116 posts · 45,391 views
Gambler's House
109 posts
Follow the Energy
7 posts
Sort by Latest Post, Most Popular
View by Condensed, Full
- May 22, 2012
- 12:56 AM
- 56 views
Linguistics and Archaeology in North America
by teofilo in Gambler's House
The same special issue of the journal World Archaeology that I was discussing in the previous post has an article looking specifically at the relationship between linguistic and archaeological evidence in the study of the prehistory of North America. It is by M. Dale Kinkade and J. V. Powell, two linguists who specialized in the languages [...]... Read more »
Kinkade, M., & Powell, J. (1976) Language and the prehistory of North America. World Archaeology, 8(1), 83-100. DOI: 10.1080/00438243.1976.9979654
- April 23, 2012
- 04:29 AM
- 79 views
The Roles of Linguistics and Archaeology
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Sorry for the extended hiatus; I’ve been busy with various things. I’ll have more on the Mississippians at some point, but for now I want to discuss a more general issue: the relationship of historical linguistics to archaeology in attempting to reconstruct past events. Both disciplines provide ways to study past events beyond the reach [...]... Read more »
Blust, R. (1976) Austronesian culture history: Some linguistic inferences and their relations to the archaeological record . World Archaeology, 8(1), 19-43. DOI: 10.1080/00438243.1976.9979650
Ehret, C. (1976) Linguistic evidence and its correlation with archaeology. World Archaeology, 8(1), 5-18. DOI: 10.1080/00438243.1976.9979649
Mallory, J. (1976) Time perspective and proto‐indo‐European culture. World Archaeology, 8(1), 44-56. DOI: 10.1080/00438243.1976.9979651
Phillipson, D. (1976) Archaeology and Bantu linguistics. World Archaeology, 8(1), 65-82. DOI: 10.1080/00438243.1976.9979653
- March 26, 2012
- 03:48 AM
- 101 views
Mississippian Burial Practices
by teofilo in Gambler's House
One of the major areas of interest for the “New Archaeologists” who came to dominate American archaeology in the late twentieth century was mortuary analysis. In keeping with the arguments of Lewis Binford and other leaders of the movement that archaeology as a discipline should be “problem-oriented” and focused on reconstruction prehistoric societies as fully [...]... Read more »
Milner, G. (1984) Social and Temporal Implications of Variation among American Bottom Mississippian Cemeteries. American Antiquity, 49(3), 468. DOI: 10.2307/280355
- March 19, 2012
- 03:12 AM
- 126 views
Mississippian Houses
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Mississippian societies are best known for their mound centers, with Cahokia in Illinois being the largest and most impressive but by no means the only one. These sites have drawn the interest of archaeologists since the very beginning of American archaeology as a field of study, but the focus on mounds meant that other aspects [...]... Read more »
Bennett, J. (1944) A Note on Middle Mississippi Architecture. American Antiquity, 9(3), 333. DOI: 10.2307/275792
- March 11, 2012
- 05:56 AM
- 137 views
The Figurines of Cahokia
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Among the rarest and most fascinating artifacts associated with Mississippian sites are figurines made of carved stone. These are most numerous in the Cahokia area, although they have also been found in various other parts of the Mississippian world, most notably at the Spiro site in Oklahoma. Regardless of where they are found, however, many [...]... Read more »
Emerson, T., & Hughes, R. (2000) Figurines, Flint Clay Sourcing, the Ozark Highlands, and Cahokian Acquisition. American Antiquity, 65(1), 79. DOI: 10.2307/2694809
Emerson, T., Hughes, R., Hynes, M., & Wisseman, S. (2003) The Sourcing and Interpretation of Cahokia-Style Figurines in the Trans-Mississippi South and Southeast. American Antiquity, 68(2), 287. DOI: 10.2307/3557081
Prentice, G. (1986) An Analysis of the Symbolism Expressed by the Birger Figurine. American Antiquity, 51(2), 239. DOI: 10.2307/279939
- February 27, 2012
- 03:25 AM
- 149 views
Filed Teeth at Cahokia
by teofilo in Gambler's House
One of the distinctive characteristics of Cahokia and its area of strong influence is the prevalence of filed teeth in many human burials. Filing of teeth as a cultural practice was common in Mexico for thousands of years before the Spanish conquest, but further north it is very rare and found mostly at Cahokia and [...]... Read more »
Perino, G. (1967) Additional Discoveries of Filed Teeth in the Cahokia Area. American Antiquity, 32(4), 538. DOI: 10.2307/2694083
- February 21, 2012
- 01:49 AM
- 134 views
Coring Monks Mound
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Monks Mound is both the largest mound at Cahokia and the largest at any Mississippian site, by a huge margin. It’s 100 feet high and about 1,000 by 800 feet at the base, covering more than 18 acres. Its mass is five times that of the second-largest Mississippian mound (Mound A at the Etowah site [...]... Read more »
