The Spiro Ceremonial Center

The Spiro Ceremonial Center
Author: James A. Brown
Publisher: U OF M MUSEUM ANTHRO ARCHAEOLOGY
Total Pages: 784
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0915703394

In Volume I of this two-volume set, James A. Brown reports on and interprets decades of archaeological investigation at the Spiro Ceremonial Center, a major site along the Arkansas River in eastern Oklahoma. In Volume 2, he describes the archaeological collections in detail, covering burials, ceramics, stone tools, pipes, beads, textiles, ornaments, and animal bone. Foreword by James B. Griffin. Contributions by Alice M. Brues, Lyle W. Konigsberg, Paul W. Parmalee, and David H. Stansbery.

The Calf Creek Horizon

The Calf Creek Horizon
Author: Jon C. Lohse
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 1086
Release: 2022-01-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1623499771

Often characterized by distinctive chipped-stone technology, the Calf Creek cultural horizon made its first appearance in the central and southern plains of North America some six thousand years ago. Distributed over a known area of more than 500,000 square miles, it is one of the largest post-Paleoindian archaeological cultural complexes identified to date. One of the most notable aspects of Calf Creek culture is its distinctive, deeply notched bifaces, many of which show evidence of heat-treating. Recent targeted dating suggests that these unique traits, which required exacting knapping and other techniques for production, arose in a relatively narrow window, sometime around 5,950–5,700 calendar years before the present. Given the wide geographical distribution of Calf Creek artifacts, however, researchers surmise that these technological innovations, once adopted, spread fairly quickly throughout the associated cultural groups. Editors Jon C. Lohse, Marjorie A. Duncan, and Don G. Wyckoff have collected in this comprehensive volume much of what is currently known about the Calf Creek cultural horizon. In a collaboration involving professional and academic archaeologists, landowners, and avocationalists, The Calf Creek Horizon brings together for the first time in a single source fine details of geographic distribution, regional variability, typology, and technological aspects of Calf Creek material culture. This first-ever “big picture” view will inform and direct related research for years to come.

La Harpe's Post

La Harpe's Post
Author: George H. Odell
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2002-09-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0817311629

This major contribution to contact period studies points to the Lasley Vore site in modern Oklahoma as the most likely first meeting place of Plains Indians and Europeans more than 300 years ago. In 1718, Jean-Baptiste Bénard, Sieur de la Harpe, departed St. Malo in Brittany for the New World. La Harpe, a member of the French bourgeoisie, arrived at Dauphin Island on the Gulf coast to take up the entrepreneurial concession provided by the director of the French colony, Jean Baptiste LeMoyne de Bienville. La Harpe's charge was to open a trading post on the Red River just above a Caddoan village not far from present-day Texarkana. Following the establishment of this post, La Harpe ventured farther north to extend his trade market into the region occupied by the Wichita Indians. Here he encountered a Tawakoni village with an estimated 6,000 inhabitants, a number that swelled to 7,000 during the ten-day visit. Despite years of ethnohistoric and archaeological research, no scholar had successfully established where this important meeting took place. Then in 1988, George Odell and his crew surveyed and excavated an area 13 miles south of Tulsa, along the Arkansas River, that revealed undeniable association of Native American habitation refuse with 18th-century European trade goods. Odell here presents a full account of the presumed location of the Tawakoni village as revealed through the analysis of excavated materials from nine specialist collaborators. In a strikingly well-written narrative report, employing careful study and innovative analysis supported by appendixes containing the excavation data, Odell combines documentary history and archaeological evidence to pinpoint the probable site of the first European contact with North American Plains Indians.

The Archaeology of the Caddo

The Archaeology of the Caddo
Author: Timothy K. Perttula
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 536
Release: 2012-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0803240465

This landmark volume provides the most comprehensive overview to date of the prehistory and archaeology of the Caddo peoples. The Caddos lived in the Southeastern Woodlands for more than 900 years beginning around A.D. 800–900, before being forced to relocate to Oklahoma in 1859. They left behind a spectacular archaeological record, including the famous Spiro Mound site in Oklahoma as well as many other mound centers, plazas, farmsteads, villages, and cemeteries. The Archaeology of the Caddo examines new advances in studying the history of the Caddo peoples, including ceramic analysis, reconstructions of settlement and regional histories of different Caddo communities, Geographic Information Systems and geophysical landscape studies at several spatial scales, the cosmological significance of mound and structure placements, and better ways to understand mortuary practices. Findings from major sites and drainages such as the Crenshaw site, mounds in the Arkansas River basin, Spiro Mound, the Oak Hill Village site, the George C. Davis site, the Willow Chute Bayou Locality, the Hughes site, Big Cypress Creek basin, and the McClelland and Joe Clark sites are also summarized and interpreted. This volume reintroduces the Caddos’ heritage, creativity, and political and religious complexity.

Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America

Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America
Author: Guy E. Gibbon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1020
Release: 2022-01-26
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1136801790

First published in 1998. Did prehistoric humans walk to North America from Siberia? Who were the inhabitants of the spectacular Anasazi cliff dwellings in the Southwest and why did they disappear? Native Americans used acorns as a major food source, but how did they get rid of the tannic acid which is toxic to humans? How does radiocarbon dating work and how accurate is it? Written for the informed lay person, college-level student, and professional, Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America: An Encyclopedia is an important resource for the study of the earliest North Americans; including facts, theories, descriptions, and speculations on the ancient nomads and hunter-gathers that populated continental North America.

Archaeological Perspectives on Warfare on the Great Plains

Archaeological Perspectives on Warfare on the Great Plains
Author: Andrew Clark
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2018-05-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1607326701

The Great Plains has been central to academic and popular visions of Native American warfare, largely because the region’s well-documented violence was so central to the expansion of Euroamerican settlement. However, social violence has deep roots on the Plains beyond this post-Contact perception, and these roots have not been systematically examined through archaeology before. War was part, and perhaps an important part, of the process of ethnogenesis that helped to define tribal societies in the region, and it affected many other aspects of human lives there. In Archaeological Perspectives on Warfare on the Great Plains, anthropologists who study sites across the Plains critically examine regional themes of warfare from pre-Contact and post-Contact periods and assess how war shaped human societies of the region. Contributors to this volume offer a bird’s-eye view of warfare on the Great Plains, consider artistic evidence of the role of war in the lives of indigenous hunter-gatherers on the Plains prior to and during the period of Euroamerican expansion, provide archaeological discussions of fortification design and its implications, and offer archaeological and other information on the larger implications of war in human history. Bringing together research from across the region, this volume provides unprecedented evidence of the effects of war on tribal societies. Archaeological Perspectives on Warfare on the Great Plains is a valuable primer for regional warfare studies and the archaeology of the Great Plains as a whole. Contributors: Peter Bleed, Richard R. Drass, David H. Dye, John Greer, Mavis Greer, Eric Hollinger, Ashley Kendell, James D. Keyser, Albert M. LeBeau III, Mark D. Mitchell, Stephen M. Perkins, Bryon Schroeder, Douglas Scott, Linea Sundstrom, Susan C. Vehik