The next meeting of the London Chapter OAS will be online via ZOOM. It will be held on Thursday, February 8, 2024, at 7:30 PM. London Chapter members will be automatically sent a ZOOM link but anyone else wishing to attend can send an email request to Jim Keron at jrkeron@yahoo.com and he will send a link to the ZOOM meeting session. The ZOOM session normally opens about 7:00 PM.
The speaker will be
Dr. David Anderson, Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, University of Tennesee Knoxville, speaking on Exploring Settlement Distribution & Demographic Change in the Early through Late Holocene Southeastern USA
Summary
Dr. Anderson will talk about research carried out with colleagues D. Shane Miller (Mississippi State University), and Andrew A. White (Illinois State Archaeological Survey). The work examines human settlement across the southeastern United States from the Late Paleoindian through the Early Woodland periods (ca. 11,000-3000 years ago) using state site file and radiocarbon data. Changes over time are evident as people’s lifeways changed, with settlement concentrations shifting over the landscape in response to changes in social organization, technology, and biota. The occurrence of knappable stone, as well as the location of hardwood forests producing nut mast, documented in regional pollen distributions, were important in shaping site incidence in some periods, as were changes in sea level. Distinctive patterning is evident that, when coupled with the location of monumental architecture, and evidence for other forms of interaction, indicates a complex social landscape was present, similar to that observed in later periods. Extensive use of interior areas is evident during the Early and Middle Archaic in some areas, followed by increased settlement in coastal areas in the Late Archaic. These changes played out differently across the region, mandating analyses directed to sequence definition, high precision absolute dating, and the standardization and compilation of site and collections information, and at multiple temporal and geographic scales, if we are to understand more fully what is occurring in the rich, varied, and changing human landscape of the Holocene Southeast.
As a heads up, at our Thursday, March 14, 2024, 7:30 PM meeting will be held via ZOOM. The speaker will be: Dr. Ronald Williamson, Founder and Senior Associate, Archaeological Services Inc., Toronto, speaking on The History and Archaeology of the Iroquois du Nord: A Review and What’s New.
Anderson February 2024 talk poster