This book, edited by David Anderson and Ken Sassaman, is a synthetic study by many authors on the current archaeology of the Mid-Holocene Southeast - that is, the middle and late Archaic period in southeastern North America, from roughly 7,000 years before the present until a bit more than 2,500 years ago. The book examines in detail what we currently know of the Native American societies which existed during this period, and significantly updates and expands what we have known about these cultures.
It has been traditional to regard all of the Native American cultures of this time as "hunter-gatherers", with the unfortunate connotation of "primitive" which that term carries. This book takes us beyond merely looking at environment and tool-using technology to show that the peoples of the middle and late Archaic had complex cultures based on a changing environment. One of the best series of essays is by Russo, who shows that the "shell heaps" found in northern Florida and elsewhere were almost certainly deliberately constructed monuments, with ritual and cultural significance for the people who built them. There is also discussion of what is known of the Poverty Point site in Louisiana, an example of extraordinary construction and cultural sophistication centuries before the Mississipian era.
While some of the chapters are somewhat weaker due to lack of more complete data to support certain assertions (the chapter on Poverty Point is an example), the book as a whole is a useful and readable addition to our knowledge of the Archaic southeast. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the Native American cultures of the southeastern United States, as well as professional archaeologists.
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