Reed, N., Bennett, J., & Porter, J. (1968) Solid Core Drilling of Monks Mound: Technique and Findings. American Antiquity, 33(2), 137. DOI: 10.2307/278515
- February 20, 2012
- 03:07 AM
- 175 views
Cahokia’s Grand Plaza
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Mississippian societies are known for their mounds, but there’s more to them than that even if you just look at community layout at the largest centers. One of the most distinctive characteristics of Mississippian mound centers is that the mounds at the biggest centers are typically grouped very formally around a central plaza. Historic [...]... Read more »
Holley, G., Dalan, R., & Smith, P. (1993) Investigations in the Cahokia Site Grand Plaza. American Antiquity, 58(2), 306. DOI: 10.2307/281972
- February 19, 2012
- 02:05 AM
- 173 views
Mississippian Agriculture
by teofilo in Gambler's House
One of the main ways Mississippian societies differed from earlier societies in eastern North America was in their much heavier reliance on maize agriculture for subsistence. There had been agriculture, and even maize, before in the east, but the Mississippians farmed much more intensively and used maize in particular much more heavily than people had [...]... Read more »
Fowler, M. (1969) Middle Mississippian Agricultural Fields. American Antiquity, 34(4), 365. DOI: 10.2307/277733
- February 6, 2012
- 03:28 AM
- 182 views
Who the Cahokians Weren’t
by teofilo in Gambler's House
The name “Cahokia” comes from one of the constituent tribes of the Illinois Confederacy, a group of several semi-autonomous “tribes” or “villages” that occupied much of what is now the state of Illinois and parts of some of the surrounding states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Staunch allies of the French throughout most of [...]... Read more »
Blasingham, E. (1956) The Depopulation of the Illinois Indians, Part I. Ethnohistory, 3(3), 193. DOI: 10.2307/480408
Blasingham, E. (1956) The Depopulation of the Illinois Indians. Part 2, Concluded. Ethnohistory, 3(4), 361. DOI: 10.2307/480464
Wedel, W. (1945) On the Illinois Confederacy and Middle Mississippi Culture in Illinois. American Antiquity, 10(4), 383. DOI: 10.2307/275581
Wray, D., & Smith, H. (1944) An Hypothesis for the Identification of the Illinois Confederacy with the Middle Mississippi Culture in Illinois. American Antiquity, 10(1), 23. DOI: 10.2307/275179
- January 30, 2012
- 03:16 AM
- 209 views
Where Did the Cahokians Come From?
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Regardless of exactly how many people lived at Cahokia, it’s clear from recent research that the population of the site and its immediately surrounding area grew immensely in a short period of time in the eleventh century AD. As Timothy Pauketat points out in the 2003 article that I was discussing earlier, the scale of [...]... Read more »
Lynott, M., Neff, H., Price, J., Cogswell, J., & Glascock, M. (2000) Inferences about Prehistoric Ceramics and People in Southeast Missouri: Results of Ceramic Compositional Analysis. American Antiquity, 65(1), 103. DOI: 10.2307/2694810
Pauketat, T. (2003) Resettled Farmers and the Making of a Mississippian Polity. American Antiquity, 68(1), 39. DOI: 10.2307/3557032
- January 22, 2012
- 04:47 AM
- 253 views
The Density of Cahokia
by teofilo in Gambler's House
The greatest of the Mississippian mound centers, by far, is Cahokia. This vast site contains numerous mounds and is located in the American Bottom area of southwestern Illinois, across the Mississippi River from the modern city of St. Louis, Missouri. This is a highly strategic location, very close to the confluence of the two largest [...]... Read more »
Bareis, C. (1964) Meander Loops and the Cahokia Site. American Antiquity, 30(1), 89. DOI: 10.2307/277637
Hegmon, M. (2003) Setting Theoretical Egos Aside: Issues and Theory in North American Archaeology. American Antiquity, 68(2), 213. DOI: 10.2307/3557078
Lawler, A. (2011) America's Lost City. Science, 334(6063), 1618-1623. DOI: 10.1126/science.334.6063.1618
Pauketat, T. (2003) Resettled Farmers and the Making of a Mississippian Polity. American Antiquity, 68(1), 39. DOI: 10.2307/3557032
Peregrine, P. (1991) A Graph-Theoretic Approach to the Evolution of Cahokia. American Antiquity, 56(1), 66. DOI: 10.2307/280973
- January 16, 2012
- 02:49 AM
- 197 views
The Vacant Quarter
by teofilo in Gambler's House
One of the major advantages Southwestern archaeologists have over those studying other areas of prehistoric North America is a very solid chronology, based primarily on tree-rings and extended by diagnostic pottery types that in many cases changed rapidly. As a result of this chronology, in many parts of the Southwest unexcavated sites can be dated [...]... Read more »
Cobb, C., & Butler, B. (2002) The Vacant Quarter Revisited: Late Mississippian Abandonment of the Lower Ohio Valley. American Antiquity, 67(4), 625. DOI: 10.2307/1593795
- January 13, 2012
- 02:42 AM
- 230 views
Does Language Density Correlate with Latitude?
