One hundred years of archaeological excavations at an important American landmark, the Shiloh Indian Mounds archaeological site, a National Historic Landmark The Shiloh Indian Mounds archaeological site, a National Historic Landmark, is a late prehistoric community within the boundaries of the Shiloh National Military Park on the banks of the Tennessee River, where one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War was fought in April 1862. Dating between AD 1000 and 1450, the archaeological site includes at least eight mounds and more than 100 houses. It is unique in that the land has never been plowed, so visitors can walk around the area and find the collapsed remains of 800-year-old houses and the 900-meter-long palisade with bastions that protected the village in prehistoric times. Although its location within a National Park boundary has protected the area from the recent ravages of man, riverbank erosion began to undermine the site in the 1970s. In the mid-1990s, Paul Welch began a four-year investigation culminating in a comprehensive report to the National Park Service on the Shiloh Indian Mounds. These published findings confirm that the Shiloh site was one of at least fourteen Mississippian mound sites located within a 50 km area and that Shiloh was abandoned in approximately AD 1450. It also establishes other parameters for the Shiloh archaeological phase. This current volume is intended to make information about the first 100 years of excavations at the Shiloh site available to the archaeological community.

This book in the SAA Press Current Perspectives Series represents a period-by-period synthesis of southeastern prehistory designed for high school and college students, avocational archaeologists, and interested members of the general public. It also serves as a basic reference for professional archaeologists worldwide on the record of a remarkable region.

A guide to 366 places that are significant to American Indians and open to the public. Organized geographically, the guide includes location information, maps, and suggestions for further reading about the sites.

The greatness of America is right under our feet. The American past—the people, battles, industry and homes—can be found not only in libraries and museums, but also in hundreds of archaeological sites that scientists investigate with great care. These sites are not in distant lands, accessible only by research scientists, but nearby—almost every locale possesses a parcel of land worthy of archaeological exploration. Archaeology in America is the first resource that provides students, researchers, and anyone interested in their local history with a survey of the most important archaeological discoveries in North America. Leading scholars, most with an intimate knowledge of the area, have written in-depth essays on over 300 of the most important archaeological sites that explain the importance of the site, the history of the people who left the artifacts, and the nature of the ongoing research. Archaeology in America divides it coverage into 8 regions: the Arctic and Subarctic, the Great Basin and Plateau, the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, the Midwest, the Northeast, the Southeast, the Southwest, and the West Coast. Each entry provides readers with an accessible overview of the archaeological site as well as books and articles for further research.

How do archaeologists work with the data they identify as a record of the cultural past? How are these data collected and construed as evidence? What is the impact on archaeological practice of new techniques of data recovery and analysis, especially those imported from the sciences? To answer these questions, the authors identify close-to-the-ground principles of best practice based on an analysis of examples of evidential reasoning in archaeology that are widely regarded as successful, contested, or instructive failures. They look at how archaeologists put old evidence to work in pursuit of new interpretations, how they construct provisional foundations for inquiry as they go, and how they navigate the multidisciplinary ties that make archaeology a productive intellectual trading zone. This case-based approach is predicated on a conviction that archaeological practice is a repository of considerable methodological wisdom, embodied in tacit norms and skilled expertise – wisdom that is rarely made explicit except when contested, and is often obscured when questions about the status and reach of archaeological evidence figure in high-profile crisis debates.

Using a wealth of archaeological evidence, this book outlines the development of Mississippian civilization.