionally have been found in Late Mississippian/protohistoric contexts in Alabama and Mississippi. Ethnohistorical documents suggest that large vessels were used for cooking in a domestic context. A systematic examination of three urns from east-central Mississippi shows multiple uses prior to their final deposition with burials. Vessel size analysis of a temporal sequence of sherds from midden contexts used sherd thickness and curvature data to show that large vessels became more common. Three explanations are examined to better understand the use of large vessels during this time: bet hedging, costly signaling, and changing technology. The results confirm the use of burial urns in domestic contexts before their final use as interment containers, making technological change the most viable of the three hypotheses.     

Over a Century of Explorations at Etowah

The Etowah site is one of the larger and more famous Mississippian period mound centers in the American Southeast. Despite the fact that over a century of archaeological investigations have been conducted at the site, its history is not as well-understood as sequences of other major Mississippian centers like Moundville or Cahokia. This is because few attempts have been made to synthesize existing information and place the site in a broader social context. In this paper I review previous research at Etowah and present a reconstruction of the site's history as a chiefdom capital. In attempting to understand that sequence, I draw upon the distinctions made by dual-processual theory concerning the orientation of chiefdom political economies and how they vary. Both the specific history of Etowah and the parallels it shares with the sequences of other chiefdom capitals have important implications for understanding more generally the emergence and operation of ranked societies.     

Spondylodendron pranabii—the dominant lycopsid of the late Mississippian vegetation of the Kashmir Himalaya

Cleal, C.J., Bhat, G.M., Singh, K.J., Dar, A.M., Saxena, A. & Chandra, S., February 2016. Spondylodendron pranabii—the dominant lycopsid of the late Mississippian vegetation of the Kashmir Himalaya. Alcheringa 40, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311-5518.

The Sepukhovian fossil floras of the northern margins of Gondwana, on the shores of the Palaeotethys, are dominated by remains of an eligulate, mainly monopodial lycopsid with persistent leaves. The stems show considerable morphological and preservational variation that has historically resulted in the fossils having been assigned to many fossil-species and -genera. However, there is now clear evidence that this simply reflects variation within a single fossil-species, reflecting biological variation and the effects of variable taphonomy, for which the correct taxonomic name is Spondylodendron pranabii (Pal) comb. nov. Part of this morphological variation might have been due to variations in growth rate during the life of the individual plants, which in turn might reflect stressed growing conditions in a wetland habitat. The systematic position of Spondylodendron remains uncertain, owing to the lack of unequivocal evidence of reproductive structures, but it might have affinities with the Sublepidodendraceae.

Christopher J. Cleal [chris.cleal@museumwales.ac.uk], Department of Natural Sciences, National Museum Wales, Cathays Park, Cardiff CF10 3NP, UK; G.M. Bhat [bhatgm@jugaa.com] and A.M. Dar, Department of Geology, University of Jammu, Jammu, India; Kamal Jeet Singh, [kamaljeet31@hotmail.com] and Anju Saxena [anju_saxena2002@yahoo.co.in], Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, 53 University Road, Lucknow-226007, (U.P.) India; Shaila Chandra, Flat Number 105, Beverly Park Apartment 422, New Hyderabad, Lucknow-226007, (U.P.) India.