Archaeology of the Central Mississippi Valley describes an archeological reconstruction of the preceding 11,000 years of an extraordinarily rich environment centered within the largest river system north of the Amazon. This book focuses on the lowlands of the Mississippi Valley from just north of the Ohio River to the mouth of the Arkansas River. Organized into 13 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the territory between the Ohio and Arkansas rivers. This text then attempts to humanize the archeological interpretations by reference to social organization, settlement system, economy, religion, and politics. Other chapters focus on understanding the nature of change through time in the Central Mississippi Valley. This book discusses as well the difference between an old braided stream surface and the younger meander belt system. The final chapter deals with the investigation of prehistoric Indian remains. This book is a valuable resource for archeologists, zoologists, and scientific hobbyists.

Bruce D. Smith reports on the faunal remains of seven Middle Mississippi sites in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri, in the northern part of the Lower Mississippi River Valley. Remains recovered include those from white-tailed deer, raccoon, fish, turkey, rabbits, black bear, and more. The seven sites—the Banks site, the Chucalissa site, the Gooseneck site, the Lilbourn site, Powers Fort, the Snodgrass site, and the Turner site—date to between AD 1000 and 1550.

This collection of essays is based on the 2005 Society for American Archaeology symposium and presents research that epitomizes Richard I. Ford’s approach of engaged anthropology. This transdisciplinary approach integrates archaeological research with perspectives from ethnography, history, and ecology, and engages the anthropologist with Native partners and with socio-natural landscapes. Research papers largely focus on the U.S. Southwest, but also consider other areas of North America, issues related to museums collections, and indigenous approaches to materials research.

In 1975, James B. Griffin retired as director of the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology. During his three decades as director and professor, he had become one of the leading archaeologists in North America and had tremendous influence over the next generation of archaeological research. To honor the man and his work, nineteen scholars contributed essays to this volume. Contributors include Ted Bank, Richard Wilkinson, Donald Janzen, George Quimby, and H. Martin Wobst. Richard Ford and Volney Jones compiled a guide to Griffin’s extensive published works.

In this volume, the authors report on the complete excavation of the Snodgrass site, a prehistoric Mississippian village in southeast Missouri. More than 30 structures were completely excavated over seven years of fieldwork. Price and Griffin present descriptions and analyses of the structures, artifacts (primarily lithics and ceramics), and burials found at the site. Their work provides a look at the social complexity and patterned lifeways that existed within a prehistoric village population.