The Biltmore Mound and Hopewellian Mound Use in the Southern Appalachians

Kimball, Larry R.; Whyte, Thomas R.; Crites, Gary D.

doi:10.1179/sea.2010.29.1.004

Cited by 23 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Intermittently investigated since the 1880s (Dickens, 1976;Heye, 1919;Keel, 1976 Jefferies et al, 1994;Kimball et al, 2010;Knight, 1990Knight, , 2001Lindauer and Blitz, 1997;Milanich et al, 1997;Sears 1956). This research contributes to a growing body of work in the Eastern Woodlands (e.g., Buikstra and Charles 1999;Howey 2012;Kidder 2011;Sassaman 2010;Thompson and Turck 2009) that pattern challenges traditional models that view monuments such as platform mounds as indicators of emergent sociopolitical hierarchies (Childe 1950, Renfrew 1973.…”

Section: The Garden Creek Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Prospecting for New Questions: Integrating Geophysics to Define Anthropological Research Objectives and Inform Excavation Strategies at Monumental Sites

Horsley

Wright

Barrier

2014

Archaeological Prospection

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Abstract:Geophysical data have the potential to significantly contribute to archaeological research projects when effectively integrated with more traditional methods. Although pre-existing archaeological questions about a site may be answered using geophysical methods, beginning an investigation with an extensive geophysical survey can assist in understanding the function and archaeological potential of a site, and may even transform preconceptions about the type and spatial organisation of features that are present. In this way, these prospection tools not only accurately locate and map features to allow recovery of cultural material for identification and dating, we argue that they can go much further, allowing us to prospect for new and appropriate archaeological and anthropological research questions. Such an approach is best realised when geophysical and traditional archaeologists work together to define new objectives and strategies to address them, and by maintaining this collaboration to allow continual feedback between geophysical and archaeological data. A flexible research design is therefore essential in order to allow the methodologies to adapt to the site, the results, and the questions being posed. This methodology is demonstrated through two case studies from mound sites in the Southeast United States: the transitional Mississippian Washausen site in Illinois; and the Middle Woodland Garden Creek site in North Carolina. In both cases, integrating geophysical methods throughout the archaeological investigations has resulted in multiple phases of generating and addressing new research objectives. While clearly beneficial at these two mound sites in the Southeast U.S., this interdisciplinary approach has obvious implications well beyond these temporal and geographic areas.Geophysical methods have become a common part of the archaeologist's toolkit in southeastern North America, where they are increasingly utilised to explore large sites and landscapes (e.g. Kvamme, 2003; Peterson, 2007;Horsley and Wall, 2009;Thompson and Pluckhahn, 2010;Burks and Cook, 2011). Often, however, these non-invasive methods have been used more narrowly, to locate specific buried features for targeting in subsequent excavations. This is especially true in commercial applications that require the production of maps of anomalies worth more invasive testing.Although very effective in these situations, we illustrate that geophysics can be deployed to better advantage in research contexts. (This paper focuses on research-driven projects, our * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 610 526 5025; fax: +1 610 526 5655; e-mail: cbarrier@brynmawr.edu. approach-and geophysical surveys in general-is also amenable to commercial contexts: e.g. Johnson and Haley, 2006;Lockhart and Green, 2006). In the mid-1990s, Boucher (1996 argued that geophysical methods were not used to their full potential. Citing examples from the U.K., he determined this resulted from poor communication between geophysicists and archaeologists. Nearly two decades on, th...

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Section: The Garden Creek Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Prospecting for New Questions: Integrating Geophysics to Define Anthropological Research Objectives and Inform Excavation Strategies at Monumental Sites

Horsley

Wright

Barrier

2014

Archaeological Prospection

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“…On the whole, investigations of ceremonialism and monumentality at Middle Woodland villages far outnumber studies of everyday life. In the last 25 years, on the basis of surface collections, shovel tests, geophysical survey, and horizontal excavations, village occupations have been inferred at Cold Springs, Kolomoki, Leake, and Tunacunhee in Georgia (Fish and Jefferies 1986;Jefferies 1994Jefferies , 2006Keith 2011Keith , 2013Pluckhahn 2000Pluckhahn , 2003; Garden Creek and Biltmore in North Carolina (Keel 1976;Kimball et al 2010Kimball et al , 2013Wright 2014a, b); Walling and Armory in Alabama (Eubanks 2013;Knight 1990); and Crystal River, Fort Center, McKeithen, and several other sites in northern Florida (Milanich et al 1997;Pluckhahn and Thompson 2013;Russo et al 2006;Stephenson et al 2002). Only some of these villages, however, have undergone extensive excavation, and even fewer have received attention in the published literature.…”

