William H. Marquardt

Shell Mounds in the Southeast: Middens, Monuments, Temple Mounds, Rings, or Works?

Focusing on the southeastern United States, I provide some alternative perspectives on shell mounds previously interpreted as architectural features, temple mounds, and feasting sites. The same pattern of deposition often inferred to indicate mound construction—darker-colored, highly organic strata alternating with lighter-colored, shell-rich strata—can be accounted for by domestic midden accumulation and disposal of refuse away from living areas. Observed abundances of particular shell species can result from local or regional ecological conditions. Site complexes interpreted as architectural may have evolved largely in response to short-term climate changes. Shell rings on the Georgia and South Carolina coasts probably functioned to conserve and store unconfined water. To understand ancient shell mounds, we need a sediment-oriented approach to the study of mound deposits and more attention to the environmental contexts in which shell mounds accumulated.

Complexity and Scale in the Study of Fisher–Gatherer–Hunters: An Example from the Eastern United States

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses complexity and scale in the study of fisher–gatherer–hunters (FGH). Advances in the understanding of FGH complexity can be traced in part to improvements in dating, recovery of paleoecological information, and macrolevel spatial analysis. This research has taken place almost entirely under the controlling model of cultured evolution—cultural ecology. The perspectives of historical materialism can add an important dimension to the evolutionary–ecological paradigm. One of the most important advances in FGH studies since the 1940s has been the improvements in chronological studies, the most dramatic and revolutionary of which is undoubtedly the advent of 14 C dating. Another development having a significant effect on FGH studies has been the increasing emphasis on macrolevel spatial analysis. Certainly no more revolutionary advance regarding FGH societies can be envisioned than the development of special techniques for the recovery and analysis of paleoecological data. The advances in basic chronology building, spatial analysis, and data recovery have taken place in a theoretical framework conditioned predominantly by cultural evolutionism and cultural ecology.

From Shell Midden to Midden-Mound: The Geoarchaeology of Mound Key, an Anthropogenic Island in Southwest Florida, USA.

Mound Key was once the capital of the Calusa Kingdom, a large Pre-Hispanic polity that controlled much of southern Florida. Mound Key, like other archaeological sites along the southwest Gulf Coast, is a large expanse of shell and other anthropogenic sediments. The challenges that these sites pose are largely due to the size and areal extent of the deposits, some of which begin up to a meter below and exceed nine meters above modern sea levels. Additionally, the complex depositional sequences at these sites present difficulties in determining their chronology. Here, we examine the development of Mound Key as an anthropogenic island through systematic coring of the deposits, excavations, and intensive radiocarbon dating. The resulting data, which include the reversals of radiocarbon dates from cores and dates from mound-top features, lend insight into the temporality of site formation. We use these insights to discuss the nature and scale of human activities that worked to form this large island in the context of its dynamic, environmental setting. We present the case that deposits within Mound Key’s central area accumulated through complex processes that represent a diversity of human action including midden accumulation and the redeposition of older sediments as mound fill.

Resolving the Crisis in Archaeological Collections Curation

Professional archaeologists in America seem to have reached a consensus that systematic archaeological collections are vital to current and future comparative research. Current repositories are inadequately designed and insufficiently funded. Minimally, a repository must be housed in a safe, sturdy, secure building equipped to handle curation and conservation as well as special storage functions. It must include areas for collections study and have an effective information storage/retrieval system. It must have a qualified professional staff. While initial processing of materials may be accounted for in research budgets, long-term (in perpetuity) curatorial maintenance charges may be best defrayed by interest income from funds invested by the repository.

TRACKING THE CALUSA: A RETROSPECTIVE

Abstract In an article published in this journal in 1986, I critically reviewed models of the emergence of the Calusa social formation in southwest Florida. An interdisciplinary project that I hoped would provide detailed information with which to refine those models had just begun, so at the time there were few substantive results. In subsequent years, detailed data gathered by an interdisciplinary team have helped improve the models and also provided some surprises.

Lightning whelk natural history and a new sourcing method

ABSTRACT Artifacts made from sinistral (left-handed) whelk shells are commonly found at inland archaeological sites in eastern North America. Past attempts to source the coast of origin of these marine shells based on chemical analyses have provided tentative results. A knowledge of sinistral whelk natural history is essential before attempting shell sourcing studies. The common occurrence of sinistral whelks in the Gulf of Mexico and their uncommon occurrence along both the South Atlantic and Mid-Atlantic bights are documented. Critical biogeographical and morphological information is presented, as well as a new method of sourcing artifacts based on spire-angle measurements. Sinistral whelk artifacts from Spiro, East St. Louis, and Cahokia probably came from the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

In search of Louisiana's past

Neuman, Robert W. An Introduction to Louisiana Archaeology. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984. xvi + 366 pp. including plates, references, and index.

Politics and Production Among the Calusa of South Florida

27.50 cloth.