Constructing Histories
Archaic Freshwater Shell Mounds and Social Landscapes of the St. Johns River, Florida
- 345 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
Constructing Histories
Archaic Freshwater Shell Mounds and Social Landscapes of the St. Johns River, Florida
About this book
Large accumulations of ancient shells on coastlines and riverbanks were long considered the result of garbage disposal during repeated food gatherings by early inhabitants of the southeastern United States. In this volume, Asa R. Randall presents the first new theoretical framework for examining such middens since Ripley Bullen's seminal work sixty years ago. He convincingly posits that these ancient "garbage dumps" were actually burial mounds, ceremonial gathering places, and often habitation spaces central to the histories and social geography of the hunter-gatherer societies who built them.
Synthesizing more than 150 years of shell mound investigations and modern remote sensing data, Randall rejects the long-standing ecological interpretation and redefines these sites as socially significant monuments that reveal previously unknown complexities about the hunter-gatherer societies of the Mount Taylor period (ca. 7400–4600 cal. B.P.). Affected by climate change and increased scales of social interaction, the region's inhabitants modified the landscape in surprising and meaningful ways. This pioneering volume presents an alternate history from which emerge rich details about the daily activities, ceremonies, and burial rituals of the archaic St. Johns River cultures.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Constructing Histories
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Archaic Shell Mounds on the St. Johns River
- 1. Shell Mounds and Hunter-Gatherers in Prehistory
- 2. Hunter-Gatherers, Landscapes, and Histories
- 3. Ecological Histories in the Middle Holocene
- 4. The Traditions of Mount Taylor Communities
- 5. Mount Taylor Places in Time and Space
- 6. Histories Inscribed in Place
- 7. Mount Taylor Social Histories
- Appendix. Mount Taylor– and select Orange-period radiocarbon assays from shell sites on the middle St. Johns River
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index