Middle Atlantic Prehistory

Middle Atlantic Prehistory
Author: Heather A. Wholey
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2018-03-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1442228768

Regional identities and practices are often debated in American archaeology, but Middle Atlantic prehistorians have largely refrained from such discussions, focusing instead on creating chronologies and studying socio-political evolution from the perspective of sub-regions. What is Middle Atlantic prehistoric archaeology? What are the questions and methods that identify our practice in this region or connect research in our region to larger anthropological themes? Middle Atlantic Prehistory: Foundations and Practice provides a basic survey of Middle Atlantic prehistoric archaeology and serves as an important reference for situating the development of Middle Atlantic prehistoric archaeology within the present context of culture area studies. This edited volume is a regional, historic overview of important themes, topics, and approaches in Middle Atlantic prehistory; covering major practical and theoretical debates and controversies in the region and in the discipline. Each chapter is holistic in its review of the historical development of a particular theme, in evaluating its contributions to current scholarship, and in proposing future directions for productive scholarly work. Contributing authors represent the full range of professional practice in archaeology and include university professors, cultural resources professionals, government regulatory/review archaeologists and museums curators with many years of practical and theoretical immersion in his/her chapter topic, and is highly regarded in the discipline and in the region for their expertise. Middle Atlantic Prehistory provides a much-needed synthesis and historical overview for academic and cultural resource archaeologists and independent scholars working in the Middle Atlantic region in particular.

Material Culture from Prehistoric Virginia

Material Culture from Prehistoric Virginia
Author: William Jack Hranicky
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 550
Release: 2011
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 145672410X

Material Culture from Prehistoric Virginia: Volume 1 is one volume of a two-volume set. This two-volume set is available in black and white and in color. Volume 1 contains artifact listings from A through L. Volume 2 contains the remainder of the alphabetical listings. These publications contain over 10,000 prehistoric artifacts mainly from Virginia, but the publication covers the eastern U. S. The set starts with Pre-Clovis and goes through Woodland times with some Indian ethnography and rockart. Each volume is indexed, contains references, has charts and graphs, drawings, photographs, artifact dates, and artifact descriptions. These volumes contain artifacts that have never appeared in the archaeological literature. From beginners to experienced archaeologists, they offer a complete library for the American Indian culture and experience. If the prehistoric Indian made it, an example is probably shown.

A Most Indispensable Art

A Most Indispensable Art
Author: James B. Petersen
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1996
Genre: Crafts & Hobbies
ISBN: 9780870499159

This collection of essays chronicles the diversity and richness of one broad category of traditional material culture - fiber industries or textiles - among prehistoric and historic Native Americans in eastern North America. Such industries, which include basketry, fabrics, cordage, and netting, played an important role in the economic, social, and ceremonial life of indigenous cultures. However, because of the extreme age of the artifacts, their fragile nature, and unfavorable preservation conditions, knowledge of these industries has long been incomplete - resulting in a gap in scholarship that this volume does much to address.

The Woodland Southeast

The Woodland Southeast
Author: David G. Anderson
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 697
Release: 2002-05-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0817311378

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.

Early Native Americans in West Virginia: The Fort Ancient Culture

Early Native Americans in West Virginia: The Fort Ancient Culture
Author: Darla Spencer
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 1467118516

Once thought of as Indian hunting grounds with no permanent inhabitants, West Virginia is teeming with evidence of a thriving early native population. Today's farmers can hardly plow their fields without uncovering ancient artifacts, evidence of at least ten thousand years of occupation. Members of the Fort Ancient culture resided along the rich bottomlands of southern West Virginia during the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric periods. Lost to time and rediscovered in the 1880s, Fort Ancient sites dot the West Virginia landscape. This volume explores sixteen of these sites, including Buffalo, Logan and Orchard. Archaeologist Darla Spencer excavates the fascinating lives of some of the Mountain State's earliest inhabitants in search of who these people were, what languages they spoke and who their descendants may be.