David H. Dye

Animal pelt caps and Mississippian ritual sodalities

Archaeologists have become increasingly interested in ancient belief systems and it is recognized that the material remains of past societies may effectively aid in constructing informed interpretations of religious institutions and ritual practice. Recent research seeks linkages between ethnographic accounts and eastern Woodlands representational imagery. In this article, I examine depictions of animal pelt headdresses and marshal prairie–plains ethnographic accounts to argue that Mississippian figural imagery denotes more than status ascription. Animal pelt headgear was a distinctive and prominent feature of Mississippian belief systems, which materialized transcendent beings in figural art. The implication is that Mississippian ritual sodalities may be comparable to historic prairie–plains exemplars. Closer analytic attention and focus is warranted to assess the cultural contexts in which ceremonial regalia is visualized in Mississippian art. In this regard, ritual headgear may help identify specific culture heroes venerated within the context of ritual sodalities.

GEORGE A. LIDBERG JR. AND DEPRESSION-ERA ARCHAEOLOGY IN TENNESSEE

Abstract The 1930s were a time of ferment for American archaeology that expanded through its inclusion in New Deal–era federal relief programs. The passage of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Act in 1933 and establishment of a salvage archaeology program in response to proposed impoundments made the TVA a major locus of archaeological activity in the eastern United States. One of those participants was George A. Lidberg Jr., a somewhat typical Works Progress Administration (WPA) supervisor, who like many TVA archaeologists was trained in the Midwest. Lidberg’s career was effectively ended by World War II. This paper presents biographical information on Lidberg and reviews the sites at which he worked. Such biographies are important in that they provide insights into the unprecedented challenges that faced the men and women responsible for implementing massive-scale federal work relief salvage programs in the Southeast.

The Holly Bluff style

ABSTRACT We recognize a new style of Mississippian-period art in the North American Southeast, calling it Holly Bluff. It is a two-dimensional style of representational art that appears solely on containers: marine shell cups and ceramic vessels. Iconographically, the style focuses on the depiction of zoomorphic supernatural powers of the Beneath World. Seriating the known corpus of images allows us to characterize three successive style phases, Holly Bluff I, II, and III. Using limited data, we source the style to the northern portion of the lower Mississippi Valley.

Carson Lake Punctated Sociological implications of a ceramic motif from the Central Mississippi Valley

A distinctive ceramic motif, a series of punctations within a pendant triangular field, has a limited distribution within the central portion of the Nodena phase region of northeastern Arkansas and southeastern Missouri. Based on the presence of key horizon markers, the ceramic crafting took place within a generation or two during the protohistoric period. The motif’s distribution is suggestive of a localized group of potters engaged in some type of religious or social interaction. In this article, we briefly outline a model to interpret this distinctive cluster of a ceramic motif.

Conflict and War, Archaeology of: Behavior and Social Organization

Archaeologists have a long-standing interest in the evolution of human conflict and war. They identify three modes of aggression and violence based on the archaeological record: self-redress homicides, feuds, and war. Self-redress homicides predominated early in human history and continued among egalitarian hunter-gatherers. Feuds are the typical means of tribal justice for nonegalitarian hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and small-scale farming communities. Warfare employs organized deadly force by agricultural chiefdoms and various state societies that seek to alter the balance of power between autonomous political communities. The ways in which violent practices are constituted, result in part from the nature and scale of human social organization.