Nancy Marie White

WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT THE USEFUL DIVERSITY OF THEORY IN SOUTHEASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY

Abstract Theory is crucial but has become boring and unintelligible; it is often ignored by most professionals. Archaeology must include a foundation of culture history, processual science, and postprocessual imagination and counteraction of bias. Further, all archaeology should aim for public aspects and practical applications. Theoretical writing must be clear and avoid pretension. Gender bias in Southeastern archaeology is one of the worst distortions of the prehistoric record for what were probably matrilineal societies. Diverse humanistic approaches from many (including non-archaeological) viewpoints can provide worthwhile avenues for investigation with new scientific tools. Narrow interpretive frameworks should be avoided in favor of the delightful banquet of multiple simultaneous or blended approaches.

Fort San José, a Remote Spanish Outpost in Northwest Florida, 1700–1721

Spanish inroads into North America targeted early the land that is now Florida, with sixteenth-century explorations and seventeenth-century missions. In northwest Florida, between the major settlements of St. Marks/San Luis (today, Tallahassee) and Pensacola, the little-known Fort San Jose, near the modern town of Port St. Joe, was an outpost and rest stop along the northeastern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Fort San Jose was originally and briefly occupied in 1701 and reoccupied from 1719 to 1721. New research on this fort is possible because a large collection of materials and data has just become available for professional study. We document its position as a way station between the larger centers and a home for petty tyrants, soldiers, convicts, prostitutes, Indians (from both Mexico and the southeastern USA), and probably smugglers. Though today the archeological site is mostly an empty, beautiful white sugar sand beach, in the early eighteenth century here, Fort San Jose was a small but significant player in the wider spheres of international conflicts and politics.

A Review of: “People of the Shoals: Stallings Culture of the Savannah River Valley”

Stallings Island, in the middle Savannah River (Georgia/South Carolina) near the Fall Line, is a rich archaeological site, excavated frequently over the last 150 years. It is the major locus for the Stallings culture, famous for its fiber-tempered, often highly decorated ceramics, the earliest in North America. This book describes the Stallings adaptation and compares it with earlier and later cultures, and with those upriver and downriver to the coast, 200 km away. Kenneth Sassaman and colleagues have done much innovative work: dating soot on soapstone (steatite) vessels, researching old records and collections,