Megan Kassabaum

This book presents a temporally and geographically broad yet detailed history of an important form of Native American architecture, the platform mound. While the variation in these earthen monuments across the eastern United States has sparked much debate among archaeologists, this landmark study reveals unexpected continuities in mound building over many thousands of years. In A History of Platform Mound Ceremonialism, Megan Kassabaum synthesizes an exceptionally wide dataset of 149 platform mound sites from the earliest iterations of the structure 7,S00years ago to its latest manifestations. Kassabaum discusses Archaic period sites from Florida and the Lower Mississippi Valley, as well as Woodland period sites across the Midwest and Southeast, to revisit traditional perspectives on later, more well-known Mississippian-era mounds. Kassabaum's chronological approach corrects major flaws in the ways these constructions have been interpreted in the past. This comprehensive history exposes nonlinear shifts in mound function, use, and meaning across space and time and suggests a dynamic view of the vitality and creativity of their builders. Ending with a discussion of Native American beliefs about and uses of earthen mounds

My recent article offered a model by which to better classify feasts by distinguishing between archaeological correlates of group size and sociopolitical competition. Applying this model to remains from a precontact mound site, I highlighted feasting's role in promoting group solidarity in the American South. Hayden's comment argues that my scheme does not accommodate certain types of events, and it questions my noncompetitive interpretation. I address both critiques here by citing further data from the Southeast, emphasizing the importance of interpreting feasts within their cultural and historical contexts, and highlighting Hayden's continued reliance on long-standing assumptions about feasting and monumental architecture.

The Junior Archeological Society (JAS), operating in Baton Rouge from the 1950s to the 1970s, provided opportunities for middle and high school students to study and practice archaeology. The group, headed by teacher and avocational archaeologist J. Ashley Sibley, Jr., focused on nearby prehistoric Native American sites including investigations at the Smith Creek site (22WK526) in Wilkinson County, Mississippi. Using interviews with former members, accounts and records of the JAS, and analysis of recently rediscovered artifacts resulting from its excavations at the Smith Creek site, the authors discuss the JAS and the importance of its investigations to current understandings of the site. This case study emphasizes the value of continued collaboration between professional and avocational archaeologists.

This article contributes to an ongoing critical examination of feasting by developing a classification scheme that emphasizes the variable contexts in which feasts have occurred. Many recent archaeological and ethnographic accounts have focused on the political and economic roles feasts play in creating power and status differences among participants, while others have highlighted how they build community and increase solidarity within a group. My scheme reconceptualizes the term by giving two independent variables-group size and level of sociopolitical competition-equal roles in determining whether a given eating event is a feast; in turn, my dual-dimensional model facilitates more sophisticated interpretations of archaeological remains. After outlining its utility for describing and comparing eating events, this article evaluates the evidence for feasting at a precontact Native American mound site in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Botanical, faunal, and ceramic analyses of materials from the Feltus mounds (AD 750-1100) reveal fairly typical food-related assemblages, whereas the sheer amount of material, speed with which it was deposited, and size of individual specimens are exceptional. The resulting interpretation emphasizes feasting's role in creating and maintaining group solidarity at Feltus and advances understanding of noncompetitive outcomes of feasting behavior in the precontact American Southeast.

Ceramic data and radiocarbon dates from two Coles Creek mound centers in the lower Yazoo Basin, Mississippi, are used to modify the chronology of the local Coles Creek period sequence. The modifications have ramifications for efforts to understand the Coles Creek to Mississippian transition ca. AD 1200.

Platform mounds and plazas have a 5000-year-long history in the eastern United States but are often viewed through the lens of late prehistoric and early historic understandings of mound use. This review approaches the history of these important landscape features via a forward-looking temporal framework that emphasizes the variability in their construction and use through time and across space. I suggest that by viewing platform mounds in their historical contexts, emphasizing the construction process over final form, and focusing on nonmound sites and off-mound areas such as plazas, we can build a less biased and more complex understanding of early Native American monumentality.

