Size Matters

Kolomoki was one of the largest villages of the Middle and Late Woodland periods in the American Southeast. Located in southwestern Georgia, the site features a circular village plan nearly a kilometer in diameter which is centered on a large open plaza. This chapter introduces the term “hypertrophic village” to describe Kolomoki and, by extension, villages of similarly exaggerated size. New insights from recent excavations covering Kolomoki's transition from Swift Creek to Weeden Island pottery suggest that Kolomoki grew from a relatively compact to hypertrophic village beginning around the sixth century A.D. and culminating a century or two later. The wide spacing between domestic units both enabled and constrained social cohesion, and may have afforded the community at Kolomoki unrivalled symbolic power. The construction of Kolomoki's hypertrophic village may have been a strategy related to settlement shifts that recent work suggests took place throughout the region in the seventh century A.D.

From Early Village to Regional Center (Phase 2)

The village at Crystal River expanded greatly in size and permanence in Phase 2, which began sometime between around AD 200 and 300 and ended by around AD 500. This growth may have owed partially to a rise in sea level associated with the warmer temperatures of the Roman Warm Period, which might have made life on the seaward islands more difficult. The exchange of Hopewell exotics faded in this interval, but the societies of the Gulf Coast appear to have witnessed a fluorescence, as indicated by the widespread exchange of Swift Creek pottery and Weeden Island pottery. Crystal River was peripheral to these pottery traditions, but it may have been an important nexus between these and the Glades tradition of southern Florida, specifically with regard to the exchange of craft goods manufactured from marine shell. The gulf coast fluorescence is also indicated by a heightened pace of the construction of mounds. At Crystal River, three small platform mounds were initiated in this interval, clearly differentiating it from its peers in the region.

Fort Walton Mississippian Beginnings in the Apalachicola–Lower Chattahoochee River Valley of Northwest Florida, Southwest Georgia, and Southeast Alabama

In the Apalachicola-lower Chattahoochee River valley, new data reaffirm a relatively seamless Fort Walton emergence from resident late Weeden Island groups circa A.D.900-1000 that was characterized by blending external Mississippian influences with local traditions. Check-stamped and other Woodland ceramics continued as Mississippian forms were adopted, but in non-shell-tempered wares. Maize was grown inland but agriculture may not have developed along the coast. Platform mounds were built and Woodland mound centers were reoccupied. Taken together, these data suggest that Fort Walton beginnings here involved negotiations between maintaining local identity and incorporating outside Mississippian practices.

The Materiality of Signs: Enchainment and Animacy in Woodland Southeastern North American Pottery

Archaeological examinations of symbolic meaning often have been hampered by the Saussurean concept of signs as coded messages of preexisting meanings. The arbitrary and imprecise manner by which meaning is represented in material culture according to Saussure tends to stymie archaeological investigations of symbolism. As an alternative, archaeologists recently have drawn on Peirce’s semiotic to investigate how materiality is bound to the creation of meanings through the process of signification. This study examines how the symbolism expressed in pottery of the Middle Woodland period southeastern United States, Swift Creek Complicated Stamped and Weeden Island effigy vessels, might be better explained as icons and indexes that were enlisted to have particular social effects. Examining the semiotic potentials of these objects helps explain their apparent uses and the significance of alternative representations of the same subjects.