Archaeology Books

Book SynopsisGuide to the Palaeolithic Artifacts and Features of the Americas is the go-to reference for stone, bone, antler, ivory, and wooden artifacts of the palaeolithic era in the Americas. Written by Ricard Michael Gramly, an expert in the field, this book canvases a century of archaeological literature and scholarship and includes over 150 images to clearly and efficiently classify the artifacts discussed. Each artifact includes all the terms and synonyms by which it is classified, a visual depiction of the artifact, and the time period in which the artifact occurred in.Combining both Old and New World technologies, typologies and practices, this book is a must have for professional and amateur archaeologists, collectors of palaeolithic artifacts, and the casual reader interested in the history of the Americas.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA truly creative, rigorous, and novel interdisciplinary collection that rethinks some of historical archaeology’s most fundamental questions."—Paul Mullins, Indiana University–Purdue UniversityThe division of human society by race, class, and gender has been addressed by scholars in many of the social sciences. Now historical archaeologists are demonstrating how material culture can be used to examine the processes that have erected boundaries between people.Drawing on case studies from around the world, the essays in this volume highlight diverse moments in the rise of capitalist civilization both in Western Europe and its colonies. In the first section, the contributors address the dynamics of the racial system that emerged from European colonialism. They show how archaeological remains shed light on the institution of slavery in the American Southeast, on the treatment of Native Americans by Mormon settlers, and on the color line in colonial southern Africa. The next group of articles considers how gender was negotiated in nineteenth-century New York City, in colonial Ecuador, and on Jamaican coffee plantations. A final section focuses on the issue of class division by examining the built environment of eighteenth-century Catalonia and material remains and housing from early industrial Massachusetts.These essays constitute an archaeology of capitalism and clearly demonstrate the importance of history in shaping cultural consciousness. Arguing that material culture is itself an active agent in the negotiation of social difference, they reveal the ways in which historical archaeologists can contribute to both the definition and dismantling of the lines that divide.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn the late 1700s, as white settlers spilled across the Appalachian Mountains, claiming Cherokee and Creek lands for their own, tensions between Native Americans and pioneers reached a boiling point. Land disputes stemming from the 1791 Treaty of Holston went unresolved, and Knoxville settlers attacked a Cherokee negotiating party led by Chief Hanging Maw resulting in the wounding of the chief and his wife and the death of several Indians. In retaliation, on September 25, 1793, nearly one thousand Cherokee and Creek warriors descended undetected on Knoxville to destroy this frontier town. However, feeling they had been discovered, the Indians focused their rage on Cavett’s Station, a fortified farmstead of Alexander Cavett and his family located in what is now west Knox County. Violating a truce, the war party murdered thirteen men, women, and children, ensuring the story’s status in Tennessee lore.In Massacre at Cavett’s Station, noted archaeologist and Tennessee historian Charles Faulkner reveals the true story of the massacre and its aftermath, separating historical fact from pervasive legend. In doing so, Faulkner focuses on the interplay of such early Tennessee stalwarts as John Sevier, James White, and William Blount, and the role each played in the white settlement of east Tennessee while drawing the ire of the Cherokee who continued to lose their homeland in questionable treaties. That enmity produced some of history’s notable Cherokee war chiefs including Doublehead, Dragging Canoe, and the notorious Bob Benge, born to a European trader and Cherokee mother, whose red hair and command of English gave him a distinct double identity. But this conflict between the Cherokee and the settlers also produced peace-seeking chiefs such as Hanging Maw and Corn Tassel who helped broker peace on the Tennessee frontier by the end of the 18th century. After only three decades of peaceful co-existence with their white neighbors, the now democratic Cherokee Nation was betrayed and lost the remainder of their homeland in the Trail of Tears.Faulkner combines careful historical research with meticulous archaeological excavations conducted in developed areas of the west Knoxville suburbs to illuminate what happened on that fateful day in 1793. As a result, he answers significant questions about the massacre and seeks to discover the genealogy of the Cavetts and if any family members survived the attack. This book is an important contribution to the study of frontier history and a long-overdue analysis of one of East Tennessee’s well-known legends.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisFilling a gap in classroom texts, more than 60 essays by major scholars in the field have been gathered to create the most up-to-date and complete book available on Levantine and Near Eastern archaeology.Table of ContentsForeword William G. DeverIntroduction Suzanne RichardPart I Theory, Method, and ContextGeography of the Levant Barry BeitzelPaleoenvironments of the Levant Arlene Miller RosenArchaeozoology Paula Wapnish and B. HessePaleoethnobotany Peter WarnockMethod and Theory in Syro-Palestinian Archaeology J. S. Holladay, Jr.Bible and Archaeology Walter E. RastLevantine Archaeology T. W. DavisText Sources for Levantine Archaeology: The Bible J. M. MillerWriting and Scripts Gary A. RendsburgSemitic Languages Gary A. RendsburgWriting: The Archaeology of Writing (Writing Materials) Alan R. MillardNorthwest Semitic Epigraphic Sources Alan MillardChronology of the Southern Levant William G. DeverSurvey of Preclassical Architecture in the Levant G. R. H. WrightBronze and Iron Age Burials and Funerary Customs in the Southern Levant Elizabeth Bloch-SmithSubsistence Pastoralism Oystein S. LaBiancaAgriculture David C. HopkinsRoads and Highways David A. DorseyNautical Archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean Deborah N. CarlsonEthnography/Ethnoarchaeology Gloria LondonEthnicity and Material Culture Gloria LondonWomen in the Ancient Near East Susan AckermanEveryday Life (Customs, Manners, and Laws) Victor H. MatthewsArchaeological Survey in the Southern Levant E. B. BanningRestoration of Ancient Monuments: Theory and Practice G. R. H. WrightMetalworking/Mining in the Levant James D. MuhlyWeapons and Warfare G. PhilipCeramics/Kilns Gloria LondonJewelry in the Levant E. E. PlattThe Mosaics of Jordan M. PiccirilloNumismatics (Minting and Monetary Systems/Coinage) in the Levant K. ButcherScarabs William A. WardGIS and Archaeological Survey Gary L. ChristophersonComputer Applications in Archaeology E. B. BanningPart II Cultural Phases and Associated TopicsThe Paleolithic in Syria-Palestine Geoffrey A. Clark and Nancy R. CoinmanThe Neolithic Period G. O. RollefsonPrehistoric Chipped-Stone Technology Gary O. RollefsonThe Chalcolithic of the Southern Levant T. E. LevyThe Nahal Mishmar Hoard from the Judean Desert Miriam TadmorNegev M. HaimanThe Early Bronze Age in the Southern Levant S. RichardSouthern Sinai in the Early Bronze Age II I. Beit-AriehTheory in Archaeology: Culture Change at the End of the Early Bronze Age Jesse C. Long, Jr.Archaeology of the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan Walter E. RastThe Middle Bronze Age (circa 2000-1500 b.c.e.) David IlanCanaanite Religion Beth Alpert NakhaiThe Late Bronze Age lbert LeonardEl-Amarna Texts Victor H. MatthewsTrade and Exchange in the Levant Eric H. ClinePalestine in the Iron Age Randy YounkerReligion and Cult in the Levant: The Archaeological Data William G. DeverGoddesses Susan AckermanSyria-Palestine in the Persian Period Charles E. CarterThe Samaritans T. GilesThe Hellenistic Period Andrea M. BerlinNabateans David F. GrafClassical Text Sources in the Levant David F. GrafJewish Art and Iconography in the Land of Israel Rachel HachliliSynagogues in the Land of Israel Steven FineGolan Synagogues Zvi ?Uri Ma?ozEarly Christian Iconography Linda Sue GalateEarly Christian Churches in Israel Joseph Patrich