Taken together, the papers published in this volume demonstrate that Southeastern archaeologists are theoretically eclectic, are borrowers and users of theory, are reflexive and collaborative, and are modest and unaggressive when discussing their theoretical inclinations. This paper clarifies the positive and negative outcomes of these characteristics and suggests ways to encourage the benefits while discouraging the drawbacks. I advocate being careful when combining theoretical paradigms, using technology to continue year-round informal communication, being more generous with stakeholder relationships and the methods used to build them, and giving ourselves more credit for the interesting theory building that we do.

This dissertation examines prehistoric activity at the Feltus site (22Je500) in Jefferson County, Mississippi, to elucidate how Coles Creek (AD 700–1200) platform mound sites were used. Data from excavations undertaken by the Feltus Archaeological Project from 2006 to 2012 support the conclusion that Coles Creek people utilized Feltus episodically for some 400 years, with little evidence of permanent habitation. More specifically, the ceramic, floral, and faunal data suggest that Feltus provided a location for periodic ritual events focused around food consumption, post-setting, and mound building. The rapidity with which the middens at Feltus were deposited and the large size of the ceramic vessels implies that the events occurring there brought together large groups of people for massive feasting episodes. The vessel form assemblage is dominated by open bowls and thus suggests an emphasis on food consumption, with less evidence for food preparation and virtually none for food storage. Overall, the ceramic assemblage emphasizes a great deal of continuity in the use of the Feltus landscape from the earliest occupation, during the Hamilton Ridge phase, through the latest, during the Balmoral phase. Evidence from the food remains further supports these conclusions. Faunal remains indicate that the Feltus diet consisted mainly of large mammals and fish, and botanical remains suggest a focus on nuts and wild seeds, with limited evidence for domesticated chenopod. An emphasis on exceptionally large animals (including bear) and easily amassable plant resources further implies large, communal eating events. The presence of ritually important plants, smoking pipes, and bear remains in the Feltus deposits suggest that the meals that occurred during these events were ceremonial. The final chapter offers a general scheme for identifying, describing, and comparing feasting events in the archaeological record. Based on this comparative framework, I argue that the feasts and communal rituals taking place at Coles Creek sites need not have been competitive, but rather may have emphasized community building and highlighted the shared identity of the participants.

While the lack of grave goods has been the focus of most scholarly discussion of Coles Creek burial practices, the mortuary analyses presented here focus on recognizing correspondences among sex, age, and burial position. Using assemblages from three Coles Creek sites (Greenhouse, Lake George, and Mount Nebo), I find that while there is significant intersite variability among Coles Creek mortuary programs, certain age groups are consistently treated differently from each other and from everyone else. Thus
interments were being made with deliberate care and consideration for those involved and are not nearly as haphazard and disorderly as previously thought.

Since Paleolithic times, bears have been potent ritual symbols for peoples throughout Eurasia and North America. Though stories change by context, the meaning of bear has stayed remarkably constant. Preagriculturalists saw bears as people, albeit different-from-human people, who possessed
great spiritual power. Bears linked the human and spirit worlds and were commonly seen as kin, healers, and food providers. These various roles recur in ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological data and are particularly well supported by archaeological evidence of large feasting
events involving bear consumption, pipe smoking, and the setting of large standing posts at the Coles Creek period Feltus Mounds.

Drawing on diverse archaeological and ethnohistoric accounts, this paper offers an alternative scheme for identifying, describing, and comparing feasting events and evaluates the evidence for feasting at the Feltus site in southwestern Mississippi. Botanical, faunal, and ceramic analyses reveal material commonly found on Coles Creek sites, though the sheer amount of material, speed with which it was deposited, and size of individual specimens is exceptional. The inclusion of several unusual materials in high quantities (e.g., pipes and bear) further separates the Feltus events from everyday events. Overall, the Feltus data suggest feasting focused on building community and increasing group solidarity.

