This is the only book on the historic art to be found in Mud Glyph Cave.

A companion to The Archaeology of Rock-Art (Cambridge 1998), this new collection edited by Christopher Chippindale and George Nash addresses the most important component around the rock-art panel - its landscape. The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art draws together the work of many well-known scholars from key regions of the world for rock-art and for rock-art research. It provides a unique, broad and varied insight into the arrangement, location, and structure of rock-art and its place within the landscapes of ancient worlds as ancient people experienced them. Packed with illustrations, as befits a book about images, The Figured Landscapes of Rock-Art offers a visual as well as a literary key to the understanding of this most lovely and alluring of archaeological traces.

"This multi-author volume reflects on the history and continuity of zooarchaeology in North America and honors one of its most notable contemporary contributors, Walter E. Klippel. Klippel came to the University of Tennessee in 1977 as an assistant professor of anthropology and, over the next forty years, mentored countless students, published more than fifty journal articles and book chapters, and assembled a zooarchaeological comparative collection of national significance. Developed by friends, students, and colleagues of the professor, this wide-ranging collection of essays is organized by the prevailing themes of Klippel's career, including geological and landscape contexts, taphonomy, and the incorporation of actualistic methodologies and new technologies into zooarchaeological analyses. The diversity of topics alone suggests how extensive Klippel's research interests have been and how much contemporary zooarchaeology owes to his vision. Seeking to extend and not only celebrate that vision, the contributors also turn to explore new uses for the zooarchaeological framework in nontraditional settings. Foreword by Bonnie W. Styles and R. Bruce McMillan"--

Caves have been used in various ways across human society, but despite the persistence within popular culture of the iconic caveman, deep caves were never used primarily as habitation sites for early humans. Rather, in both ancient and contemporary contexts, caves have served primarily as ritual spaces. In Sacred Darkness, contributors use archaeological evidence as well as ethnographic studies of modern ritual practices to envision the cave as place of spiritual and ideological power that emerges as a potent venue for ritual practice. Covering the ritual use of caves in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, Mesoamerica, and the US Southwest and Eastern woodlands, this book brings together case studies by prominent scholars whose research spans from the Paleolithic period to the present day. These contributions demonstrate that cave sites are as fruitful as surface contexts in promoting the understanding of both ancient and modern religious beliefs and practices. This state-of-the-art survey of ritual cave use will be one of the most valuable resources for understanding the role of caves in studies of religion, sacred landscape, or cosmology and a must-read for any archaeologist interested in caves.

From the high plains of Canada to caves in the southeastern United States, images etched into and painted on stone by ancient Native Americans have aroused in observers the desire to understand their origins and meanings. Rock paintings and engravings can be found in nearly every state and province, and each region has its own distinctive story of discovery and evolving investigation of the rock art record. Rock art in the twenty-first century enjoys a large and growing popularity fueled by scholarly research and public interest alike. This book explores the history of rock art research in North America and is the only volume in the past twenty-five years to provide coverage of the subject on a continental scale. Written by contributors active in rock art research, it examines sites that provide a cross-section of regions and topics and complements existing books on rock art by offering new information, insights, and approaches to research. The first part of the volume explores different regional approaches to the study of rock art, including a set of varied responses to a single site as well as an overview of broader regional research investigations. It tells how Writing-on-Stone in southern Alberta, Canada, reflects changing thought about rock art from the 1870s to today; it describes the role of avocational archaeologists in the Mississippi Valley, where rock art styles differ on each side of the river; it explores discoveries in southwestern mountains and southeastern caves; and it integrates the investigation of cupules along Georgia’s Yellow River into a full study of a site and its context. The book also compares the differences between rock art research in the United States and France: from the outset, rock art was of only marginal interest to most U.S. archaeologists, while French prehistorians considered cave art an integral part of archaeological research. The book’s second part is concerned with working with the images today and includes coverage of gender interests, government sponsorship, the role of amateurs in research, and chronometric studies. Much has changed in our understanding of rock art since Cotton Mather first wrote in 1714 of a strange inscription on a Massachusetts boulder, and the cutting-edge contributions in this volume tell us much about both the ancient place of these enduring images and their modern meanings. Discovering North American Rock Art distills today’s most authoritative knowledge of the field and is an essential volume for both specialists and hobbyists.