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Tim De Chant at Per Square Mile has an interesting post discussing an article by Ruth Mace and Mark Pagel in which they did a statistical analysis of the distribution of Native languages at European contact in North America and found that the density of languages correlates inversely with latitude (when controlling for land area) [...]... Read more »
Mace, R., & Pagel, M. (1995) A Latitudinal Gradient in the Density of Human Languages in North America. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 261(1360), 117-121. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.1995.0125
- January 9, 2012
- 04:00 AM
- 177 views
Who Were the Padouca?
by teofilo in Gambler's House
In 1827 William Clark, who had attained national fame as co-leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition more than 20 years earlier and had gone on to a successful career as an Indian Agent and governor of the Missouri Territory, obtained title to 37,000 acres in western Kentucky along the Ohio River that had been [...]... Read more »
Grinnell, G. (1920) Who Were the Padouca?. American Anthropologist, 22(3), 248-260. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1920.22.3.02a00050
Michelson, T. (1921) Who Were the Padouca?. American Anthropologist, 23(1), 101-101. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1921.23.1.02a00120
Secoy, F. (1951) The Identity of the "Paduca"; An Ethnohistorical Analysis. American Anthropologist, 53(4), 525-542. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1951.53.4.02a00060
- January 8, 2012
- 04:08 AM
- 208 views
Why Don’t Navajos Eat Fish?
by teofilo in Gambler's House
In 1898 Washington Matthews, the US Army physician who was one of the earliest and best recorders of ethnographic information on the Navajos, published an article in the Journal of American Folklore entitled “Ichthyophobia.” It’s an interesting piece of scholarship for a number of reasons, not least its florid Victorian prose style. Matthews begins thus: [...]... Read more »
Landar, H. (1960) The Loss of Athapaskan Words for Fish in the Southwest. International Journal of American Linguistics, 26(1), 75. DOI: 10.1086/464559
Matthews, W. (1898) Ichthyophobia. The Journal of American Folklore, 11(41), 105. DOI: 10.2307/533215
- January 7, 2012
- 02:46 AM
- 253 views
Gendered Language among the Pueblos
by teofilo in Gambler's House
This video has attracted some attention in certain corners of the internet. It features a (very talented) male actor doing a pitch-perfect impersonation of a young woman saying various expressions that are strongly stereotyped as “female” in contemporary American English. One thing that struck me about watching the video was how it shows how [...]... Read more »
Kroskrity, P. (1983) On Male and Female Speech in the Pueblo Southwest. International Journal of American Linguistics, 49(1), 88. DOI: 10.1086/465769
Sims, C., & Valiquette, H. (1990) More on Male and Female Speech in (Acoma and Laguna) Keresan. International Journal of American Linguistics, 56(1), 162. DOI: 10.1086/466144
- December 27, 2011
- 02:15 AM
- 292 views
Ram Mesa: A Reasonable Case for Witchcraft Execution without Cannibalism
by teofilo in Gambler's House
One of the most notable examples of an assemblage of highly mutilated human remains from the Southwest being attributed to witchcraft execution rather than cannibalism, in accordance with J. Andrew Darling’s theory discussed in the previous post, is Ram Mesa, southwest of Chaco Canyon near Gallup, NM. This site was excavated by the University of [...]... Read more »
Ogilvie, M., & Hilton, C. (2000) Ritualized violence in the prehistoric American Southwest. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 10(1), 27-48. DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-1212(200001/02)10:13.0.CO;2-M
- December 25, 2011
- 11:15 PM
- 259 views
Cannibal Christmas Returns: The Witchcraft Theory
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Last year around Christmas I did a series of posts on the evidence for cannibalism in the prehistoric Southwest. I didn’t cover nearly all that there is to say about this important but controversial issue then, so I figured it would be a good idea to discuss it a bit more this year. In this [...]... Read more »
Andrew Darling, J. (1998) Mass Inhumation and the Execution of Witches in the American Southwest. American Anthropologist, 100(3), 732-752. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1998.100.3.732
- December 25, 2011
- 01:49 AM
- 283 views
The “Kiowa Apaches”: Neither Kiowa Nor Apache?
by teofilo in Gambler's House
The term “Apache” is one of the most widely known names for Native American groups, but it’s actually quite problematic. There is, I think, a general perception that it refers to a specific “tribe,” but it doesn’t. What it really is, at least as it’s used today, is a designation for all the Southern Athapaskan [...]... Read more »
Hoijer, H. (1938) The Southern Athapaskan Languages. American Anthropologist, 40(1), 75-87. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1938.40.1.02a00080
Huld, M. (1985) Regressive Apicalization in Na'isha. International Journal of American Linguistics, 51(4), 461. DOI: 10.1086/465932
topics
join us!
Do you write about peer-reviewed research in your blog? Use ResearchBlogging.org to make it easy for your readers — and others from around the world — to find your serious posts about academic research.
If you don't have a blog, you can still use our site to learn about fascinating developments in cutting-edge research from around the world.