Definitions and guidelines for identifying feasting in the archaeological record are abundant. Drawing on a variety of archaeological and ethnohistoric accounts, this paper develops a classificatory scheme that simplifies these definitions by emphasizing two continua of variation—group size and level of sociopolitical competition. In doing so, it offers a vocabulary for describing and comparing feasting events. By allowing more flexibility in the definition, this reconceptualization acknowledges the importance of a large category of feasts that are under-theorized in archaeology—those whose purpose is to build community and increase group solidarity. This focus brings the kinds of eating events common in Southeastern U.S. prehistory to the forefront of theoretical discussions of feasting. The latter half of this paper evaluates evidence for feasting at the Late Woodland period Feltus site in southwestern Mississippi. Botanical and faunal analyses show large amounts of foods commonly found on prehistoric sites in the American South. Likewise, ceramic analyses show a typical assemblage of Coles Creek varieties while the size of the vessels is exceptional. These characteristics, combined with a paucity of evidence for competition such as rare or exotic materials, elaborate burials, and other prestige goods, provides compelling evidence that Feltus was a location of noncompetitive feasting.

As feasting becomes a popular topic of archaeological investigation, definitions and guidelines for identifying it in the archaeological record proliferate.  This paper presents a classificatory scheme that simplifies these definitions by emphasizing two continua of variation—group size and level of sociopolitical competition.  By allowing more flexibility in the definition of feast, this reconceptualization acknowledges the importance of a large category of feasts that are under-theorized in archaeology—those whose purpose is to build community and increase group solidarity.  This focus brings the kinds of eating events common in Southeastern prehistory to the forefront of theoretical discussions of feasting.

This poster presents the results of an attempt to understand the activities that took place at the Feltus site through a functional analysis of the ceramic assemblage.  Though investigations at Feltus produced no whole pots, we have devised a set of vessel forms common in the Coles Creek period using published images of whole pots.  By recording and quantifying the range of variation within and between these categories and considering potential functional groups that correlate with the different forms, we use the fragmentary ceramics from Feltus to understand the types and scales of activities taking place at the site.

Archaeology is not just ancient history. Historical archaeology provides new ways to understand the recent past through everyday objects, memories of living community members, and forgotten historical records. These sources of knowledge each provide different perspectives about the past. Archaeological excavations uncover artifacts that help reconstruct aspects of daily life. Community members offer stories about specific people, events, and places not recorded in newspapers or census records. Historical records like old maps show how houses and roads in a neighborhood changed through time. Community archaeologists collaborate with community members to bring these sources of knowledge together and tell local histories that are often overlooked and rarely recorded in history books. Community archaeology can also help us understand the present. The pursuit of racial and social justice among communities today is tied to histories of gentrification and systemic racism that historical archaeology works to explore, interpret, and challenge.

This course introduces the archaeology of Philadelphia and the surrounding area through guided visits to local prehistoric and historic sites, accompanied by readings, discussions, and guest lectures. This is an experiential course, in that students will explore local archaeological sites, both well-known and rarely discussed, in person. Moving beyond reading the histories of places like Eastern State Penitentiary, the President's House, or Sycamore Mills, students will engage with social scientific analysis of the material culture and landscape features that remain in the archaeological record. This course is open to all undergraduates, no previous archaeological experience is required. Due to transportation requirements, enrollment is limited, so permission of the instructor is required. Course may be repeated for credit.

This course is designed to survey the complex ways that food and food-related activities are woven into human behavior. We will examine foodways from a holistic anthropological perspective by examining the biological, cultural, linguistic, and archaeological contexts of our food production, preparation, presentation, and consumption. We will consider aspects of "food and culture" at several critical junctions of human history and address contemporary issues related to food, health, identity, and society. By the end of this course, you should be able to:
• Understand how evolution, history, and culture have shaped food into both a dietary need and a cultural construction.
• Connect the history of foodways to current issues including health, food insecurity, geo-politics, and consumerism.
• Think critically about your own personal food history and about Philadelphia's food culture.
• Articulate how the four sub-disciplines of anthropology-archaeological, biological, linguistic, and cultural-contribute to understanding human physical and cultural diversity.

