Books in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series series

Presenting the most current research and thinking on prehistoric archaeology in the Southeast, this volume reexamines some of Florida's most important Paleoindian sites and discusses emerging technologies and methods that are necessary knowledge for archaeologists working in the region today.

"e;This book, a true milestone in the archaeology of the Greater Antilles, presents a bold new synthesis and interpretation of El Chorro de Maita, a native Cuban Indian town caught up in the political and economic domination of the early colonial world."e;--Vernon James Knight Jr., author of Iconographic Method in New World Prehistory "e;Provides a deeper and well-documented understanding of the role of the aboriginal 'Indo-Cubans' in an early colonial context that stimulated the development of a Cuban national identity."e;--Jos R. Oliver, author of Caciques and Cem IdolsDuring Spanish colonization of the Greater Antilles, the islands' natives were forced into labor under the encomienda system. The indigenous people became "e;Indios,"e; their language, appearance, and identity transformed by the domination imposed by a foreign model that Christianized and "e;civilized"e; them. Yet El Chorro de Mata retained many of its indigenous characteristics. In this volume--one of the first in English to examine and document an archaeological site in Cuba--Roberto Valcrcel Rojas analyzes the construction of colonial authority and the various attitudes and responses of natives and other ethnic groups. His pioneering study reveals the process of transculturation in which new individuals emerged--Indians, mestizos, criollos--and helps construct the vital link between the pre-Columbian world and the development of an integrated and new history. Roberto Valcrcel Rojas is a researcher for the Cuban Ministry of Science's Department of Central-Eastern Archaeology and a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University.

Bringing together major archaeological research projects from Virginia to Alabama, this volume explores the rich prehistory of the Southeastern Coastal Plain. Contributors consider how the region's warm weather, abundant water, and geography have long been optimal for the habitation of people beginning 50,000 years ago.

Presents current archaeological research on an important landscape feature: a series of low, cascading rapids along the Ohio River on the border of Kentucky and Indiana. Using the perspective of historical ecology, contributors demonstrate how humans and the environment mutually affected each other in the area for the past 12,000 years.

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 over thousands of years.

Although scholars have long recognized the mythic status of bears in indigenous North American societies of the past, this is the first volume to synthesize the vast amount of archaeological and historical research on the topic.

Inspired by the Quaker ideals of simplicity, equality, and peace, a group of white planters formed a community in the British Virgin Islands during the eighteenth century. Yet they lived in a slave society, and nearly all their members held enslaved people. In this book, John Chenoweth examines how the community navigated the contradictions of Quakerism and plantation ownership.

While previous research on household archaeology in the colonial Caribbean has drawn heavily on artifact analysis, this volume provides the first in-depth examination of the architecture of slave housing during this period.

Compiles all the major writings of Spanish explorers in the area between 1513 and 1566. Including transcriptions of the original Spanish documents as well as English translations, this volume presents - in their own words - the experiences and reactions of Spaniards who came to Florida with Juan Ponce de Leon, Panfilo de Narvaez, Hernando de Soto, and Pedro Menendez de Aviles.

A much-needed synthesis of the rapidly expanding archaeological work that has taken place in the Moundville region over the past two decades, this volume presents the results of multifaceted research and new excavations.

An exploration of the role of human adaptation along the Gulf coast of Florida and the influence of coastal foraging on several indigenous Florida populations. This location includes remnants of a prehistoric Indian village and a massive ancient burial mound, known as the Palmer Site.

Discovered during construction of the I-75 corridor northeast of Tampa, the site of Harney Flats was a turning point in the archaeology of the southeastern United States. Harney Flats describes the excavation, which was praised for its state-of-the-art strategy and interpretive methods, and details the objects uncovered and what they reveal about the lives of the people who used them.

Focusing on the daily concerns and routine events of people in the past, Investigating the Ordinary argues for a paradigm shift in the way southeastern archaeologists operate. Instead of dividing archaeological work by time periods or artifact types, the essays in this volume unite separate areas of research through the theme of the everyday.

Using fresh evidence and non-traditional ideas, the contributing authors of Mississippian Beginnings reconsider the origins of the Mississippian culture of the North American Midwest and Southeast (A.D. 1000-1600). These essays provide the most comprehensive examination of early Mississippian culture in over thirty years.

For more than 130 years, research aimed at understanding Paleoindian occupation of the coastal Southeast has progressed at a glacial pace. In this volume, James Dunbar suggests that the most important archaeological and paleontological resources in the Americas still remain undiscovered in Florida's karst river basins.