Ceremonial Structures Research Articles

New Appalachian Books

New Appalachian Books by George Brosi The Adena People. William S. Webb and Charles E. Snow. Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Press, first paperback printing (1988) of a 1945 serial publication which became a 1974 hardback book. 369 pages. Trade paperback with photos and index. $14.95. This book is "one of the major publications on eastern United States archaeology in the first half of this century . . . and still remains a standard reference work on this prehistoric Ohio Valley occupation . . . Webb and Snow identified Adena as the first sedentary people in the eastern United States with 'developed agricultural husbandry' . . . pottery makers, smokers, mound builders, constructors of earth- *George Brosi owns and operates the Appalachian Bookstore in Berea and publishes the bimonthly AppalachianMountainBooks. Healso sellsbooks through mailorderstoclientsinallparts ofthecountry. If readers need more information about any ofthe above listings, write him at 123 Walnut Street, Berea, Kentucky 40403. 102 works, builders of wooden houses, and the first architects of ceremonial structures." -James B. Griffin in the Foreword. The Adena People were the dominant culture in northern Kentucky and West Virginia from about 2500 B.C. until about 700 A.D. Cochran, Weimer. Nantahala People and Events. Berea, Kentucky: Berea College Appalachian Center, 1987. 35 pages. Staple-bound trade paperback. $3.00. Weimer Cochran (1892-1978) was a lifelong resident of Macon County, North Carolina. A farmer and timber cutter, he only had a grade-school education, but he became a fine amateur historian and storyteller. In this pamphlet Loyal Jones edits together both written and spoken material he collected from Cochran, adding a short write-up by John Parris, in The Asheville Citizen. Cohen, Stan. King Coal: A Pictorial Heritage of West Virginia Coal Mining. Charleston, West Virginia: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, fifth printing, 1988, of a 1984 release. 146 pages. Trade paperback $9.95. The great union drives, the terrible mine disasters, the coal barons' mansions and the miners' hovels all come to life in this attractive coffee-table book of many pictures, and short, informative text. Convicts, Coal, and the Banner Mine Tragedy. Robert David Ward and William Warren Rogers. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1987. 192 pages. Hardback in dust jacket with photos, index, and bibliography. $19.95. While this impressive book centers on the mine explosion in 1911 that killed 128 convict miners, it also illuminates many other important issues as well. The Banner mine was located in Jefferson County, Alabama, and much industrial and Alabama hill-country history is included in this book. Since so many convict miners were black, the book illuminates black history as well as criminology and the convict lease system. Deitz, J. Dennis. The Flood and the Blood. South Charleston, West Virginia: Mountain Memory Books, 1988. 245 pages. Hardback in dust jacket with index and photographs on practically every page. $20.00. This coffee-table book contains a wealth of compelling stories from local people in the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek area south of Charleston, West Virginia. Most of the material deals with the 1932 flood on Paint Creek, but also included are accounts of other floods, the mine wars, and mine disasters. The old pictures and some new ones bring the text to life while the drawings by Lawrence Harper and the maps by Roy Harper clarify the commentary considerably. This book is a great combination of social history and good old-fashioned storytelling. Donald, David Herbert. Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988, paperback edition of a 1987 release. 577 pages. A trade paperback with photos, notes, sources and index. $12.95. "Easily the best biography of an American novelist." -Gore Vidal. "An eloquently told story and an extraordinary achievement." -The Boston Globe. "Supercedes all Erevious Wolfe biographies in illuminating detail, in empathy for its complex unappy subject, in sympathy for what he wanted to do, and what he did, as a writer, 103 and in its own literary distinction . . ." -Washington Post Book World. Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) grew up in Asheville, North Carolina. The book remains in print as a hardback. $24.95. Dorgan, Howard. Giving Glory to God in Appalachia: Worship Practices of Six Baptist Subdenominations. Knoxville, Tennessee: The University...

El Niño flood deposits at Batán Grande, northern Peru

AbstractRecent construction of a 10 × 3 irrigation canal across the Batán Grande–Poma archaeological complex of northern Peru provided an opportunity for inspection of soil profiles and detailed sampling along a five km transect bisecting an important concentration of ceremonial structures built during the past 3000+ years. From laboratory analysis of 80 soil samples we conclude no long‐term irrigation agriculture was practiced in this area and it was unimportant as a resource base. Stratigraphic studies indicate few sediments survive from the 1925 El Niño event, but a massive bed attributable to prehistoric slack‐water flood sediments has been identified and can be bracketed between ca. A. D. 650–1000 by associated diagnostic funerary ceramics. Other flood deposits representing the same or different events are described, but we conclude intervalley correlations will be difficult until more precise dating methods are available.