When Europeans first entered North America, they found the landscape dotted with impressive monumental constructions. The range of sizes, shapes, and levels of complexity demonstrated by these earthworks has captured the minds of American archaeologists ever since. A huge amount of archaeological research has demonstrated that the practice of constructing mounds has tremendous time depth in North America, beginning in the Lower Mississippi Valley and then spreading throughout the Eastern United States. Based on Dr. Kassabaum's fifteen seasons of fieldwork at mound sites, this course explores 7,500 years of moundbuilding, from the earliest sites built by mobile hunter-gatherers to Cahokia, t he first city in North America built about 1,000 years ago. In addition to exploring the archaeological record of many important sites, this course considers how religion, technology, foodways, and social structure of Native groups changed through time and discussed archaeological field and lab methods, laws pertaining to the protection of Native American sites and artifacts, and the relationship between archaeology and contemporary Native groups.

Ceramic materials are one of the most common and informative artifact types found on archaeological sites. Archaeologists use their attributes to explore diverse issues, ranging from site chronology and function to production sequences and technological change, and from economy and exchange to foodways and social identity. This course combines lectures, readings, discussions, lab activities, and research to help students investigate the complex relationship between pots and people. By examining the range of questions that can be tackled using ceramic data, as well as the methods that are appropriate for such investigations, students will prepare themselves to undertake their own independent research projects.

What is the nature and disciplinary status of archaeology? Is it a natural science, a social science, or one of the humanities? Or, is it a hybrid field with a complex and distinctive engagement with all three?  What questions do archaeologists ask and what methods have they developed to answer them?  Is there a unified theory of archaeology, or are there multiple theories appropriate for different research interests? If the latter is the case, how are these theories to be resolved when they come into conflict? How is archaeology practiced in the contemporary moment? And, how should it be? What does archaeology offer us as four-field anthropologists?

This graduate seminar is an introduction to the method and theory of archaeological anthropology and to contemporary issues facing its practitioners. It emphasizes the varied ways inferences are made about past and present human behavior from material culture. It reviews the fundamental epistemologies of explanation and understanding, as well as the ways that archaeology is related to the other subdisciplines of anthropology and additional fields in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. It engages critically but sympathetically with the history of the discipline, investigates how archaeologists engage with contemporary anthropological debates and broader social issues, and discusses complex issues facing practicing archaeologists today.

The four core seminars, of which this class is one, are the basis for comprehensive written exams taken at the end of the first year of graduate study in the Department of Anthropology. A list of study questions based on the topics covered in this course will be provided at the end of the seminar for use in exam preparation.

This course will introduce students to the methods and theory of archaeology by exploring how we turn archaeological data into statements about cultural behavior.  We will discuss the place of archaeology in the broader field of anthropology and debate issues facing the discipline today.  The course will rely on case studies from around the world and from many different time periods to introduce students to the research process, field and lab methods, and essential questions of archaeological anthropology.
At the end of the class, students will be able to:
-Recognize the role of archaeology as a subfield of  anthropology.
-Explain the theory and methods involved in the study of the human past.
-Discuss the relevance of archaeology to contemporary human issues and politics.
-Critically evaluate claims about the past.

By focusing on the scientific analysis of archaeological
remains, this course will explore life and death in the past.
ANTH 267 will take place in the new Center for the Analysis of
Archaeological Materials (CAAM) and will be team taught in
three modules: human skeletal analysis, analysis of animal
remains, and analysis of plant remains. Each module will
combine laboratory and classroom exercises to give students
hands-on experience with archaeological materials. We will
examine how organic materials provide key information about
past environments, human behavior, and cultural change
through discussions of topics such as health and disease,
inequality, and food.

This course explores over 10,000 years of the North American
archaeological record, investigating the unwritten histories and
material evidence of Indigenous peoples (Native Americans)
prior to European contact. The regional coverage includes the
continental U.S. and Canada, with special attention to the
Midwest, Southwest, and Southeast. Archaeological studies of
prehistory are interwoven with contemporary Native
interpretations to build a scientific and humanist reconstruction
of the past. Topics include the peopling of the continent,
ancient technologies, Native architecture and settlement
patterns, prehistoric economies and trade, origins of
horticulture, social and political structure, prehistoric art and
cosmology, early contacts with Europeans, and the ethics of
archaeological practice.

