This course is an introduction to the archaeology of the southeastern U.S., focusing on history of native cultures in the Southeast, from early settlement of the continent some twelve to fifteen thousand years ago, through contact between native peoples and Europeans, which began in the sixteenth century A.D. The Southeast includes diverse environmental zones such as the Mississippi River Valley, the Ridge and Valley province of Tennessee and Kentucky, mountain ranges such as the Ozarks and Appalachians, the Piedmont region from Alabama through the Carolinas and Virginia, the coastal plain along both the Atlantic and the Gulf, and the swampy lowlands of southern Florida. Native American groups of the Southeast include speakers of Muskogean, Iroquoian, Siouan, and Algonkian languages, among others.
The study of archaeology in the Southeast is relevant to broader archaeological and anthropological interests in such topics as human migration and colonization, trade and exchange, the domestication of plants and people, the formation of villages, mobile settlement patterns by hunter-gatherer groups, sedentary settlement patterns by farming societies, the architectural and social structure of houses and communities, the meanings of monumental architecture and iconography, the interaction between hunter-gatherers and forager-farmers and their respective environments, interactions between native peoples and European colonists, and human responses to long-term environmental changes.