Section: Some Archaeologists Disagree With This Model's Characterizatmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several recent studies have provided evidence that supports Knight's model, though it is worth noting that the material correlates of feasting (e.g., Dietler and Hayden 2001) are not always straightforwardly discernable at Middle Woodland sites. For example, remarkably well-preserved remains of a Middle Woodland feast were recently recovered at the Biltmore Mound in western North Carolina; consisting of elements from diverse animal species and exotic artifacts, this assemblage has been interpreted as evidence for Hopewellian ceremonialism in the Appalachian Summit (Kimball et al 2010(Kimball et al , 2013. The construction of Mound A at Roberts Island, Florida, also may relate to communal feasting activities, insofar as the oyster shells in mound fills appear to have been collected and processed over a shorter period of time-perhaps corresponding with a feasting event-than those from midden deposits (Sampson 2015).…”

Section: Feasting and Mortuary Ritualmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local and “Global” Perspectives on the Middle Woodland Southeast

Wright

2016

J Archaeol Res

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During the Middle Woodland period, from 200 BC to AD 600, south-eastern societies erected monuments, interacted widely, and produced some of the most striking material culture of the pre-Columbian era, but these developments are often overshadowed by the contemporaneous florescence of Hopewell culture in Ohio. I argue that the demonstrable material links between the Middle Woodland Southeast and Midwest demand that we cease to analyze these regional archaeological records in isolation and adopt multiscalar perspectives on the social fields that emerged from and impacted local Middle Woodland societies. In synthesizing recent research on Middle Woodland settlement, monumentality, interaction, and social organization, I make explicit comparisons between the Middle Woodland Southeast and Ohio Hopewell, revealing both commonalities and contrasts. New methodological approaches in the Southeast, including geophysical survey techniques, Bayesian chronological modeling, and high-resolution provenance analyses, promise to further elucidate site-specific histories and intersite connectivity. By implementing theoretical frameworks that simultaneously consider these local and global dimensions of Middle Woodland sociality, we may establish the southeastern Middle Woodland period as an archaeological context capable of elucidating the deep history of the Eastern Woodlands as well as long-standing issues surrounding middle-range societies.

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“…Groups of humans visiting the uplands from the west brought with them lithic materials and tools made of Ridge and Valley province chert, jasper, chalcedony, and quartzite. Lithic assemblages of most prehistoric sites in the region, with the exception of those dating to the Middle Archaic period, 8000-5000 B.P., are dominated by these exogenous materials imported primarily as finished artifacts by means of human migration and to a lesser extent exchange (Kimball et al 2010;Purrington 1983;Whyte 2013). As soon as humans began to discard artifacts in the Appalachian Summit, in the late Pleistocene epoch, they inadvertently provided their descendants with the "gifts of the ancestors"-high quality lithic materials that could potentially be discovered and used to supply their tool kits.…”

Section: Lithic Materials Of the Appalachian Summitmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The inadvertent anthropogenic lithic provisioning of the Appalachian Summit probably began 10,000 years ago with the occasional loss and discard of fluted points and other chipped stone artifacts of exogenous materials ( Perkinson 1971Perkinson , 1973Purrington 1983;Whyte 2010). This provisioning was punctuated in the Late Archaic period between 5000 and 3000 B.P.…”

Section: Anthropogenic Lithic Provisioning In the Appalachian Summitmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gifts of the Ancestors: Secondary Lithic Recycling in Appalachian Summit Prehistory

Whyte¹

2014

Am. antiq.

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Evidence of systematic secondary lithic recycling at the Katie Griffith site and Church Rocksheiter No. 2 in the mountains of western North Carolina is presented. It is proposed that recycling and reuse of found stone artifacts in the Early Woodland period of the Appalachian Summit region of the southeastern United States was a regular lithic procurement option. It is concluded that systematic secondary lithic recycling was widespread in prehistory, provides an avenue for exploring economizing responses to raw material procurement challenges, and must be accounted for when using lithic artifacts in reconstructions and explanations of human mobility, exchange, and technological organization, and in archaeological constructions of lithic artifact typologies.

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The Biltmore Mound and Hopewellian Mound Use in the Southern Appalachians

Cited by 23 publications

References 11 publications

Prospecting for New Questions: Integrating Geophysics to Define Anthropological Research Objectives and Inform Excavation Strategies at Monumental Sites

Prospecting for New Questions: Integrating Geophysics to Define Anthropological Research Objectives and Inform Excavation Strategies at Monumental Sites

Local and “Global” Perspectives on the Middle Woodland Southeast

Gifts of the Ancestors: Secondary Lithic Recycling in Appalachian Summit Prehistory

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