The Feltus mound group (22Je500) is a well-preserved Coles Creek period site in Jefferson County, Mississippi. It originally consisted of four mounds, three of which still survive today (Fig. 1). Ceramics and radiocarbon dates bracket its occupation between AD 700 and 1100, with mound construction starting after AD 900. Four field seasons totaling nine months of excavation have taken place at the site since 2006.3, 5 During the summer of 2012, we conducted geophysical work and excavations in mounds A and B which provided considerable information on the construction and use of mound summits during middle Coles Creek times, i.e., the Ballina and Balmoral phases.1

Research Report No. 33, Research Laboratories of Archaeology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Reports in this series discuss the findings of archaeological excavations and research projects undertaken by the RLA between 1984 and present.

This dissertation examines prehistoric activity at the Feltus site (22Je500) in Jefferson County, Mississippi, to elucidate how Coles Creek (AD 700-1200) platform mound sites were used. Data from excavations undertaken by the Feltus Archaeological Project from 2006 to 2012 support the conclusion that Coles Creek people utilized Feltus episodically for some 400 years, with little evidence of permanent habitation. More specifically, the ceramic, floral, and faunal data suggest that Feltus provided a location for periodic ritual events focused around food consumption, post-setting, and mound building. The rapidity with which the middens at Feltus were deposited and the large size of the ceramic vessels implies that the events occurring there brought together large groups of people for massive feasting episodes. The vessel form assemblage is dominated by open bowls and thus suggests an emphasis on food consumption, with less evidence for food preparation and virtually none for food stor...

<p>The practice of enclosing open spaces with earthen mounds begins in the Lower Mississippi Valley around 3500 B.C. As the earliest recognized monumentalized landscapes in Eastern North America, these locations are thought to have provided periodic bases for the exploitation of rich natural resources and the maintenance of social relationships. Archaeological work at these early plaza sites has focused on establishing the age and stratigraphy of the associated mounds, leaving little known about the everyday activities that occurred around or between them. In this chapter, two case studies from separate areas of the Late Woodland Southeast are discussed: Feltus and Range sites. Participants in the large-scale rituals occurring in the Feltus plaza spent much of their time spatially separated, but the periodic moments of aggregation quite literally created the personal relationships, social structure, and ritual system in which they lived their daily lives. On the other hand, participants in the daily activities that occurred in the Range courtyards co-resided, but the particular relationships they shared with other individuals were negotiated in outside spaces, and the very presence and structure of the courtyard itself tied them – every day – into a much larger local community around formal, central plazas.</p>

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My recent article offered a model by which to better classify feasts by distinguishing between archaeological correlates of group size and sociopolitical competition. Applying this model to remains from a precontact mound site, I highlighted feasting's role in promoting group solidarity in the American South. Hayden's comment argues that my scheme does not accommodate certain types of events, and it questions my noncompetitive interpretation. I address both critiques here by citing further data from the Southeast, emphasizing the importance of interpreting feasts within their cultural and historical contexts, and highlighting Hayden's continued reliance on long-standing assumptions about feasting and monumental architecture.

This article contributes to an ongoing critical examination of feasting by developing a classification scheme that emphasizes the variable contexts in which feasts have occurred. Many recent archaeological and ethnographic accounts have focused on the political and economic roles feasts play in creating power and status differences among participants, while others have highlighted how they build community and increase solidarity within a group. My scheme reconceptualizes the term by giving two independent variables—group size and level of sociopolitical competition—equal roles in determining whether a given eating event is a feast; in turn, my dual-dimensional model facilitates more sophisticated interpretations of archaeological remains. After outlining its utility for describing and comparing eating events, this article evaluates the evidence for feasting at a precontact Native American mound site in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Botanical, faunal, and ceramic analyses of material...

Platform mounds and plazas have a 5000-year-long history in the eastern United States but are often viewed through the lens of late prehistoric and early historic understandings of mound use. This review approaches the history of these important landscape features via a forward-looking temporal framework that emphasizes the variability in their construction and use through time and across space. I suggest that by viewing platform mounds in their historical contexts, emphasizing the construction process over final form, and focusing on nonmound sites and off-mound areas such as plazas, we can build a less biased and more complex understanding of early Native American monumentality.

