A01=Asa R. Randall
Archaeology
Archaic Period
Architecture
Author_Asa R. Randall
Bartram
Category=NKP
Ceremonial mound
Chronology
Climate Event
Community Pattern
Culture
Culture Core
Culture History
Deposition
Depositional narrative
Depositional Practice
Diet
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Exchange
Florida
Fluvial History
GIS Analysis
History
Hunter Gatherers
Hydrology
Hypsithermal
Inhabitation
Inscription
Intensive shellfishing
Jefferies Wyman
Landscape ecology
Landscape Modification
LiDAR
Living Architecture
Mapping
Midden
Middening
Middle Holocene
Mobility practices
Monument
Monumentality
Mortuary mound
Mortuary Ritual
Mount Taylor period
Nature
NonEvent
Orange period
Paleoproxy
Practice Theory
Prehistory
Processualism
Remote Sensing
Ritualized Deposition
Shell Mounds
Shell site reuse
Site Biography
Site Typology
Social Evolution
Social history
Social Memory
Social Theory
St Johns Period
St Johns River Valley
Stratigraphy
Zooarchaeology
Product details
- ISBN 9780813061016
- Weight: 800g
- Dimensions: 155 x 233mm
- Publication Date: 28 Aug 2015
- Publisher: University Press of Florida
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
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.
Asa R. Randall is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma, USA.