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book is an updated edition of Jefferson Chapman's 1985 account of one of the most productive and significant research efforts in the eastern United States. For fourteen years (1967–1981), archaeologists from the University of Tennessee conducted excavations and surveys in the Little Tennessee River Valley, which was being inundated by the TVA's creation of the Tellico Reservoir. The project produced a wealth of new information about more than 12,000 years of Native American history in the region. This revision retains the full text and illustrations of the original edition, with its compelling descriptions of ancient ways of life and the archaeological detective work that was done to obtain that knowledge. The new material, contained in a postscript, summarizes the discoveries, research methods, and other developments that have, over the past ten years, further enhanced our knowledge of the Native Americans who occupied the area. Included, for example, are details about some fascinating new techniques for dating human remains, as well as discussions of burial practices, native crops, new archaeological laws, and the "Bat Creek Stone," a controversial artifact that, according to some claims, gives evidence of migrations of Mediterranean peoples to the New World during Roman times. The Author: Jefferson Chapman is director of the Frank H. McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a research associate professor in the department of anthropology.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe orthodox view of the Mississippian social world hinges on the idea that chiefdoms—dominance- based hierarchical societies in the Eastern Woodlands of North America—vied for power, often violently but at times cooperatively, through political and economic avenues. These chiefdoms represented something of a feudal state in prehistoric North America, which lasted up to the contract period with Europeans around 1500 AD. In From Cahokia to Larson to Moundville, noted archaeologist A. Martin Byers challenges these assumptions and offers a contrasting view by deconstructing the chiefdom model and offering instead an autonomous social world that focused on spiritual renewal and sacred rituals. Byers presents his case through the archaeological record of Cahokia, Larson, and Moundville’s monumental earthworks and, in doing so, reveals the Mississippian social community to be more complex, and more cooperative, than previously envisioned.