Preclassic lowland maize from Cuello, Belize

In spite of recent progress towards an understanding of prehispanic Maya agriculture, relatively little is known about plants grown prehistorically in the Peten, Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula. Little plant material has been reported from Maya sites, and almost no detailed archaeobotanical analyses have been done. The Cuello site (18°05′N, 88°35′W) in northern Belize is unique in having numerous intact floors of very early ceremonial structures which separate plant remains into clearly defined units. Flotation of soil samples has yielded a wide range of carbonized plant material including many maize cupules (cob fragments) and kernels. As we report here, these can be classified into several types which seem to relate to a range of archaeological types of maize found elsewhere.

The Shaugh Moor Project: Second Report—The Enclosure

The Shaugh Moor project is concerned with an area of moorland in south Dartmoor north-east and north respectively of the villages of Shaugh Prior and Wotter (fig. 1). The physical threat to the evidence for settlement and land-use caused by the operations of the China Clay industry involved the Central Excavation Unit of the Department of the Environment from 1976 in a programme of survey, excavation and environmental studies related to the settlements, land boundaries, burial mounds and ceremonial structures that are to be found on this piece of moorland. The background to the project and its preliminary research strategy have been outlined in Paper I (Wainwright et al. 1979) and this publication describes the investigation of a stone-walled enclosure surrounding houses and other structures that was totally excavated in 1977 and 1978. Subsequent papers will describe the related archaeological and scientific investigations into the past environment and land-use of this block of moorland and its adjacent region.

The Alamito Culture of Northwestern Argentina

AbstractAs a result of five field seasons in the Campo del Pucará, Prov. of Catamarca, the Alamito culture, dated in the fourth century A.D., is one of the best known archaeological cultures of the Valliserrana subarea of northwestern Argentina. The 50 sites excavated show only slight variation in subsistence (essentially agricultural), technology, ceremonial structures, burial pattern, settlement pattern, and inferred social organization. Close affiliations are evident with the Ciénaga, Condorhuasi, and possibly Tafí cultures of Argentina; further afield, similarities can be observed with the Megalithic culture of Bolivia, Chiripa and Titicaca Basin complexes, and more remotely with Peru.

An Insect Fauna of Late Bronze Age Date from Wilsford, Wiltshire

The Wilsford shaft, discovered at Normanton Gorse, Wiltshire, was first described by Ashbee (1963). It is one of the earlier of a series of artificial shafts or ritual wells which are a feature of later prehistoric Europe (Schwarz 1962; Piggott 1965). They are either associated with ceremonial structures and burials, or else are in isolation. Cults centring upon them were current in Roman times. The English examples, their associations and usages, have recently been discussed by Ross (1967 s.v.). Before excavation, the Wilsford shaft was a 'pond-barrow', i.e. a circular dish-like depression surrounded by a bank which had been destroyed by total agriculture. Such 'barrows', some of considerable size, are a regular feature of the barrow cemeteries about Stonehenge (Piggott 1951, Fig. 1) and are found elsewhere in Wiltshire. Excavation of this pond-barrow disclosed an inverted conical cavity which proved to be the weathering cone of a vertical, cylindrical shaft 6 ft in diameter and almost 100 ft (30 m ) deep (Fig. 1). At this depth a fault in the chalk through which water could enter the shaft was encountered and this may have been the reason that the original excavators stopped digging. The shaft had been dug in vertical stages, and checked by plumbing and a template. Deep antler pick marks showed where deviations from the vertical had been corrected and the sides had been dressed with a broad-bladed metal axe. Seams of flint had been broken through. Near the top of the shaft artifacts of Recent, Roman and Iron Age cultures were recovered while at about 60 ft the greater part of a late Bronze Age pot was found. The bottom of the shaft contained a considerable quantity of organic material. This included much wood, both the remains of fabricated containers and also timber, broken branches, twigs and other pieces. Also present were seeds, leaves, cereal straw, moss, possibly fungi and pollen as well as pieces of rope and hide. Artifacts included a shale ring, bone pins and amber beads. Until the time of its excavation by Mr Ashbee and his colleagues the lowest part of the shaft's contents appears to have been more or less continuously waterlogged, thus being preserved in conditions normally only met with in bogs and lakes. This would account for the remarkably fine state of preservation of the insect remains. A sample consisting of pieces of wood collected at depths between 96 ft 6 in. and 97 ft 6 in. (29.4 m and 29*8 m) was submitted to the National Physical Laboratory for radiocarbon dating and an age of 3330 + 90 B.P. was obtained (N.P.L. 74) (Ashbee 1966). It was from this layer that the insect remains described here were obtained. The material examined, which was all recovered from the bottom 6 ft (1 8 m) of the shaft, filled eighteen jars and consisted of a mixture of silt, small fragments of chalk and a mass of comminuted wood and other vegetable matter. It had been mixed with water, alcohol and glycerine to preserve it. It was estimated that the volume of this sludge examined for insects was about 23 1.

