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Preface In 1992, C. Wesley Cowan, curator of archaeology at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, was invited to organize a symposium centered "sort of around Pittsburgh," where the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology was being held. The topic-changes undergone by Native American societies in eastern North America immediately before and after Columbus's landfall in the Caribbean-was timely, and the symposium (a two-session affair) was well attended. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries marked the end for many eastern Native American societies and the diminishing of a former way of life for most of the others. Defining eclipse as "a reduction or loss of splendor, status, reputation , etc.; any obscuring or overshadowing," Cowan titled the symposium "Societies in Eclipse: Pittsburgh and Environs at the Dawn of Colonization." Its Wednesday evening venue permitted the inclusion of only five papers, so Cowan decided to expand the topic's areal coverage by organizing a second, larger symposium, which was presented the following day during the concurrent sessions. He titled this symposium "Societies in Eclipse: Eastern North America at the Dawn of Colonization." As so often happens with successful symposia that offer fresh perspectives and important new data, Cowan recognized the value of refining the presentations and capturing them in a more enduring medium. He was encouraged to pursue the project by Daniel Goodwin, then editor at the Smithsonian Institution Press. Aware of the limited representation the symposium offered, Cowan asked several symposium contributors to suggest additional scholars who might be asked to write chapters. Nearly all of the expanded chapters were in Cowan's hands by the late summer of 1993, and after receiving a publishing contract from the Smithsonian Institution Press, Cowan worked throughout 1994 on the final, edited draft. In 1995, however, following the amalgamation of the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History with several other Cincinnati institutions, Cowan left the museum and launched an independent business. From home, he continued to work with authors and the press on Societies in Eclipse, but lacking any academic institutional support, the project inevitably lagged. At that point, Brose, as senior editor of the MidcontinentalJournal of Archaeology, asked Cowan if he would entertain an offer of assistance to complete the project. Cowan accepted immediately and by the summer of 1996 had turned the project over to Brose entirely. Brose asked Mainfort , editor of Southeastern Archaeology, to assist in resuscitating the volume. In the winter of 1997 we received approval from the press to move forward as co-editors of Societies in Eclipse. We felt strongly that the five years since the presentation of such paradigm-changing data at the Pittsburgh conference were not an impossibly long time. We believed the book would not quickly be outdated: it remained the first synthetic and comprehensive book to turn xiii xiv PREFACE the illumination of a generation of anthropological archaeology toward those few generations of American Indians who lived between prehistory and removal from unfettered control of the eastern continent. Nevertheless, because it had been more than two years since any of the manuscripts had been revised, we asked every author to review the most recent version of his or her chapter, and if significant new data or publications had appeared, to refer to them in a separate, concluding section . Only if we were persuaded that the new studies were significant enough to require reinterpretation of existing conclusions did we ask authors to rewrite those portions of their manuscripts. The chapters in this bookfollow the format originally envisioned by Cowan and Goodwin. Cultural developments in each area are divided into broad precontact and postcontact dimensions. Important characteristics of each are summarized, with major emphases on changing settlement size and structure, social relationships, mortuary patterns, and exchange networks. Each chapter also summarizes what is known about the relationship between archaeology and the historical record. Cowan wanted the chapters to present substantive new interpretations of cultural changes that were under way before European contact in the Eastern Woodlands, from the northeastern Appalachians to the trans-Mississippi southern prairies. Penelope Drooker graciously agreed to work with Wes Cowan to bring the middle Ohio region up to date, and Mainfort filled a key areal gap by contributing a chapter on the central Mississippi Valley. Finally; David Hurst Thomas prepared some concluding remarks. Though one paper was retracted from publication, all the other chapters in the volume were originally presented at the Society for American Archaeology meeting in Pittsburgh . Though updated and altered, their focus remains the...

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