Showcases the wealth of new research on sacred imagery found in twelve states and four Canadian provinces In archaeology, rock-art—any long-lasting marking made on a natural surface—is similar to material culture (pottery and tools) because it provides a record of human activity and ideology at that site. Petroglyphs, pictographs, and dendroglyphs (tree carvings) have been discovered and recorded throughout the eastern woodlands of North America on boulders, bluffs, and trees, in caves and in rock shelters. These cultural remnants scattered on the landscape can tell us much about the belief systems of the inhabitants that left them behind. The Rock-Art of Eastern North America brings together 20 papers from recent research at sites in eastern North America, where humidity and the actions of weather, including acid rain, can be very damaging over time. Contributors to this volume range from professional archaeologists and art historians to avocational archaeologists, including a surgeon, a lawyer, two photographers, and an aerospace engineer. They present information, drawings, and photographs of sites ranging from the Seven Sacred Stones in Iowa to the Bald Friar Petroglyphs of Maryland and from the Lincoln Rise Site in Tennessee to the Nisula Site in Quebec. Discussions of the significance of artist gender, the relationship of rock-art to mortuary caves, and the suggestive link to the peopling of the continent are particularly notable contributions. Discussions include the history, ethnography, recording methods, dating, and analysis of the subject sites and integrate these with the known archaeological data.

In the long history of documenting the material culture of the archaeological record, meaning and actions of makers and users of these items is often overlooked. The authors in this book focus on rituals exploring the natural and made landscape stages, the ritual directors, including their progression from shaman to priesthood, and meaning of the rites. They also provide comments on the end or failure of rites and cults from Paleoindian into post-DeSoto years. Chapters examine the archaeological records of Cahokia, the lower Ohio Valley, Aztalan Wisconsin, Vermont, Florida, and Georgia, and others scan the Eastern US, investigating tobacco/datura, color symbolism, deer symbolism, mound stratigraphy, flintknapping, stone caching, cults and their organization, and red ochre. These authors collectively query the beliefs that can be gleaned from mortuary practices and their variation, from mound construction, from imagery, from the choice of landscape setting. While some rituals were short-lived, others can be shown to span millennia as the ritual specialists modified their interpretations and introduced innovations.

This volume supplements the acclaimed three volume set published in 1986 and consists of an annotated listing of American Studies monographs published between 1984 and 1988. There are more than 6,000 descriptive entries in a wide range of categories: anthropology and folklore, art and architecture, history, literature, music, political science, popular culture, psychology, religion, science and technology, and sociology.

Since its inception in 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority has played a dual role as federal agency and steward of the Tennessee River Valley. While known to most people today as an energy provider, the agency is also charged with managing and protecting the nation's fifth-largest river system, the Tennessee River, and vast tracts of land and resources encompassing Tennessee and portions of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia. Included in TVA's mandate is the preservation of the archaeological record of the valley's prehistoric peoples-a record that would have been forever lost beneath floodwaters had TVA not demonstrated a commitment to minimize its impact on the valley and sought to protect its archaeological resources. In TVA Archaeology, fourteen contributors who have worked with TVA in its conservation effort discuss prehistoric excavations conducted at Tellico, Normandy, Jonathan's Creek, and many other sites. They explore TVA's role in the excavations and how the agency facilitated prehistoric investigations along proposed dam sites. They also delve into the history of TVA as it grew from a New Deal program to a federal corporation and reveal how, during the agency's formative years, the TVA board responded to prodding from archaeologists David DeJarnette and William Webb and molded TVA into the steward of a region it is today. TVA remains a mainstay of progress and conservation within an important region of the United States, and its safeguarding of the valley's prehistory cements its legacy as more than just an energy supplier. Students and researchers interested in prehistoric archaeology, the Tennessee Valley, and the history of TVA will find this volume an invaluable contribution to the study of the region. Erin E. Pritchard is an archaeologist with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Her work includes multiple archaeological site investigations, most notably Dust Cave in northern Alabama, and she has authored and coauthored numerous site reports for TVA.

The Encyclopedia of Caves and Karst Science contains 350 alphabetically arranged entries. The topics include cave and karst geoscience, cave archaeology and human use of caves, art in caves, hydrology and groundwater, cave and karst history, and conservation and management. The Encyclopedia is extensively illustrated with photographs, maps, diagrams, and tables, and has thematic content lists and a comprehensive index to facilitate searching and browsing.