Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Chronology, Content, Context

Abstract

Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Chronology, Content, Context. ADAM KING (ed.). University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 2007. xv + 305 pp., illus., tables, biblio., index. $42.50 (paper), ISBN 0-8173-5409-3; $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8173-1554-3. Reviewed by Jeffrey P. Brain promotional blurb the back cover claims that the contents of this book correct dating errors in other publications (Marvin T. Smith), the repeatedly mentioned reference, of course, being Shell Gorgets (Brain and 1996). To be fair, as indicated by the title, Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Chronology, Content, Context ranges widely into other concerns, as well, but chronology a central issue and the main point of discussion between us so will be the focus of the following comments. Please note that my use of the first person plural refers the publication while additional commentary in this review obviously my own. chapters discussed in order. King's introduction makes it clear that Shell Gorgets was the burr under the saddle that led this book: The goal of this volume ... a response the [chronological] debate renewed by the publication of Shell Gorgets by Brain and Phillips.... These contributions provide a different interpretation of many of the same data considered by Brain and Phillips (p. 14). So he has mustered many of the best and the brightest do battle, those scholars intimately familiar with those data sets (p. 13). Having accepted the challenge, let's examine their arguments. Jon Muller leads the parade with his Prolegomena. He, of course, does not like our gorget styles, although they every bit as well defined and viable as his, and perhaps even more useful (see Hally's chapter). But that another matter beyond the focus of discussion here. We agree that SECC or Cult is just one central and particularly spectacular episode in a long series of cultural events associated with Mississippian and other late prehistoric groups from A.D. 800 on (p. 20); we disagree, of course, in the dating of this mainstream or Southern Cult to the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries (ca.1250 C.E. in uncorrected radiocarbon years). In a sweeping but undocumented statement, he asserts the conventional wisdom that his assessment of the dating not based only associations at a few major sites like Spiro and Cahokia but rather archaeological evidence and dates from many sites across the East (ibid.). His only specific attempt justify this chronology co-opt an average date of A.D. 1248 (range 1155-1760) from Mud Glyph Cave (p. 28) where the drawing of a crude stick figure compared with the sophisticated Castalian Springs gorget of the Eddyville style (Fig. 2.5). In his support of this dating he revisits the old business of the heirlooming factor, as well as the red herring that demonstrably late materials, such as rattlesnake gorgets, have nothing do with Cult-which of course true. We recognize and clearly trace stylistic evolution and therefore we agree that the styles not all contemporaneous, but there those (which have overlapping occurrences) that define the classic Cult horizon ca. 1400-1550. His discussion of the relative temporal (which not be confused with absolute chronological) and regional distributions-and stylistic connections-of these artifacts echo almost precisely what we say. His statement that our homogeneous burial assemblages are too broad and diverse, and whole sites often treated as though they had only short-term, homogeneous occupations (p. 34) simply not true: We restricted the concept tightly defined contexts within sites which we fully recognized could have much longer occupations. Curiously, he allows that the few engraved shell pieces from Cahokia are associated with the final phases of occupation rather than the peak of that social formation's political and social development (p. …

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