Vernon Knight | University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa (original) (raw)
Papers by Vernon Knight
Southeastern Archaeological Conference, …, 1988
Page 1. ADVANCES IN SOUTHEASTERN ARCHEOLOGY 1966-1986 CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE FEDERAL ARCHEOLOGICAL ... more Page 1. ADVANCES IN SOUTHEASTERN ARCHEOLOGY 1966-1986 CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE FEDERAL ARCHEOLOGICAL PROGRAM Edited by Bennie C. Keel -yçe*' Southeastern Archeological Conference Special Publication Number 6 ... Bennie C. Keel Washington. ...
Fakes, Copies and Replicas in Cuban Archaeology. In Real, Recent, or Replica? Amerindian (and Neo-Amerindian) Iconography in the Caribbean, edited by J. Ostapkowicz and J. Hanna, pp. 167-190. The University of Alabama Press, 2021
Importante volumen sobre la producción de falsificaciones y copias de artefactos indígenas en el ... more Importante volumen sobre la producción de falsificaciones y copias de artefactos indígenas en el Caribe, y su impacto en la investigación arqueológica, y en la visión de las culturas indígenas. El capítulo 7 trata el caso cubano analizando, además del tema de las falsificaciones, aspectos de las prácticas del coleccionismo de objetos arqueológicos y un importante proceso de creación de réplicas –único en Las Antillas-, así como su uso investigativo, museográfico y divulgativo. Rinde homenaje a pioneros en esta labor como Caridad Rodríguez Cullel, René Herrera Fritot, Ivan Gundrum, y José Rogelio Martínez Fernández.
Despite intensive study by John R. Swanton, in the early twentieth century, of social organizatio... more Despite intensive study by John R. Swanton, in the early twentieth century, of social organization in the towns of the early Creek Confederacy, we are left with certain puzzling features. The article outlines two of them. First, despite the remarkable attention paid to clans and clanship, the nature of local, corporate kin groups was never clearly resolved. Second, despite evidence of a strong separation between the matrilineal organization, on the one hand, and the town council on the other, Swanton gives numerous examples where the two seem impossibly commingled. The article offers thoughts toward resolving both puzzles.
Early Georgia, 2017
In northern Georgia, regional diversity has rendered a comprehensive Woodland ceramic chronology ... more In northern Georgia, regional diversity has rendered a comprehensive Woodland ceramic chronology unrealistic. Large, ill-conceived study areas, lack of recognition of mixing in excavated assemblages, dependence on typologies invented for much coarser work, and continued respect to presumed period “diagnostics” are common issues. We argue that better tools are needed, and advocate for mode-based classification and the formal seriation of assemblages as a foundation for chronology building. When the focus is a smaller portion of northwest Georgia, the relative frequency of certain ceramic modes are reliable for ordering site components. A picture of strong ceramic continuity emerges within a series of arbitrarily defined pottery periods, within which change is the norm. An approach that merges radiometric dates with mode-based chronologies will allow us to track cultural implications and to critically reassess the named culture periods inherited from the literature.
We recognize a new style of Mississippian-period art in the North American Southeast, calling it ... more We recognize a new style of Mississippian-period art in the North American Southeast, calling it Holly Bluff. It is a two-dimensional style of representational art that appears solely on containers: marine shell cups and ceramic vessels. Iconographically, the style focuses on the depiction of zoomorphic supernatural powers of the Beneath World. Seriating the known corpus of images allows us to characterize three successive style phases, Holly Bluff I, II, and III. Using limited data, we source the style to the northern portion of the lower Mississippi Valley.
Alabama Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Jul 1, 2017
Southeastern Archaeology, 2014
An academic directory and search engine.
with Roberto Valcarcel Rojas. Latin American Antiquity 26(2):260-278, Jun 2015
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 130.160.4.77 on TueEthnohistorical analysis of Southeastern chiefdoms reveals a pattern of hierarchy very different from those proposed in the ideal evolutionary types of Kirchhoff and Service. In this area, Mississippian aristocratic organization probably evolved on a uniform base of ranked exogamous matriclan and moiety systems. Despite stratification into classes of noble and commoner, nobilities retained their character as exogamous groups. Ranking by genealogical distance from the royal line was restricted to the close kin of the paramount. A limited agnatic inheritance of nobility was adopted to offset the effects of noble exogamy on the offspring of male nobles in an otherwise uterine system.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 130.160.4.77 on TueSymbolic objects for ceremonial display, or sacra, tend to be systematically related in their representational content to the cult institutions that produce and manipulate them. Cult organization is normally pluralistic among preliterate complex societies. Mississippian sacra suggest a triad of coexisting types of cult institution: (1) a communal cult type emphasizing earth/fertility and purification ritual, (2) a chiefly cult type serving to sanctify chiefly authority, and (3) a priestly cult type mediating between the other two, supervising mortuary ritual and ancestor veneration.