Read more less

Book SynopsisArkansas’s diverse geography, spanning the Ozark Mountains, densely forested Timberlands, and Mississippi River Delta, and its complex Native American and Euro American history belie the inat­tentive historical treatment the Natural State has thus far received by scholars. Often disparaged as a cultural and intellectual backwater—and indeed perhaps best known for President Bill Clinton and Wal-Mart—this overly simplified image of Arkansas shadows a state rich in historic significance and the archaeological record. Carl G. Drexler aims to correct this bias in Historical Archaeology of Arkansas. In nine essays that range from Civil War sites to the Ozark Mountains to the nineteenth-century Jewish commu­nity, Drexler and his contributors present an Arkansas unknown to all but those dedicated individu­als working to publicize the state’s hidden diversity. The research presented herein depicts a strong state and federal commitment to documenting Arkansas’s history, perhaps unmatched by any other state in America, and the success of public archaeology through the efforts of the Arkansas Archaeo­logical Survey.Historical Archaeology of Arkansas not only showcases the natural beauty and rich history of Arkansas, but it also serves as a primer for historical inquiry for other state and federal organizations looking to bolster their own programs.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn this innovative work, Julia King moves nimbly among a variety of sources and disciplinary approaches—archaeological, historical, architectural, literary, and art-historical—to show how places take on, convey, and maintain meanings. Focusing on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay region of Maryland, King looks at the ways in which various groups, from patriots and politicians of the antebellum era to present-day archaeologists and preservationists, have transformed key landscapes into historical, indeed sacred, spaces.The sites King examines include the region’s vanishing tobacco farms; St. Mary’s City, established as Maryland’s first capital by English settlers in the seventeenth century; and Point Lookout, the location of a prison for captured Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. As the author explores the historical narratives associated with such places, she uncovers some surprisingly durable myths as well as competing ones. St. Mary’s City, for example, early on became the center of Maryland’s “founding narrative” of religious tolerance, a view commemorated in nineteenth-century celebrations and reflected even today in local museum exhibits and preserved buildings. And at Point Lookout, one private group has established a Confederate Memorial Park dedicated to those who died at the prison, thus nurturing the Lost Cause ideology that arose in the South in the late 1800s, while nearby the custodians of a 1,000-acre state park avoid controversy by largely ignoring the area’s Civil War history, preferring instead to concentrate on recreation and tourism, an unusually popular element of which has become the recounting of ghost stories.As King shows, the narratives that now constitute the public memory in southern Maryland tend to overlook the region’s more vexing legacies, particularly those involving slavery and race. Noting how even her own discipline of historical archaeology has been complicit in perpetuating old narratives, King calls for research—particularly archaeological research—that produces new stories and “counter-narratives” that challenge old perceptions and interpretations and thus convey a more nuanced grasp of a complicated past.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Delaware Valley is a distinct region situated within the Middle Atlantic states, encompassing portions of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. With its cultural epicenter of Philadelphia, its surrounding bays and ports within Maryland and Delaware, and its conglomerate population of European settlers, Native Americans, and enslaved Africans, the Delaware Valley was one of the great cultural hearths of early America. The region felt the full brunt of the American Revolution, briefly served as the national capital in the post-Revolutionary period, and sheltered burgeoning industries amidst the growing pains of a young nation. Yet, despite these distinctions, the Delaware Valley has received less scholarly treatment than its colonial equals in New England and the Chesapeake region.In Historical Archaeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600–1850, Richard Veit and David Orr bring together fifteen essays that represent the wide range of cultures, experiences, and industries that make this region distinctly American in its diversity. From historic-period American Indians living in a rapidly changing world to an archaeological portrait of Benjamin Franklin, from an eighteenth-century shipwreck to the archaeology of Quakerism, this volume highlights the vast array of research being conducted throughout the region. Many of these sites discussed are the locations of ongoing excavations, and archaeologists and historians alike continue to debate the region’s multifaceted identity.The archaeological stories found within Historical Archeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600–1850 reflect the amalgamated heritage that many American regions experienced, though the Delaware Valley certainly exemplifies a richer experience than most: it even boasts the palatial home of a king (Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon and former King of Naples and Spain). This work, thoroughly based on careful archaeological examination, tells the stories of earlier generations in the Delaware Valley and makes the case that New England and the Chesapeake are not the only cultural centers of colonial America.

