Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

University of Mississippi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Theses/Dissertations

Archaeology

Articles 1 - 13 of 13

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Regional Variation In Gravel-Based Lithic Economies: Archaeological Investigations At Stark Farm (22ok778) And Grand Village (22ad501), Matthew H. Perry Aug 2022

Regional Variation In Gravel-Based Lithic Economies: Archaeological Investigations At Stark Farm (22ok778) And Grand Village (22ad501), Matthew H. Perry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The lithic economies of the Late Mississippian and Early Contact periods have in the past been characterized as simple and lacking complexities, however this is a flawed assumption (Binford 1980:10). This thesis aims to highlight the variations and complexities that existed in gravel-based lithic economies exploring how these variations present themselves in the archaeological record. These variations will be examined through several quantitative methods including mass, cortex, flake and biface analysis. I will also use historical accounts and archaeological reports to place these assemblages in the Late Mississippian and Early Contact periods. This research compares the gravel-based lithic assemblages from …


Excavating Ethnohistory: Archaeological Signatures Of Ceremony In The Southeast, Riley Alice Freeman Aug 2022

Excavating Ethnohistory: Archaeological Signatures Of Ceremony In The Southeast, Riley Alice Freeman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates ethnohistoric accounts written about Southeastern Native Americans and their practice of a renewal ceremony known as the Green Corn Ceremony or Busk. It then presents a model of the material consequences and potential archaeological signatures of this ceremony. This model is applied by analyzing four large refuse basins at the Stark Farm (22OK778) site located in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi. Situated in the Black Prairie physiographic region of the Southeastern United States, this site was occupied between the Late Mississippian through Contact era (A.D. 1400 - 1700) and is thought to be part of the larger Starkville Archaeological …


Minimum Number Of Individuals: A Methodological Comparison Using Human Remains From Caves Branch Rockshelter In The Cayo District Of Belize, Caitlin Elizabeth Stewart Jan 2019

Minimum Number Of Individuals: A Methodological Comparison Using Human Remains From Caves Branch Rockshelter In The Cayo District Of Belize, Caitlin Elizabeth Stewart

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The analysis of human remains in archaeological contexts is often complicated by the presence of highly fragmented and commingled remains. The standard methods used to help quantify the number of individuals and elements in these contexts are based upon the segmentation of whole bones. The methods provide standardization and are flexible enough to allow for the idiosyncratic nature of each context. However, this results in a lack of transparency, which is necessary to reanalyze the same sample or to compare “like” contexts, as the data collected will vary.


Hurricane Landing: An Analysis Of Site 22la516 In Sardis Lake, Lafayette County, Mississippi, Joshua John Shiers Jan 2019

Hurricane Landing: An Analysis Of Site 22la516 In Sardis Lake, Lafayette County, Mississippi, Joshua John Shiers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Site 22LA516, known as Hurricane Landing, is a single mound early Mississippian site located in the middle of Sardis Lake, Lafayette County, Mississippi. As part of a 2015 joint salvage archaeology project between the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) and the Vicksburg District Corp of Engineers, nine pit features were excavated. Analyses of the ceramics and lithic remains recovered from the features, combined with AMS dates, were conducted with the focus of better understanding Hurricane Landing within its North Central Hills region of Mississippi. Hurricane Landing’s 2015 excavation ceramic collection contains shell tempered and grog tempered plainware with several shell …


Crafting Stone Discoidals On The Frontier: Production And Identity In Southwest Virginia, Hamilton Hastie Bryant Jan 2019

Crafting Stone Discoidals On The Frontier: Production And Identity In Southwest Virginia, Hamilton Hastie Bryant

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Stone discoidals are widely recognized as a class of artifacts associated with Mississippian cultural traditions and even some of its various descendant communities. Excavations at the Carter Robinson site a Fourteenth Century Mississippian frontier site in Lee County Virginia have revealed evidence of the production of stone discoidals. Although craft production in Mississippian societies has been the subject of much debate little to no attention has been given to the production of stone discoidals. The purpose of this thesis is to explicate the method of stone discoidal production at Carter Robinson and to explore how this production was organized overtime …


Archaeological Investigations At A Mississippian Platform Mound Site In Lowndes County, Mississippi, Hannah Danielle Zechman Jan 2019

Archaeological Investigations At A Mississippian Platform Mound Site In Lowndes County, Mississippi, Hannah Danielle Zechman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Upper Tombigbee River Valley and the Black Prairie two adjacent physiographic regions located in northeast Mississippi are defined archaeologically by the existence of multiple single-mound sites with associated farmsteads or small habitation sites. This thesis is an analysis of mound-construction data and the ceramic assemblage excavated in 2017 from the Butler Mound Site (22LO500) a single-mound site located in Lowndes County Mississippi. The purpose of this thesis is to determine when construction of the Butler Mound occurred using mound-construction data ceramic analysis and radiocarbon dating. This thesis also seeks to understand how Butler and neighboring sites relate to one …


