Light on the Path

by Pluckhahn, Thomas J.; Ethridge, Robbie Franklyn; Hudson, Charles M.

• ISBN13: 9780817352875
• ISBN10: 0817352872
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-02-12
• Publisher: Univ of Alabama Pr

Summary

The past 20 years have witnessed a change in the study of the prehistory and history of the native peoples of the American South. This paradigm shift is the bridging of prehistory and history to fashion a seamless social history that includes not only the 16th-century Late Mississippian period and the 18th-century colonial period but also the largely forgotten-and critically important-century in between. The shift is in part methodological, for it involves combining methods from anthropology, history, and archaeology. It is also conceptual and theoretical, employing historical and archaeological data to reconstruct broad patterns of history-not just political history with Native Americans as a backdrop, nor simply an archaeology with added historical specificity, but a true social history of the Southeastern Indians, spanning their entire existence in the American South. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Figures	vii
Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(25)
Thomas J. Pluckhahn
Robbie Ethridge
Jerald T. Milanich
Marvin T. Smith
The Nature of Mississippian Regional Systems	26	(17)
David J. Hally
Lithics, Shellfish, and Beavers	43	(14)
Mark Williams
Scott Jones
The Cussita Migration Legend: History, Ideology, and the Politics of Mythmaking	57	(37)
Steven C. Hahn
Coalescent Societies	94	(29)
Stephen A. Kowalewski
``A Bold and Warlike People'': The Basis of Westo Power	123	(10)
Eric Bowne
New Light on the Tsali Affair	133	(32)
William Martin Jurgelski
``A Sprightly Lover Is the Most Prevailing Missionary'': Intermarriage between Europeans and Indians in the Eighteenth-Century South	165	(14)
Theda Perdue
The Historic Period Transformation of Mississippian Societies	179	(17)
Adam King
Bridging Prehistory and History in the Southeast: Evaluating the Utility of the Acculturation Concept	196	(11)
John E. Worth
Creating the Shatter Zone: Indian Slave Traders and the Collapse of the Southeastern Chiefdoms	207	(12)
Robbie Ethridge
References Cited	219	(52)
Contributors	271	(2)
Index	273