The Art of Anthropology/The Anthropology of Art, edited by Brandon D. Lundy, pp. 223-238. Newfound Press, Knoxville, Tennessee., 2013
The iconography of ancient art has to do with making propositions about what that art depicts. St... more The iconography of ancient art has to do with making propositions about what that art depicts. Stylistic studies, in contrast, make propositions about the sharedness of formal properties with other objects.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 130.160.4.77 on TueABSTRACT Presented in translation is a French document of 1700 pertaining to the Mobile and Tomeh Indians of the northern Gulf Coast of southeastern North America. Ethnographic data from the document receive comment, with emphasis on settlement and subsistence in the Mobile Bay-delta region. In addition, the earliest known French town list of the interior of Alabama is included, with notes on the probable identifications and affiliations of the Indian towns. The purpose here is to call attention to a hitherto much neglected French document concerning two small Indian tribes formerly inhabiting the Mobile Bay-delta region. It is entitled Voyage de M. de Sauvole dufort des Bilochies ou Maurepas aux Thomies, sur la Mobile a trente-six lieues de distance. Depuis le 19 juin 1701, jusqu'en novembre en differentesfois (Paris: Archives de la Marine, 2 JJ 56, No. 16). The manuscript is actually a copy, probably abridged by Claude Delisle, of a journal which, despite the title, was prepared in the year 1700 by Charles Levasseur rather than by his Commandant Sauvole. While brief, Levasseur's journal attains ethnohistorical importance by its inclusion of the earliest detailed French town list of the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa Rive0 area. Further, the notes it contains on the Mobile and Tomeh supplement the sketchy descriptions provided by other early writers. The journal also documents the presence of the Pensacola Indians within the Mobile delta in the year 1700, a little-appreciated fact. The Pensacola, who had shortly before been at war with the Mobile, fled their former home in the early 1690s to relocate, curiously, closer to their old adversaries in the lower portion of the Mobile delta, on the eastern side (Higginbotham 1977:42n). ETHNOHISTORY 28/2 (Spring 198 1) 179 This content downloaded from 130.160.4.77 on Tue
Southeastern Archaeological Conference, …, 1988
Page 1. ADVANCES IN SOUTHEASTERN ARCHEOLOGY 1966-1986 CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE FEDERAL ARCHEOLOGICAL ... more Page 1. ADVANCES IN SOUTHEASTERN ARCHEOLOGY 1966-1986 CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE FEDERAL ARCHEOLOGICAL PROGRAM Edited by Bennie C. Keel -yçe*' Southeastern Archeological Conference Special Publication Number 6 ... Bennie C. Keel Washington. ...
Fakes, Copies and Replicas in Cuban Archaeology. In Real, Recent, or Replica? Amerindian (and Neo-Amerindian) Iconography in the Caribbean, edited by J. Ostapkowicz and J. Hanna, pp. 167-190. The University of Alabama Press, 2021
Importante volumen sobre la producción de falsificaciones y copias de artefactos indígenas en el ... more Importante volumen sobre la producción de falsificaciones y copias de artefactos indígenas en el Caribe, y su impacto en la investigación arqueológica, y en la visión de las culturas indígenas. El capítulo 7 trata el caso cubano analizando, además del tema de las falsificaciones, aspectos de las prácticas del coleccionismo de objetos arqueológicos y un importante proceso de creación de réplicas –único en Las Antillas-, así como su uso investigativo, museográfico y divulgativo. Rinde homenaje a pioneros en esta labor como Caridad Rodríguez Cullel, René Herrera Fritot, Ivan Gundrum, y José Rogelio Martínez Fernández.
Despite intensive study by John R. Swanton, in the early twentieth century, of social organizatio... more Despite intensive study by John R. Swanton, in the early twentieth century, of social organization in the towns of the early Creek Confederacy, we are left with certain puzzling features. The article outlines two of them. First, despite the remarkable attention paid to clans and clanship, the nature of local, corporate kin groups was never clearly resolved. Second, despite evidence of a strong separation between the matrilineal organization, on the one hand, and the town council on the other, Swanton gives numerous examples where the two seem impossibly commingled. The article offers thoughts toward resolving both puzzles.
