Description: "Using fresh evidence and nontraditional ideas, the contributing authors of Mississippian Beginnings reconsider the origins of the Mississippian culture of the North American Midwest and Southeast (A.D. 1000-1600). Challenging the decades-old opinion that this culture evolved similarly across isolated Woodland populations, they discuss signs of migrations, missionization, pilgrimages, violent conflicts, long-distance exchange, and other far-flung entanglements that now appear to have shaped the early Mississippian past. " -- Publisher's description
Brief description: Gregory D. Wilson, associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of The Archaeology of Everyday Life at Early Moundville.
Review Quotes: "A major exposition of the current scholarly understanding of the development of Mississippian societies and cultures. . . . Multifaceted and informative. This work is seminal in the field of Mississippian studies and ideal for well-informed students of the culture. Essential."--Choice "A badly needed update on the latest research and perspectives on how the Mississippian culture emerged and spread. . . . Mississippian Beginnings gives us a new understanding at both the site level and the entire region."--American Archaeology "Required reading for Mississippian scholars and for anybody interested in the archaeologies of culture contact, entanglement, and social transformation. . . . The chapters in Mississippian Beginnings exemplify the multiple kinds of processes behind the many Mississippianizations that book place across the pre-Contact Midwest and Southeastern US."--Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology