Archaeology of Northern Florida A.D. 200-900

BOOK REVIEWS
Archaeology of Northern Florida, A.D. 200-900: The
McKeithen Weeden IslandCulture. Jerald T. Milanich, Ann
S. Cordell, Vernon J. Knight, Jr., Timothy A. Kohler,
Brenda J. Sigler-Lavelle, University Press of Florida,
Gainesville, 1997. xviii + 222 pp., figures, tables, references, index, $29.95 (paper).
T~~. STEp~irNEN
KARL T. STEINEN~KARL~
Departmentof Sociology andAnthropology, State University
DepartmentofSoci ologyandAnthropology, State University
of West Georgia, Carrollton,Georgia 30118
In 1975 Jerry Milanich and Bill Sears piled into my brown
Pinto and we drove from Gainesville to the McKeithen site
in Columbia County, Florida. With Lex McKeithen as a
guide we toured this multi-mound Weeden Island site. The
spectacular effigy pots that McKeithen had shown to
Milanich demonstrated that this site should be contemporaneous with the Kolomoki site in southwest Georgia. Soon
after this visit Milanich, with support from the Wentworth
Foundation and later the National Science Foundation, began
work at the first Weeden Island civic center to be dug since
Sears' work at Kolomoki in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The results of this work were presented at numerous meetings, in a book published by Academic Press, and in a set of
slides from Pictures of Record. This book is a reprint of the
1984 Academic Press volume with a new Preface by
Milanich.
McKeithen is an interesting site because, like Kolomoki,
it should not be there. Conventional models tell us that
multi-mound civic centers with organized villages and flattopped, truncated mounds belong in the Mississippian
Period, not the Middle Woodland. Complex multi-mound
sites are generally thought to have been the center of chiefly
activities, a form of political organization that is seldom
thought to have been present in pre-Mississippian cultures.
Milanich and his co-authors present an extremely readable
narrative of their work. Lacking most of the jargon of "The
New Archaeology" that was so much in vogue at the time
this work was done, this book presents a tour of the total
project. Chapter 1, entitled "Behind the Scenes," is a
wonderful introduction to how the project began and developed. It should be read and enjoyed.
The concepts) of Weeden Island and a discussion of
Weeden Island settlement patterns in North Florida are
discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. Much of these discussions
come from Milanich's interpretations of the very uneven
survey coverage of the Florida/Georgia/Alabama area and
Brenda Sigler-Lavelle's year-long survey of the area surrounding the McKeithen site. Sigler-Lavelle identified 11
Weeden Island mound sites in Columbia County, seven of
which were tested to identify the village areas associated with
them. It was found that six of these had middens located to
the east. The authors consider and reject the idea that there
was a settlement hierarchy and suggest a pattern offissioning
similar to that proposed for Early Neolithic communities in
the Middle East, where there are civic centers and what
appear to be outlying communities.
The discussions of the midden and mound excavations in
Chapters 4 and 5 are clearly presented and provide some of
the most detailed and useful descriptions of ways to approach
these kinds of projects. Especially interesting and useful is
Tim Kohler's use of the concept of "Elite Pottery" and his
ability to define elite areas in the midden. It is unfortunate
that although portions of what appear to be two structures
were excavated, we are told very little about McKeithen
houses. The excavations of the three mounds are discussed in
the chapter entitled "Charnel Knowledge." Aside from a
wealth of information on mound construction and the
wonderful Weeden Island ceremonial vessels, we find that
the three mounds were probably jointly constructed and
capped over a 75-year (or shorter) period from A.D. 350-475.
This overlaps with the Kolomoki site in time but is clearly a
much different pattern. It shows that the observed ceremonial
aspect at McKeithen was a short-lived phenomenon and that
for the bulk of it's 700-year occupation, the outward trappings of what Milanich appropriately calls a protochiefdom
are absent.
Detailed discussions of the ceramics from the mounds,
both their physical properties and possible symbolic meanings, are presented in the next two chapters. Ann Cordell's
analysis of the ceramics from the mound is well done and
clearly presented. She points out that the pottery recovered
from Mound A is a utilitarian assemblage and is very similar
to the midden pottery while the Mound B and C pots are
exotic in form. It is suggested, although not demonstrated,
that the Mound A pots might have been used in bonecleaning activities and were left on the charnel mound when
it was capped. Jim Knight's discussion of the possible
symbolic meaning of the Mound C pots is interesting,
provocative, and takes Weeden Island studies to a new level
of abstraction. I am very sympathetic to this approach, but I
would feel a lot more comfortable with it if he had tried to
link his interpretations to known animal symbols for various
Southeastern Indian cultures.
The final chapter in this book is entitled "Interpreting
Weeden Island." Here Milanich and his co-authors take
what they learned from the McKeithen site and apply it to
other Weeden Island sites, especially Kolomoki. The success
of this approach is contingent on the quality of data for the
sites it is being applied to. In the case of Kolomoki, I do not
think that the authors are very successful, but it is not for a