A Prehistoric Community in Eastern Arizona

THERE HAVE BEEN, IN RECENT YEARS, a number of promising contributions related to the elucidation of prehistoric sociocultural systems. Most of these are concerned with settlement patterns, ceremonial structures, mortuary practices, social status, and craft specialization (Sears 1961). Several other contributions are also notable (Longacre 1963, 1964; Freeman and Brown 1964; Deetz, 1960, 1965). There is a growing feeling, represented especially by the above kinds of study, that there is much to be gained by attempting to describe (and perhaps explain) or whole sociocultural systems-much as it is done by ethnologists. How complete these descriptions can be is a matter of justifiable concern, but it is evident that at least some headway is being made in this direction. This article presents an outline of a case study which may be of value to those interested in the so-called systems or structural approach to the interpretation of archaeological data. It should provide some fodder usable in evaluating this kind of concern; and, at the very least, it is an example of certain ways in which prehistoric material can be interpreted. The explicit purposes of the study were two-fold: (a) to describe as much of the internal structure and social organization of a prehistoric society as was possible to discover, and (b) to attempt to develop an hypothesis pertinent to explaining adaptive changes in this organization. The focus of the analysis was on Broken K Pueblo, located eleven miles east of Snowflake, Arizona (excavated by the Chicago Natural History Museum, with National Science Foundation support). This archaeological site is a rectangular, ninety-five room,2 single-storied, surface masonry pueblo, dating from about A.D.

A Long Architectural Sequence at Teotihuacán

AbstractA series of superimposed structures spanning the Preclassic, Classic and Postclassic periods was uncovered in 1959 in the Oztoyahualco zone of the ancient city of Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico. Superimposed structures spanning so long a period have not previously been found in the Valley. The earliest structures in the sequence are earth floors of the Tzacualli (Teotihuacán I) phase, beneath which were found a number of caches of broken pottery and other objects. These are followed by massive, concrete, ceremonial structures of the Xolalpan (Teotihuacán III) phase and above these are structures built after the fall of Teotihuacán. The nature and distribution of these successive structures is such as to suggest that the locality became sacred in Tzacualli times and maintained this sacred character even after the fall of Teotihuacán. The Tzacualli structures receive primary attention in the discussion because of their importance.

Mogollon Settlement Patterns in Pine Lawn Valley, New Mexico

AbstractSettlement patterns are described for each phase of the sedentary agricultural occupation of the area from Pine Lawn phase (200 B.C.-A.D. 500) through Tularosa phase (A.D. 1100-1250), when the area was abandoned. Through time domestic structures changed from rounded to rectangular, from semi-subterranean to surface, and decreased in size. Earlier villages tended to be on higher, more defensible locations while later ones were lower, closer to water and arable land. Villages were generally random in plan, and great kivas, the only ceremonial structures identified in the area, appear to have served more than one village. From the settlement pattern data it is possible to construct a population curve for the area which may be partially explained in terms of botanical and climatological as well as cultural factors. Pine Lawn Valley Mogollon may have had some multi-village social organization which in later times may have united the entire valley. In this respect the Mogollon may have been intermediate between the well-integrated, segmented Anasazi communities in the plateau and the more politically structured Hohokam communities in the desert.

Paul Reiter 1909-1953

American AnthropologistVolume 56, Issue 6 p. 1085-1087 Free Access PAUL REITER 1909–1953 Clyde Kluckhohn, Clyde Kluckhohn Harvard UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Clyde Kluckhohn, Clyde Kluckhohn Harvard UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: December 1954 https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1954.56.6.02a00100Citations: 13AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. References Cited 1930 “Cave investigated”. El Palacio 29: 269– 72. 1931 Airplane used in archaeological survey of Pueblo Plateau. El Palacio 30: 215– 17, 224–25. 1931 Preliminary examination of a ruin in the Rio Puerco Valley, New Mexico. El Palacio 31: 414– 16. 1933 Ancient Pueblo of Chetro Ketl. M.A. thesis, University of New Mexico. Unpublished. 1935 With H. G. Alexander. Report on the excavation of Jemez Cave, New Mexico. Monographs of the School of American Research, No. 4. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press. 1938 The Jemez pueblo of Unshagi, New Mexico; with notes on earlier excavations at “Amoxiumqua” and Giusewa. Monographs of the School of American Research, Nos. 5–6. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press. 1939 Preview of a ruin. New Mexico 17, No. 7: 14– 15, 42–44. 1939 Ed. with Clyde Kluckhohn. Preliminary report on the 1937 excavations, Bc 50–51, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, with some distributional analyses. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press. 1940 With W. T. Mulloy and E. H. Blumenthal, Jr. Preliminary report of the Jemez excavation at Nanishagi, New Mexico. University of New Mexico, Bulletin. Anthropological Series, Vol. 3, No. 3. 1940 The Southwest before Coronado. El Palacio 47: 108– 10. 1946 Form and function in some prehistoric ceremonial structures in the Southwest. Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University. Unpublished. Citing Literature Volume56, Issue6December 1954Pages 1085-1087 ReferencesRelatedInformation