Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

The emergence of village societies out of hunter-gatherer groups profoundly transformed social relations in every part of the world where such communities formed. Drawing on the latest archaeological and historical evidence, this volume explores the development of villages in eastern North America from the Late Archaic period to the eighteenth century.            

Bringing together major archaeological research projects from Virginia to Alabama, this volume explores the rich prehistory of the Southeastern Coastal Plain. Looking back 50,000 years, contributors consider how the region’s warm weather, abundant water, and geography have long been optimal for the habitation of people. They highlight demographic changes and cultural connections across this wide span of time and space.

This volume explores how native peoples of the Southeastern United States cooperated to form large and permanent early villages using the site of Crystal River on Florida’s Gulf Coast as a case study.  

Focusing on the daily concerns and routine events of people in the past, Investigating the Ordinary argues for a paradigm shift in the way southeastern archaeologists operate. Instead of dividing archaeological work by time periods or artifact types, the essays in this volume unite separate areas of research through the theme of the everyday.            

Established by a Black community in the eighteenth century during British colonization of the Bahamas, the Northern Burial Ground of St. Matthew’s Parish was an important expression of the group’s African cultural identity. Analyzing the landscape and artifacts found at the site, Grace Turner shows how the community used this separate space to maintain a sense of social belonging despite the power of white planters and the colonial government. 

Using fresh evidence and nontraditional ideas, the contributing authors of Mississippian Beginnings reconsider the origins of the Mississippian culture of the North American Midwest and Southeast (A.D. 1000-1600). Challenging the decades-old opinion that this culture evolved similarly across isolated Woodland populations, they discuss signs of migrations, pilgrimages, violent conflicts, and other far-flung entanglements that now appear to have shaped the early Mississippian past.

In Water from Stone, Jason O'Donoughue investigates the importance of natural springs to ancient Floridians. Throughout their history, Florida's springs have been gathering places for far-flung peoples. O'Donoughue finds that springs began flowing several millennia earlier than previously thought, serving as sites of habitation, burials, ritualized feasting, and monument building for Florida's earliest peoples.

The Catawba Nation played an important role in the early colonial Southeast, serving as a military ally of the British and a haven for refugees from other native groups, yet it has largely been overlooked by scholars and the public. Fit for War explains how the Nation maintained its sovereignty while continuing to reside in its precolonial homeland near present-day Charlotte, North Carolina.  

Originally prepared as a report for the National Park Service in 1988, John Griffin’s work places the human occupation of the Everglades within the context of South Florida’s unique natural environmental systems.