A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication Among southeastern Indians pottery was an innovation that enhanced the economic value of native foods and the efficiency of food preparation. But even though pottery was available in the Southeast as early as 4,500 years ago, it took nearly two millenia before it was widely used. Why would an innovation of such economic value take so long to be adopted? The answer lies in the social and political contexts of traditional cooking technology. Sassaman's book questions the value of using technological traits alone to mark temporal and spatial boundaries of prehistoric cultures and shows how social process shapes the prehistoric archaeological record.

A synthesis of research on earthenware technologies of the Late Archaic Period in the southeastern U.S. Information on social groups and boundaries, and on interaction between groups, burgeons when pottery appears on the social landscape of the Southeast in the Late Archaic period (ca. 5000-3000 years ago). This volume provides a broad, comparative review of current data from "first potteries" of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains and in the lower Mississippi River Valley, and it presents research that expands our understanding of how pottery functioned in its earliest manifestations in this region. Included are discussions of Orange pottery in peninsular Florida, Stallings pottery in Georgia, Elliot's Point fiber-tempered pottery in the Florida panhandle, and the various pottery types found in excavations over the years at the Poverty Point site in northeastern Louisiana. The data and discussions demonstrate that there was much more interaction, and at an earlier date, than is often credited to Late Archaic societies. Indeed, extensive trade in pottery throughout the region occurs as early as 1500 B.C. These and other findings make this book indispensable to those involved in research into the origin and development of pottery in general and its unique history in the Southeast in particular.

A Field Gide To Southeastern Indian Pottery (Revised and Expanded is a 565 page compilation of 528 Native American pottery types from across the Southeastern United States including seven states; Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The tempering materials and surface decoration of each time is described in understandable terms and the distribution of each type is illustrated on individual maps. The work contains over 3000 pictures of the pottery types and a few of the associated point types found with each type.

Early Art of the Southeastern Indians is a visual journey through time, highlighting some of the most skillfully created art in native North America. The remarkable objects described and pictured here, many in full color, reveal the hands of master artists who developed lapidary and weaving traditions, established centers for production of shell and copper objects, and created the first ceramics in North America. Presenting artifacts originating in the Archaic through the Mississippian periods--from thousands of years ago through A.D. 1600--Susan C. Power introduces us to an extraordinary assortment of ceremonial and functional objects, including pipes, vessels, figurines, and much more. Drawn from every corner of the Southeast--from Louisiana to the Ohio River valley, from Florida to Oklahoma--the pieces chronicle the emergence of new media and the mastery of new techniques as they offer clues to their creators’ widening awareness of their physical and spiritual worlds. The most complex works, writes Power, were linked to male (and sometimes female) leaders. Wearing bold ensembles consisting of symbolic colors, sacred media, and richly complex designs, the leaders controlled large ceremonial centers that were noteworthy in regional art history, such as Etowah, Georgia; Spiro, Oklahoma; Cahokia, Illinois; and Moundville, Alabama. Many objects were used locally; others circulated to distant locales. Power comments on the widening of artists’ subjects, starting with animals and insects, moving to humans, then culminating in supernatural combinations of both, and she discusses how a piece’s artistic “language” could function as a visual shorthand in local style and expression, yet embody an iconography of regional proportions. The remarkable achievements of these southeastern artists delight the senses and engage the mind while giving a brief glimpse into the rich, symbolic world of feathered serpents and winged beings.

Traces the craft of pottery making among the Catawba Indians of North Carolina from the late 18th century to the present When Europeans encountered them, the Catawba Indians were living along the river and throughout the valley that carries their name near the present North Carolina-South Carolina border. Archaeologists later collected and identified categories of pottery types belonging to the historic Catawba and extrapolated an association with their protohistoric and prehistoric predecessors. In this volume, Thomas Blumer traces the construction techniques of those documented ceramics to the lineage of their probable present-day master potters or, in other words, he traces the Catawba pottery traditions. By mining data from archives and the oral traditions of contemporary potters, Blumer reconstructs sales circuits regularly traveled by Catawba peddlers and thereby illuminates unresolved questions regarding trade routes in the protohistoric period. In addition, the author details particular techniques of the representative potters—factors such as clay selection, tool use, decoration, and firing techniques—which influence their styles.

First published in 1993, this was the first authoritative study of South Carolina stoneware and its history, including he methods used to throw, glaze, decorate, and fire the vessels. Illustrated with nearly two hundred photographs (including fifteen color plates), maps, and drawings, plus an index of potters.