Networks of history and memory

Abstract

Many Archaic and Woodland period monuments in south-eastern North America were civic and ceremonial gathering centers. The built landscapes that emphasized these features are likely to have incorporated histories and memories in locally distinctive ways across the region. However, their attribution by archaeologists to broad temporal and social categories has tended to disguise this individuality. In this article I argue that the major structural changes that define the transition between the Archaic and Woodland periods were intersected by landscapes that were integral to the construction of locally important histories and memories. I point to an example from the Woodland period on the lower St Johns River, Florida, in which spatial relationships between monuments, recurrent deposition of mnemonic artifacts, and movement of people between places recreated a relational kind of social identity and personhood that was locally distinct.