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People of the Morning Star : a novel of North America's forgotten past
A religious miracle: the Cahokians believed that the divine hero Morning Star had been resurrected in the flesh. But not all is fine and stable in glorious Cahokia. To the astonishment of the ruling clan, an attempt is made on the living god's life. Now it is up to Morning Star's aunt, Matron Blue Heron, to keep it quiet until she can uncover the plot and bring the culprits to justice. If she fails, Cahokia will be torn asunder in warfare, rage, and blood as civil war consumes them all.
BOOK
The Archaeology of Everyday Life at Early Moundville
A fascinating examination of family life and social
relationships at this powerful prehistoric community, which at
its peak was the largest city north of Mexico
Complex Mississippian polities were neither developed nor
sustained in a vacuum. A broad range of small-scale social groups
played a variety of roles in the emergence of regionally
organized political hierarchies that governed large-scale
ceremonial centers. Recent research has revealed the extent to
which interactions among corporately organized clans led to the
development, success, and collapse of Moundville. These insights
into Moundville’s social complexity are based primarily on
the study of monumental architecture and mortuary ceremonialism.
Less is known about how everyday domestic practices produced and
were produced by broader networks of power and inequality in the
region. Wilson’s research addresses this gap in our
understanding by analyzing and interpreting large-scale
architectural and ceramic data sets from domestic contexts. This
study has revealed that the early Mississippian Moundville
community consisted of numerous spatially discrete
multi-household groups, similar to ethnohistorically described
kin groups from the southeastern United States. Hosting feasts,
dances, and other ceremonial events were important strategies by
which elite groups created social debts and legitimized their
positions of authority. Non-elite groups, on the other hand,
maintained considerable economic and ritual autonomy through
diversified production activities, risk sharing, and household
ceremonialism. Organizational changes in Moundville’s
residential occupation highlight the different ways kin groups
defined and redefined their corporate status and identities over
the long term.
eBook
Etowah
A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication This is a detailed reconstruction of the waxing and waning of political fortunes among the chiefly elites at an important center of the prehistoric world. At the time the first Europeans arrived in the New World, thousands of earthen platform mounds dotted the landscape of eastern North America. Only a few of the mound sites have survived the ravages of time and the devastation of pilferers; one of these valuable monuments is Etowah, located near Cartersville in northern Georgia. Over a period of more than 100 years, excavations of the site’s six mounds, and in particular Mound C, has yielded a wealth of artifacts, including marble statues, copper embossed plates, ceremonial items, and personal adornments. These objects indicate an extensive trading network between Mississippian centers and confirm contact with Spanish conquistadores near Etowah in the mid-1500s. Adam King has analyzed the architecture and artifacts of Etowah and deduced its vital role in the prehistory of the area. He advances a plausible historical sequence and a model for the ancient town's complex political structure. The chiefdom society relied upon institutional social ranking, permanent political offices, religious ideology, a redistribution of goods and services, and the willing support of the constituent population. King reveals strategies used by the paramount chiefs to maintain their sources of power and to control changes in the social organization. Elite alliances did not necessarily involve the extreme asymmetry of political domination and tribute extraction. King's use of ceramic assemblages recovered from Etowah to determine the occupation history and the construction sequence of public facilities (mounds and plazas) at the center is significant. This fresh interpretation of the Etowah site places it in a contemporary social and political context with other Mississippian cultures. It is a one-volume sourcebook for the Etowah polity and its neighbors and will, therefore, command an eager audience of scholars and generalists.
eBook
Climate and Culture Change in North America AD 900–1600
Climate change is today's news, but it isn't a new phenomenon. Centuries-long cycles of heating and cooling are well documented for Europe and the North Atlantic. These variations in climate, including the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), AD 900 to 1300, and the early centuries of the Little Ice Age (LIA), AD 1300 to 1600, had a substantial impact on the cultural history of Europe. In this pathfinding volume, William C. Foster marshals extensive evidence that the heating and cooling of the MWP and LIA also occurred in North America and significantly affected the cultural history of Native peoples of the American Southwest, Southern Plains, and Southeast.
Correlating climate change data with studies of archaeological sites across the Southwest, Southern Plains, and Southeast, Foster presents the first comprehensive overview of how Native American societies responded to climate variations over seven centuries. He describes how, as in Europe, the MWP ushered in a cultural renaissance, during which population levels surged and Native peoples substantially intensified agriculture, constructed monumental architecture, and produced sophisticated works of art. Foster follows the rise of three dominant cultural centers-Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, Cahokia on the middle Mississippi River, and Casas Grandes in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico-that reached population levels comparable to those of London and Paris. Then he shows how the LIA reversed the gains of the MWP as population levels and agricultural production sharply declined; Chaco Canyon, Cahokia, and Casas Grandes collapsed; and dozens of smaller villages also collapsed or became fortresses.
eBook
Foraminifers and conodonts in the Danlu section, South China: implications for the Viséan–Serpukhovian boundary (Mississippian)
The Viséan–Serpukhovian boundary is poorly defined in South China, hampering regional and global stratigraphical correlations. The foraminiferal and conodont distribution of the Baping Formation in the carbonate-slope Danlu section permits the recognition of an interval from the middle Viséan to the uppermost Serpukhovian in a continuous succession. The base of the Serpukhovian in Danlu is recognized by the first occurrences of Janischewskina delicata, Howchinia subplana and questionable ‘Millerella’ tortula. At a slightly younger level, the conodont Lochriea ziegleri is first recorded. A calibration on the first occurrence of L. ziegleri in different basins at a global scale has been revised compared to auxiliary markers within the ammonoids and foraminifers. The late occurrence of L. ziegleri in the Danlu section also supports a lack of synchronicity in the global first occurrence of this taxon. This study calls for the recognition of a new base for the Serpukhovian under a far better correlation between different zonal schemes and fossil groups.
