Further Reading.

Since the early 1970s, southeastern archaeologists have focused their attention on identifying the function of prehistoric sites and settlement practices during the Early Archaic period (ca. 9,000-10,500 B.P.). The Hardaway site in the North Carolina Piedmont, one of the most important archaeological sites in eastern North America, has not yet figured notably in this research. Daniel's reanalysis of the Hardaway artifacts provides a broad range of evidence-including stone tool morphology, intrasite distributions of artifacts, and regional distributions of stone raw material types- that suggests that Hardaway played a unique role in Early Archaic settlement.

The Hardaway site functioned as a base camp where hunting and gathering groups lived for extended periods. From this camp they exploited nearby stone outcrops in the Uwharrie Mountains to replenish expended toolkits. Based on the results of this study, Daniel's new model proposes that settlement was conditioned less by the availability of food resources than by the limited distribution of high-quality knappable stone in the region. These results challenge the prevalent view of Early Archaic settlement that group movement was largely confined by the availability of food resources within major southeastern river valleys.

About the Author:
I. Randolph Daniel, Jr., is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at East Carolina University.

Reviews:
Daniel provides a valuable description of the fieldwork and discoveries that have been made down through the years at the Hardaway site. His interpretation of the data, while controversial, will provoke much needed new debate, analysis, and fieldwork directed to resolving the nature of early southeastern settlement systems.
--David G. Anderson,Southeast Archeological Center, NPS

Hardaway Revisited is an important reanalysis of one of the most important archaeological sites in eastern North America. Daniel's analysis yields new insight into what happened at Hardaway during the Early Archaic and how its inhabitants adapted to the local piedmont environment.
--Larry R. Kimball, Appalachian State University

Other Information:
February
328 pages, 6 x 9, illustrated
ISBN 0-8173-0900-4

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'The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point: Place of Rings' cover. Title:
The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point: Place of Rings

Author:
Jon L. Gibson

All information on this book taken from the
University Press of Florida web site at:
http://www.upf.com/Spring2001/gibson.html

Description:
Jon Gibson confronts the intriguing mystery of Poverty Point, the ruins of a large prehistoric Indian settlement that was home to one of the most fascinating ancient cultures in eastern North America.

The 3,500-year-old site in northeastern Louisiana is known for its large, elaborate earthworks--a series of concentric, crescent-shaped dirt rings and bird-shaped mounds. With its imposing 25-mile core, it is one of the largest archaic constructions on American soil. It's also one of the most puzzling: Perplexing questions haunt Poverty Point, and archaeologists still speculate about life and culture at the site, its age, how it was created, and if it was at the forefront of an emerging complex society.

Gibson, the eminent authority on the site, boldly launches the first full-scale political, economic, and organizational analysis of Poverty Point and nearby affiliated sites. Writing in an informal style, he examines the period's architecture, construction, tools and appliances, economy, exchange, and ceremonies.

Gibson's engaging, well-illustrated account of Poverty Point brings to life one of the oldest earthworks of its size in the Western Hemisphere, the hub of a massive exchange network among native American peoples reaching a third of the way across the present-day United States.

About the Author:
Jon L. Gibson is professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Archaeological Studies at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. He is the author of Ancient Earthworks of the Ouachita Valley in Louisiana and the editor of Exchange in the Lower Mississippi Valley and Contiguous Areas at 1100 B.C.

Review:
•Gibson, the grand old man of Poverty Point archaeology, has presented his personal reflections on his and others' extensive work at this mysterious and awe-inspiring site. Sit back and take an easy and relaxed journey as he recounts (in his equally mysterious Louisiana voice) the setting, meaning, and history of archaeological thought that surround the site. His more than fair amount of speculation will get archaeologists thinking anew about the 'place of rings.
--Mike Russo, Southeastern Archeological Center, National Park Service, Tallahassee, Florida

Other Information:
February. 292pp. 6 X 9.
64 b&w photos and drawings, 7 maps, table, glossary, suggested reading.
ISBN 0-8130-1833-1

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Title:
Archaeology of the Mid-Holocene Southeast

Editors:
Kenneth E. Sassaman and David G. Anderson

All information on this book taken from the
University Press of Florida web site at:
http://www.upf.com/Fall1996/sassaman.html

Description:
This volume summarizes our archeological knowledge of natives who inhabited the American Southeast from 8,000 to 3,000 years ago and examines evidence of many of the native cultural expressions observed by early European explorers, including long-distance exchange, plant domestication, mound building, social ranking, and warfare.

