Applying a coastal-geoarchaeological approach, we synthesize stratigraphic, sedimentological, mollusk-zooarchaeological, and radiometric datasets from recent excavations and sediment coring at Harbor Key (8MA15)—a shell-terraformed Native mound complex within Tampa Bay, on the central peninsular Gulf Coast of Florida. We significantly revise the chronological understanding of the site and place it among the relatively few early civic-ceremonial centers in the region. Analyses of submound contexts revealed that the early first millennium mound center was constructed atop a platform of sand and ex situ cultural shell deposits that were reworked during ancient storm landfalls around 2000 BP. We situate Harbor Key within a seascape-scale stratigraphic and paleoenvironmental framework and show that the shellworks comprise an artificial barrier protecting the leeward estuary basin (and productive inshore wetlands) from high-energy conditions of the open bay and swells from the Gulf of Mexico. The sedimentary and archaeological records attest to the long-term history of morphodynamic interaction between coastal processes and Indigenous shell terraforming in the region and suggest that early first millennium mound building in Tampa Bay was tied to the recognition and reuse of antecedent shellworks and the persistent management of encompassing cultural seascapes.

In November 1995, the Laboratory of Archaeology at the University of Georgia submitted inventories and summaries of Indigenous ancestors and funerary objects in its holdings to comply with the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). However, after this submission, the Laboratory attempts at consultation with federally recognized descendant Tribal communities who have cultural ties in the state of Georgia were not successful, and NAGPRA-related activities essentially stalled at the Laboratory. Beginning in 2019, the Laboratory's staff recognized a lack of formal NAGPRA policies or standards, which led to a complete reevaluation of the Laboratory's approach to NAGPRA. In essence, it was the Laboratory's renewed engagement with NAGPRA and descendan tribal communities that became the catalyst for change in the Laboratory's philosophy as a curation repository. This shift in thinking set the Laboratory on a path toward building a descendant community–informed institutional integrity (DCIII) level of engagement with consultation and collaborative efforts in all aspects of collections management and archaeological research. In this article, we outline steps that the Laboratory has taken toward implementing meaningful policies and practices created with descendant Tribal communities that both fulfill and extend bounds of NAGPRA compliance.

Democratic cooperation is a particularly complex type of arrangement that requires attendant institutions to ensure that the problems inherent in collective action do not subvert the public good. It is perhaps due to this complexity that historians, political scientists, and others generally associate the birth of democracy with the emergence of so-called states and center it geographically in the “West,” where it then diffused to the rest of the world. We argue that the archaeological record of the American Southeast provides a case to examine the emergence of democratic institutions and to highlight the distinctive ways in which such long-lived institutions were—and continue to be—expressed by Native Americans. Our research at the Cold Springs site in northern Georgia, USA, provides important insight into the earliest documented council houses in the American Southeast. We present new radiocarbon dating of these structures along with dates for the associated early platform mounds that place their use as early as cal AD 500. This new dating makes the institution of the Muskogean council, whose active participants have always included both men and women, at least 1,500 years old, and therefore one of the most enduring and inclusive democratic institutions in world history.

The goal for many PhD students in archaeology is tenure-track employment. Students primarily receive their training by tenure-track or tenured professors, and they are often tacitly expected—or explicitly encouraged—to follow in the footsteps of their advisor. However, the career trajectories that current and recent PhD students follow may hold little resemblance to the ones experienced by their advisors. To understand these different paths and to provide information for current PhD students considering pursuing a career in academia, we surveyed 438 archaeologists holding tenured or tenure-track positions in the United States. The survey, recorded in 2019, posed a variety of questions regarding the personal experiences of individual professors. The results are binned by the decade in which the respondent graduated. Evident patterns are discussed in terms of change over time. The resulting portraits of academic pathways through the past five decades indicate that although broad commonalities exist in the qualifications of early career academics, there is no singular pathway to obtaining tenure-track employment. We highlight the commonalities revealed in our survey to provide a set of general qualifications that might provide a baseline set of skills and experiences for an archaeologist seeking a tenure-track job in the United States.

From 2014 to 2020, we compiled radiocarbon ages from the lower 48 states, creating a database of more than 100,000 archaeological, geological, and paleontological ages that will be freely available to researchers through the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database. Here, we discuss the process used to compile ages, general characteristics of the database, and lessons learned from this exercise in “big data” compilation.

The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) is a significant destructive force in the pine forests of western Canada and has the capacity to spread east into a novel host tree species, jack pine (Pinaceae). New populations have been documented in central Alberta, Canada, but the source populations for these outbreaks have yet to be identified. In this study, we use genetic data to identify parent populations for recent outbreak sites near Slave Lake, Lac La Biche, and Hinton, Alberta. We found the northern population cluster that entered Alberta near Grande Prairie was the source of the most eastern established population near Lac La Biche, and the range expansion to this leading-edge population has been too rapid to establish evidence of population structure. However, some dispersal from a population in the Jasper and Hinton area has been detected as far north and east as Slave Lake, Alberta. We also identified two potential source populations for the current outbreak in Hinton: most beetles appear to be from Jasper National Park, Alberta, but some also originated from the northern population cluster. These findings demonstrate the dynamic dispersal capabilities of mountain pine beetle across the Alberta landscape and the potential hazard of increased dispersal to newly established leading-edge populations.

Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon (14C) dates in North American archaeology is increasing, especially among archaeologists working in deeper time. However, historical archaeologists have been slow to embrace these new techniques, and there have been only a few examples of the incorporation of calendar dates as informative priors in Bayesian models in such work in the United States. To illustrate the value of Bayesian approaches to sites with both substantial earlier Native American occupations as well as a historic era European presence, we present the results of our Bayesian analysis of 14C dates from the earlier Guale village and the Mission period contexts from the Sapelo Shell Ring Complex (9MC23) in southern Georgia. Jefferies and Moore have explored the Spanish Mission period deposits at this site to better understand the Native American interactions with the Spanish during the 16th and 17th centuries along the Georgia Coast. Given the results of our Bayesian modeling, we can say with some degree of confidence that the deposits thus far excavated and sampled contain important information dating to the 17th-century mission on Sapelo Island. In addition, our modeling of new dates suggests the range of the pre-Mission era Guale village. Based on these new dates, we can now say with some degree of certainty which of the deposits sampled likely contain information that dates to one of the critical periods of Mission period research, the AD 1660–1684 period that ushered in the close of mission efforts on the Georgia Coast.

Hernando de Soto's expedition through the southeastern United States between 1539 and 1543 is often regarded as a watershed moment for the collapse of Indigenous societies across the region. Historical narratives have proposed that extreme depopulation as a result of early contact destabilized Indigenous economies, politics, networks, and traditions. Although processes of depopulation and transformation were certainly set in motion by this and earlier colonial encounters, the timing, temporality, and heterogeneous rhythms of postcontact Indigenous histories remain unclear. Through the integration of radiocarbon and archaeological data from the Mississippian earthen platform mound at Dyar (9GE5) in central Georgia, we present a case of Indigenous endurance and resilience in the Oconee Valley that has long been obfuscated by materially based chronologies and typologies. Bayesian chronological modeling suggests that Indigenous Mississippian traditions persisted for up to 130 years beyond contact with European colonizers. We argue that advances in modeling radiocarbon dates, along with meaningful consultation/collaboration with descendant communities, can contribute to efforts that move us beyond a reliance on materially based chronologies that can distort and erase Indigenous histories.

We sampled individual growth rings from three ancient remnant bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) trees from a massive buried deposit at the mouth of the Altamaha River on the Georgia Coast to determine the best technique for radiocarbon (14C) dating pretreatment. The results of our comparison of traditional ABA pretreatment and holocellulose and α-cellulose fractions show no significant differences among the pretreatments (<1 sigma) thereby suggesting that ABA pretreatment will prove sufficient for the development of a high-resolution 14C tree-ring chronology based on these ancient bald cypresses which will indicate whether the U.S. Southeast is subject to a regional radiocarbon offset.

Formally established in the fall of 1947, the Laboratory of Archaeology at the University of Georgia is an archaeological research and collection repository. It is considered one of the premier institutions for curation of archaeological collections from the American Southeast. For over 70 years, the Laboratory has served as a repository for objects and associated records generated from archaeological projects and research undertaken by faculty, students, CRM professionals, and state and federal agencies. The Laboratory curates over 20,000 cubic feet of artifacts as well as paper and digital archives. In addition, the Laboratory houses the Georgia Archaeological Site File and manages data from more than 59,000 archaeological sites, including over 11,500 archaeological reports. In this paper, we explore implementation procedures for bringing legacy collections up to modern curation standards. We also outline how we migrate the data on paper records into the digital realm, articulating them within a comprehensive framework.

In coastal and island archaeology, carbonate mollusk shells are often among the most abundant materials available for radiocarbon (14C) dating. The marsh periwinkle (Littorina irrorata) is one of these such species, ubiquitously found along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States in both modern and archaeological contexts. This paper presents a novel approach to dating estuarine mollusks where rather than attempting to characterize the size and variability of reservoir effects to “correct” shell carbonate dates, we describe a compound-specific approach that isolates conchiolin, the organic matter bound with the shell matrix of the L. irrorata. Conchiolin typically constitutes <5% of shell weight. In L. irrorata, it is derived from the snail’s terrestrial diet and is thus not strongly influenced by marine, hardwater, or other carbon reservoir effects. We compare the carbon isotopes (δ13C and Δ14C) of L. irrorata shell carbonate, conchiolin, and bulk soft tissue from six modern, live-collected specimens from Apalachicola Bay, Florida, with samples that represent possible sources of carbon within their environment including surface sediments, marsh plant tissues, and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in water. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates that samples obtained from wet chemical oxidation of L. irrorata conchiolin produces accurate 14C dates.

Over the past 30 years, the number of US doctoral anthropology graduates has increased by about 70%, but there has not been a corresponding increase in the availability of new faculty positions. Consequently, doctoral degree-holding archaeologists face more competition than ever before when applying for faculty positions. Here we examine where US and Canadian anthropological archaeology faculty originate and where they ultimately end up teaching. Using data derived from the 2014–2015 AnthroGuide, we rank doctoral programs whose graduates in archaeology have been most successful in the academic job market; identify long-term and ongoing trends in doctoral programs; and discuss gender division in academic archaeology in the US and Canada. We conclude that success in obtaining a faculty position upon graduation is predicated in large part on where one attends graduate school.

Antiquarians of the nineteenth century referred to the largest monumental constructions in eastern North America as pyramids, but this usage faded among archaeologists by the mid-twentieth century. Pauketat (2007) has reintroduced the term pyramid to describe the larger, Mississippian-period (A.D. 1050 to 1550) mounds of the interior of the continent, recognizing recent studies that demonstrate the complexity of their construction. Such recognition is lacking for earlier mounds and for those constructed of shell. We describe the recent identification of stepped pyramids of shell from the Roberts Island Complex, located on the central Gulf Coast of Florida and dating to the terminal Late Woodland period, A.D. 800 to 1050, thus recognizing the sophistication of monument construction in an earlier time frame, using a different construction material, and taking an alternative form.