Signs of Power: The Rise of Cultural Complexity in the Southeast

Contents

Figures vii Tables xi Preface and Acknowledgments xiii 1. Big Mounds, Big Rings, Big Power 1 Jon L. Gibson and Philip J. Carr 2. Late Archaic Fisher-Foragers in the Apalachicola–Lower Chattahoochee Valley, Northwest Florida–South Georgia/Alabama 10 Nancy Marie White 3. Measuring Shell Rings for Social Inequality 26 Michael Russo 4. Regional-Scale Interaction Networks and the Emergence of Cultural Complexity along the Northern Margins of the Southeast 71 Richard W. Jefferies 5. The Green River in Comparison to the Lower Mississippi Valley during the Archaic: To Build Mounds or Not to Build Mounds? 86 George M. Crothers 6. Cultural Complexity in the Middle Archaic of Mississippi 97 Samuel O. Brookes 7. The Burkett Site (23MI20): Implications for Cultural Complexity and Origins 114 Prentice M. Thomas, Jr., L. Janice Campbell, and James R. Morehead Contents 8. Poverty Point Chipped-Stone Tool Raw Materials: Inferring Social and Economic Strategies 129 Philip J. Carr and Lee H. Stewart 9. Are We Fixing to Make the Same Mistake Again? 146 Joe Saunders 10. Surrounding the Sacred: Geometry and Design of Early Mound Groups as Meaning and Function 162 John E. Clark 11. Crossing the Symbolic Rubicon in the Southeast 214 Kenneth E. Sassaman and Michael J. Heckenberger 12. Explaining Sociopolitical Complexity in the Foraging Adaptations of the Southeastern United States: The Roles of Demography, Kinship, and Ecology in Sociocultural Evolution 234 Randolph J. Widmer 13. The Power of Bene¤cent Obligation in First Mound–Building Societies 254 Jon L. Gibson 14. Archaic Mounds and the Archaeology of Southeastern Tribal Societies 270 David G. Anderson 15. Old Mounds, Ancient Hunter-Gatherers, and Modern Archaeologists 300 George R. Milner References Cited 317 Contributors 365 Index 369 vi contents ...