Searching Through Debris: A Mass Analysis From The Carter Robinson Mound Site In Lee County, Virginia, Robert Capps Jan 2018

Searching Through Debris: A Mass Analysis From The Carter Robinson Mound Site In Lee County, Virginia, Robert Capps

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Mississippian period is one of the most widely studied periods in the prehistoric Southeast, but there are areas such as the Mississippian frontier that have not been explored in great detail. Carter Robinson is a Mississippian chiefdom located on the frontier in southwest Virginia during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. To better understand the people living at this site a mass analysis was conducted to examine the lithic debris left behind by the people living there. The purpose of this thesis is to identify the degree of tool production at Carter Robinson and to identify areas of tool production, …


The Analysis Of Contact-Era Settlements In Clay, Lowndes, And Oktibbeha Counties In Northeast Mississippi, Emily Lee Clark Jan 2017

The Analysis Of Contact-Era Settlements In Clay, Lowndes, And Oktibbeha Counties In Northeast Mississippi, Emily Lee Clark

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this project is to compare the spatial distribution of sites across Clay, Lowndes, and Oktibbeha counties between the Mississippi and Early Historic periods using site files from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), sites were mapped chronologically to examine change through time to investigate how people reacted to European contact and colonization. Site locations and clusters also were used to evaluate possible locations of the polities of Chicaza, Chakchiuma, and Alimamu discussed in the De Soto chronicles. Sites in Clay, Lowndes, and Oktibbeha counties were chosen due to the existence of …


Excavating The Catacomb Of Santa Lucia, Gabby Coggin Jan 2016

Excavating The Catacomb Of Santa Lucia, Gabby Coggin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 733 B.C., Archias (a Corinthian) founded the city of Syracuse in Sicily. This began Syracuse’ history as a Greek colony, and also a history of cultural influences and changes produced by different occupations. The catacomb of St. Lucy is located in Syracuse, and contains evidence for the Greek, Roman Christian and Byzantine cultures. Excavations have been occurring here since 1916, beginning with Paolo Orsi, and most recently occurring in 2015 with Dr. Davide Tanasi. St. Lucy is an excellent case study for examining how different cultures have used this site as a burial location for centuries. The research done …


From Turkeys To Tamales: Paleoindian To Preclassic Period Faunal Use At Maya Hak Cab Pek Rockshelter In Southern Belize, Stephanie Raye Orsini Jan 2016

From Turkeys To Tamales: Paleoindian To Preclassic Period Faunal Use At Maya Hak Cab Pek Rockshelter In Southern Belize, Stephanie Raye Orsini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Very little is known about Paleoindian and Archaic subsistence strategies of the people of Mesoamerica prior to the development of ceramics. Rockshelters with good preservation and stratigraphic deposits can provide excellent contexts for a comparative faunal analysis though time. In February of 2014 the Bladen Paleoindian and Archaic Project (BPAP), directed by Dr. Keith Prufer, began excavations at the rockshelter Maya Hak Cab Pek (MHCP). The site has evidence for human activities from the Paleoindian period (11,500 BC to 8,000 BC) through the Preclassic Maya period (2,000 BC to AD 250). This research uses zooarchaeological analysis to investigate animal use …


Developing An Architectural Sequence For A Portion Of The Mound A Enclosure At The Carson Mound Group, Coahoma County, Mississippi, Todd Bryan Mcleod Jan 2015

Developing An Architectural Sequence For A Portion Of The Mound A Enclosure At The Carson Mound Group, Coahoma County, Mississippi, Todd Bryan Mcleod

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.


Understanding Strawberry Plains Through Landscape Archaeology, Leeanne Wendt Jan 2014

Understanding Strawberry Plains Through Landscape Archaeology, Leeanne Wendt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Strawberry Plains is a site that is located in Marshall County, Mississippi and is comprised of Woodland, Chickasaw, antebellum, and postbellum components. The focus of this thesis was placed on the postbellum time period. The information presented here is intended to give a comprehensive view into the lives of the sharecroppers that resided and worked on Strawberry Plains during the early to mid-twentieth century and also understand the economic relationship between them and the landowner. Also of importance to this project was the placement of the houses and their dispersed pattern across the landscape and comparing this pattern to other …


Cohonina Social Organization And The Role Of Forts In Integration And Interaction: A View From The Pittsberg Community., Travis Brent Cureton Jan 2014

Cohonina Social Organization And The Role Of Forts In Integration And Interaction: A View From The Pittsberg Community., Travis Brent Cureton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the role of "forts" in the sociopolitical organization of a prehistoric people known as the Cohonina through the application of settlement systems analysis and functional studies. The primary objective of this thesis is to test ideas of Cohonina sociopolitical organization through an examination of the functional characteristics of forts and their positions on the landscape using a combination of theory derived from settlement and landscape archaeology, deployed in a geographic information system work environment. A Cohonina fort site known as the Pittsberg Fort Complex, was placed in its community context through broad scale survey. Artifact, architectural, and …