Contents:
Section I. Mid-Holocene Environments
1.Geoarchaeology and the Mid-Holocene Landscape History of the Greater Southeast, by Joseph Schuldenrein
2.Mid-Holocene Forest History of Florida and the Coastal Plain of Georgia and South Carolina, by William A. Watts, Eric C. Grimm, and T. C. Hussey

Section II. Technology
3.Changing Strategies of Lithic Technological Organization, by Daniel S. Amick and Philip J. Carr
4.Technological Innovations in Economic and Social Contexts, by Kenneth E. Sassaman
5.Middle and Late Archaic Architecture, by Kenneth E. Sassaman and R. Jerald Ledbetter

Section III. Subsistence and Health
6.The Paleoethnobotanical Record for the Mid-Holocene Southeast, by Kristen J. Gremillion
7.Mid-Holocene Faunal Exploitation in the Southeastern United States, by Bonnie W. Styles and Walter E. Klippel
8.Biocultural Inquiry into Archaic Period Populations of the Southeast: Trauma and Occupational Stress, by Maria O. Smith

Section IV. Regional Settlement Variation
9.Approaches to Modeling Regional Settlement in the Archaic Period Southeast, by David G. Anderson
10.Southeastern Mid-Holocene Coastal Settlements, by Michael Russo
11.Accounting for Submerged Mid-Holocene Archaeological Sites in the Southeast: A Case Study from the Chesapeake Bay Estuary, Virginia, by Dennis B. Blanton

Section V. Regional Integration and Organization
12.The Emergence of Long-Distance Exchange Networks in the Southeastern United States, by Richard W. Jefferies
13.A Consideration of the Social Organization of the Shell Mound Archaic, by Cheryl P. Claassen
14.Southeastern Archaic Mounds, by Michael Russo
15.Poverty Point and Greater Southeastern Prehistory: The Culture That Did Not Fit, by Jon L. Gibson

About the Editors:
Kenneth E. Sassaman is archaeologist with the Savannah River Archaeological Research Program, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, and instructor in the Department of History and Anthropology at Augusta College, Augusta, Georgia. He is the author of Early Pottery in the Southeast: Tradition and Innovation in Cooking Technology.

David G. Anderson is archaeologist with the Southeast Archaeological Center, National Park Service, Tallahassee, Florida. He is the author of The Savannah River Chiefdoms: Political Change in the Late Prehistoric Southeast. They are coeditors of The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast.

Reviews:
•Sassaman and Anderson's volume is among the best of its kind. It is expertly edited and tightly organized, there is thematic consistency throughout, and virtually all of the illustrations are well-executed. While Archaeology of the Mid-Holocene Southeast deals specifically with the American Southeast, it will be indispensable to any researcher (including those in the Northeast) who wishes to place the archaeology of his or her region in a relevant comparative context.
--Northeast Anthropology

•With the publication of Archaeology of the Mid-Holocene Southeast, we see a regional and chronological variation in the Archaic that includes mound building, long-distance exchange, intergroup strife, and a better understanding of technology and subsistence practices. Quite simply, Sassaman and Anderson, along with the contributors to this volume, have succeeded in redefining the Archaic.
--Florida Anthropologist

•With this important volume, the editors serve notice that old characterizations of the cultures of the Archaic period have been buried under the back dirt of new excavations and new interpretations. . . . It places the Archaic cultures squarely at the forefront of archaeological theory.
--From the foreword by Jerald T. Milanich

Other Information:
1996. 416 pp. 6 X 9.
10 b&w photographs, 79 drawings, tables, maps, bibliography, index.
ISBN 0-8130-1434-4
ISBN 0-8130-1855-2

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