Early Georgia, 2017
In northern Georgia, regional diversity has rendered a comprehensive Woodland ceramic chronology ... more In northern Georgia, regional diversity has rendered a comprehensive Woodland ceramic chronology unrealistic. Large, ill-conceived study areas, lack of recognition of mixing in excavated assemblages, dependence on typologies invented for much coarser work, and continued respect to presumed period “diagnostics” are common issues. We argue that better tools are needed, and advocate for mode-based classification and the formal seriation of assemblages as a foundation for chronology building. When the focus is a smaller portion of northwest Georgia, the relative frequency of certain ceramic modes are reliable for ordering site components. A picture of strong ceramic continuity emerges within a series of arbitrarily defined pottery periods, within which change is the norm. An approach that merges radiometric dates with mode-based chronologies will allow us to track cultural implications and to critically reassess the named culture periods inherited from the literature.
We recognize a new style of Mississippian-period art in the North American Southeast, calling it ... more We recognize a new style of Mississippian-period art in the North American Southeast, calling it Holly Bluff. It is a two-dimensional style of representational art that appears solely on containers: marine shell cups and ceramic vessels. Iconographically, the style focuses on the depiction of zoomorphic supernatural powers of the Beneath World. Seriating the known corpus of images allows us to characterize three successive style phases, Holly Bluff I, II, and III. Using limited data, we source the style to the northern portion of the lower Mississippi Valley.
Alabama Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Jul 1, 2017
Southeastern Archaeology, 2014
An academic directory and search engine.
with Roberto Valcarcel Rojas. Latin American Antiquity 26(2):260-278, Jun 2015
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 130.160.4.77 on TueEthnohistorical analysis of Southeastern chiefdoms reveals a pattern of hierarchy very different from those proposed in the ideal evolutionary types of Kirchhoff and Service. In this area, Mississippian aristocratic organization probably evolved on a uniform base of ranked exogamous matriclan and moiety systems. Despite stratification into classes of noble and commoner, nobilities retained their character as exogamous groups. Ranking by genealogical distance from the royal line was restricted to the close kin of the paramount. A limited agnatic inheritance of nobility was adopted to offset the effects of noble exogamy on the offspring of male nobles in an otherwise uterine system.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 130.160.4.77 on TueSymbolic objects for ceremonial display, or sacra, tend to be systematically related in their representational content to the cult institutions that produce and manipulate them. Cult organization is normally pluralistic among preliterate complex societies. Mississippian sacra suggest a triad of coexisting types of cult institution: (1) a communal cult type emphasizing earth/fertility and purification ritual, (2) a chiefly cult type serving to sanctify chiefly authority, and (3) a priestly cult type mediating between the other two, supervising mortuary ritual and ancestor veneration.
The Art of Anthropology/The Anthropology of Art, edited by Brandon D. Lundy, pp. 223-238. Newfound Press, Knoxville, Tennessee., 2013
The iconography of ancient art has to do with making propositions about what that art depicts. St... more The iconography of ancient art has to do with making propositions about what that art depicts. Stylistic studies, in contrast, make propositions about the sharedness of formal properties with other objects.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 130.160.4.77 on TueABSTRACT Presented in translation is a French document of 1700 pertaining to the Mobile and Tomeh Indians of the northern Gulf Coast of southeastern North America. Ethnographic data from the document receive comment, with emphasis on settlement and subsistence in the Mobile Bay-delta region. In addition, the earliest known French town list of the interior of Alabama is included, with notes on the probable identifications and affiliations of the Indian towns. The purpose here is to call attention to a hitherto much neglected French document concerning two small Indian tribes formerly inhabiting the Mobile Bay-delta region. It is entitled Voyage de M. de Sauvole dufort des Bilochies ou Maurepas aux Thomies, sur la Mobile a trente-six lieues de distance. Depuis le 19 juin 1701, jusqu'en novembre en differentesfois (Paris: Archives de la Marine, 2 JJ 56, No. 16). The manuscript is actually a copy, probably abridged by Claude Delisle, of a journal which, despite the title, was prepared in the year 1700 by Charles Levasseur rather than by his Commandant Sauvole. While brief, Levasseur's journal attains ethnohistorical importance by its inclusion of the earliest detailed French town list of the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa Rive0 area. Further, the notes it contains on the Mobile and Tomeh supplement the sketchy descriptions provided by other early writers. The journal also documents the presence of the Pensacola Indians within the Mobile delta in the year 1700, a little-appreciated fact. The Pensacola, who had shortly before been at war with the Mobile, fled their former home in the early 1690s to relocate, curiously, closer to their old adversaries in the lower portion of the Mobile delta, on the eastern side (Higginbotham 1977:42n). ETHNOHISTORY 28/2 (Spring 198 1) 179 This content downloaded from 130.160.4.77 on Tue