Archaeology of Louisiana. MAPdC A. REES (ed.) with a foreword by Ian W. Brown. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 2010. xxvii, 456 pp. ill., maps. $95.00 (hardcover), ISBN: 9780807137031; $40.00 (Paper), ISBN: 0-8071-3705-7.Much has changed in Louisiana archaeology since R. W. Neuman (1984) published An Introduction to Louisiana Archaeology nearly three decades ago. Archaeology of Louisiana provides an exceptional summary of these changes and addresses the status of archaeology within the state's boundaries. This volume provides a much-needed chronological, methodological, and theoretical synthesis that will be useful beyond those boundaries, appealing to archaeologists who work not only in Louisiana, but throughout the American South. Moreover, Rees makes the volume publicly accessible with basic definitions, outlines of major theoretical approaches, and clear explanations of chronological divisions.In his foreword, Brown cautions us to "mind the gaps" in our knowledge - to be aware when we are stepping from "stable platforms" of well-established understandings to "fast-moving trains" of current debates and unanswered questions. Byrd and Neuman's contribution (Chapter 2) on the history of archaeology in Louisiana gives credit to academics, cultural resource management professionals, and avocational archaeologists alike for getting us to where we are today. Each subsequent chapter provides the reader with a stable platform (in the form of a concise summary of what is known about a given place and time) while articulating the as-yet-unresolved debates over less understood aspects of Louisiana's past. The authors also suggest directions for future research to fill the remaining gaps.Chapters 3 through 5 focus on Paleoindian and Archaic cultures. Admitting that much of the information for his chapter on Paleoindian and Early Archaic came from outside the state's borders, Rees acknowledges Louisiana's untapped potential, calling for exploration of deeply buried and submerged sites. Conversely, Saunders's and Gibson's chapters on Middle and Late Archaic emphasize the importance of Louisiana archaeologists' work to broader understandings of mound building, hunter-gatherer societies, and trajectories of social evolution in general. Saunders focuses on Watson Break and underscores advances made in interpretations of the South's earliest earthworks. The picture of life at Poverty Point painted by Gibson is doubly compelling in that it is beautifully written and solidly grounded in archaeology.Chapters 6 through 9 focus on Woodland cultures. Hays and Weinstein call for efforts to explain the dramatic changes that occur between Poverty Point and Tchefuncte (i.e., the disappearances of longdistance exchange, mound building and lapidary industry, and the appearance of pottery). On the other hand, McGimsey emphasizes temporal continuity and geographic relationships by searching for the origins of Marksville in earlier periods and as far afield as Ohio. In discussing Marksville, McGimsey heroically takes on the widespread problem of a single term being used to represent a site, period, phase, culture, mortuary tradition, and /or ceramic style (see also Chapter 11). Lee's chapter traces the transformation of Troyville and Baytown from "good, gray cultures" (Williams, The Eastern United States, in The National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings, Themes II and III: Early Indian Farmers and Village Communities, edited by Haag, pp. 397-325) to interesting and important moments of growth and change. Finally, Roe and Schilling discuss how the recent flurry of research on Coles Creek has dramatically changed our perception of the culture and its relationships to temporally and spatially proximate cultures. Like the authors of the other Woodland chapters, they emphasize the need to refine chronologies and investigate nonmound sites.Chapters 10 and 11 finish the discussion of Louisiana prehistory. Rees focuses on the relationship between Plaquemine and Mississippian and, in so doing, discusses the importance of moving away from culture-historical approaches toward a focus on the "actions and interactions of individuals and groups" (p. …

... beakers represent the other end of this spectrum. Figure 5: Illustration of the change in beakers as H:WP value increases bimodally. ... (1983) Ceramics, Chronology, and Community Patterns: an Archaeological Study at Moundville. Academic Press, New York. ...

Platform mounds and plazas have a 5000-year-long history in the eastern United States but are often viewed through the lens of late prehistoric and early historic understandings of mound use. This review approaches the history of these important landscape features via a forward-looking temporal framework that emphasizes the variability in their construction and use through time and across space. I suggest that by viewing platform mounds in their historical contexts, emphasizing the construction process over final form, and focusing on nonmound sites and off-mound areas such as plazas, we can build a less biased and more complex understanding of early Native American monumentality.