Read more less

Book SynopsisSoutheastern Native American forms of domestic architecture underwent multiple transitions between the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. In Native American Log Cabins in the Southeast, Gregory A. Waselkov and ten colleagues track the origins of Native American cabins, structures that incorporated a range of features borrowed from indigenous post-in ground building traditions, Euroamerican horizontal notched-log construction, and elements introduced by Africans and African Americans. Grounded in archaeological investigation, their essays illuminate the distinctive cabin forms developed by various southeastern Native groups, including the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Catawba peoples.In a rapidly changing social, economic, and political landscape at the frontiers of an expansionist United States, the log cabin, a northern European house form, proved equally adaptable to the needs of settlers, slaves, and Native peoples. Each found ways to make log cabins their own. Beneath these deceptively simple hewn facades, indigenous principles of correctness guided southeastern Indians’ uses of interior cabin space, creations of raised clay hearths, and maintenance of pits that gave occupants access to the regenerative properties of the Beneath World. The chapters in this volume make important contributions toward a better understanding of houses and households in the Native Southeast by marshalling new data, methods, and theory to address an important but understudied phenomenon.

Read more less

Book SynopsisArchaeological Adaptation: Case Studies of Cultural Transformation from the Southeast and Caribbean honors the work of longtime University of Tennessee anthropology professor Gerald Schroedl, whose career encompassed fieldwork and research in both prehistoric and historic archaeology. Schroedl's early career often focused its analysis on Mississippian and Cherokee sites, while his later years found him delving into historic archaeology in the Caribbean. Revisiting these touchstones of Schroedl's work, editor C. Clifford Boyd here gathers essays around the disciplinary theme of documentation and analysis of change. Contributors study excavations in Tennessee, Virginia, South Carolina, wider southern Appalachia, and the Caribbean, providing insight into Native American, African American, and English civilizations. Artifacts, architecture, human and structural remains, and climatic and environmental factors yield insight into changing settlement patterns, tribal practices, material culture, economic and political power relations, and health and nutrition. A preface tracing Schroedl's career and an afterword addressing developments in archaeological theory round out the volume.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book presents archaeology addressing all periods in the Native Southeast as a tribute to the career of Jefferson Chapman, longtime director of the Frank H. McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Written by Chapman’s colleagues and former students, the chapters add to our current understanding of early native southeastern peoples as well as Chapman’s original work and legacy to the field of archaeology. Some chapters review, reevaluate, and reinterpret archaeological evidence using new data, contemporary methods, or alternative theoretical perspectives— something that Chapman, too, fostered throughout his career. Others address the history and significance of archaeological collections curated at the Frank H. McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture, where Chapman was the director for nearly thirty years. The essays cover a broad range of archaeological material studies and methods and in doing so carry forth Chapman’s legacy.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less