Journal Article
Phylogeny and macroevolution of a “dead clade walking”: a systematic revision of the Paragaricocrinidae (Crinoidea)
The Paragaricocrinidae is an enigmatic late Paleozoic family of camerate crinoids that retained a robustly constructed calyx more typical of Devonian to Early Mississippian crinoids. The discovery of the oldest member of this family, Tuscumbiacrinus madisonensis n. gen. n. sp., initiated a phylogenetic investigation of the Paragaricocrinidae and consideration of its diversification and paleobiogeographic distribution. Phylogenetic analyses demonstrate the need to describe Tuscumbiacrinus n. gen and conduct revisions to preexisting taxa, resulting in the description of Palenciacrinus mudaensis n. gen. n. sp.; Pulcheracrinus n. gen.; Nipponicrinus hashimotoi n. gen. n. sp.; and Nipponicrinus akiyoshiensis n. gen. n. sp. Megaliocrinus exotericus Strimple is reassigned to Pulcheracrinus n. gen. In addition to having an anachronistic morphology, relatively few specimens are known through the ca. 76-million-year duration of this family. This pattern is unlikely to have resulted from low fossil sampling alone, and instead likely reflects low abundance and/or taxonomic richness of a long-lived waning clade. From its apparent origination in Laurussia during the Mississippian, the Paragaricocrinidae diversified into a cosmopolitan clade. Following a diversity drop during the Pennsylvanian, the Paragaricocrinidae persisted but exemplified characteristics of a dead clade walking until its eventual extinction during the middle Permian (Wordian). A new crinoid, Tuscumbiacrinus madisonensis n. gen. n. sp., is described from the Middle Mississippian (about 340 million years ago) of northern Alabama. It belongs to the enigmatic family Paragaricocrinidae, which is now known globally from the Middle Mississippian through the middle Permian. Tuscumbiacrinus n. gen. is the oldest known representative of this family. A re-examination of the entire family resulted in the recognition of four new genera, four new species, and one species is reassigned to a new genus. The Paragaricocrinidae is unusual because the anatomical construction of the body is more typical of morphologies characterizing Middle Paleozoic crinoids than Late Paleozoic forms. Further, very few specimens of this family are known, especially from the Permian. Following an abrupt drop in clade diversity, phylogenetic and macroevolutionary patterns indicate the Paragaricocrinidae exemplify patterns similar to a “dead clade walking,” in which a clade temporally persists after a decline at low taxonomic richness, abundance, and ecologic innovation before finally becoming extinct.
Journal Article
Chiefdoms, Collapse, and Coalescence in the Early American South
This book provides a new conceptual framework for understanding how the Indian nations of the early American South emerged from the ruins of a precolonial, Mississippian world. A broad regional synthesis that ranges over much of the Eastern Woodlands, its focus is on the Indians of the Carolina Piedmont - the Catawbas and their neighbors - from 1400 to 1725. Using an 'eventful' approach to social change, Robin Beck argues that the collapse of the Mississippian world was fundamentally a transformation of political economy, from one built on maize to one of guns, slaves and hides. The story takes us from first encounters through the rise of the Indian slave trade and the scourge of disease to the wars that shook the American South in the early 1700s. Yet the book's focus remains on the Catawbas, drawing on their experiences in a violent, unstable landscape to develop a comparative perspective on structural continuity and change.
eBook
Belgian substages as a basis for an international chronostratigraphic division of the Tournaisian and Visean
The Tournaisian and Visean were formerly considered as series and in Belgium were divided into two (Hastarian and Ivorian) and three stages (Moliniacian, Livian and Warnantian), which are now considered as substages. The Belgian substages are based on conodonts and foraminifers, and incidentally on rugose corals, and are described here. Their boundaries, biostratigraphy and sequence stratigraphy are well detailed and clearly defined. The base of the Hastarian (lower Tournaisian) corresponds to the base of the Tournaisian (base of Carboniferous); the base of the Ivorian (upper Tournaisian) corresponds to the appearance of the conodont Polygnathus communis carina, a little above the last Siphonodella; the base of the Moliniacian (lower Visean) corresponds to the base of the Visean stage defined by the first occurrence of the foraminifer Eoparastaffella simplex; the Livian (middle Visean) corresponds to the foraminiferal MFZ12 Zone and is marked by the appearance of Koskinotextularia and Pojarkovella nibelis; the base of the Warnantian (upper Visean) is marked by the appearance of Neoarchaediscus, Vissariotaxis, Planospirodiscus, and Palaeotextularia with a bilaminar wall, the index taxa of the MFZ13-Neoarchaediscus Zone. The up-to-date chronostratigraphic subdivision of the Tournaisian and Visean is not limited to Belgium and the surrounding areas. It can be applied through Eurasia as far as South China. The Belgian units could therefore be the basis for a future international division of the Tournaisian into two parts (Hastarian and Ivorian) and of the Visean into three parts (Moliniacian, Livian and Warnantian), corresponding to time intervals of c. 5-8 Ma.
Journal Article