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When asked to be a discussant of the symposium that led to this book, I jumped at the chance. The papers promised to be informative and provocative, but I also had another interest in the symposium. I feel research on the hunting-andgathering societies of the southern Eastern Woodlands is likely to gain momentum in the near future, and these essays can play a big part in de¤ning the trajectory of that work. For the past decade or so, the Archaic societies in the Southeast and Midwest have not received the same level of attention, especially the external notice, of the much later Mississippian chiefdoms. It is not as if outstanding studies have been lacking. The volumes edited by Anderson and Sassaman (1996; Sassaman and Anderson 1996) are particularly ¤ne examples of scholarship on this subject . Despite this excellent work, the preeminence of hunter-gatherer studies in the 1970s and early 1980s has been eclipsed by the great effort lavished on Mississippian chiefdoms. Work on Middle to Late Archaic societies has implications for research far beyond the Southeast and Midwest. Topics of special concern include, among others, the early settling down of human populations, the initial steps toward agriculture, the rate and timing of population growth, the ¤rst appearance of monumental architecture, the broadening of exchange networks, and the emergence of what is commonly labeled sociopolitical complexity. A strength of this work is its reliance on an enormous amount of solid information on site locations and characteristics. This database, which is already quite large, is expanding rapidly , mostly because of numerous well-funded cultural resource management projects. As a matter of fact, information about archaeological sites is increasing much faster than it can be mined for its full potential. But the greatest reason for my optimism about the prospects of research on the Archaic period has to do with the ever-increasing numbers of energetic and accomplished scholars who 15 Old Mounds, Ancient Hunter-Gatherers, and Modern Archaeologists George R. Milner bring their considerable talents and divergent perspectives to bear on issues of common concern. By this point in this book, readers will have found that all contributors do not agree on all points. That is exactly as things should be. Archaeological data by their very nature are incomplete and biased, leading to ambiguous results amenable to different interpretations. The most interesting divergences in opinion are over how we should go about learning about the past and, indeed, even identifying what is worth knowing. For the most part, the contributors direct their attention toward determining how people interacted with one another and, to a lesser extent, with their natural environments. Power relationships—often linked to mound construction—are an important component of that work. One contributor, however, searches for key dimensions and geometric shapes that served as mental templates for site layouts. BIG MOUND POWER? One might as well start from the beginning with “Big Mound Power”—the title of the original symposium. This title captures the essence of an enduring debate, so it is perhaps best followed by a question mark. What do mounds tell us about the organization of ancient societies, speci¤cally the control or in®uence some people held over others? This question, of course, is by no means restricted to the Archaic hunter-gatherers discussed here. In fact, only recently has interest in Middle to Late Archaic mounds quickened, as pointed out by Jon Gibson and Philip Carr (this volume). Other time periods—as well as other parts of the world—have received more than their fair share of speculation about what mounds or other forms of monumental architecture might have meant to ancient people. When talking about mounds, large is commonly equated with power. The biggest of them—including Monks Mound at Mississippian period Cahokia, but also the Adena Grave Creek mound and Mound A at Late Archaic Poverty Point—have stoked the imaginations of many writers. Almost 200 years ago, Henry Brackenridge (1818:154, 158) drew a direct link from Cahokia’s big mounds to an enormous population and an organizationally complex society when he wrote that “a people capable of works requiring so much labour, must be numerous, and if numerous, somewhat advanced in the arts.” The site and its immediate environs were inhabited by “a population as numerous as that which once animated the borders of the Nile, or of the Euphrates, or of Mexico and Peru.” Better-informed voices did little to dampen the enthusiasm of an impressionable public...

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