SunWatch: Fort Ancient Development in the Mississippian World

by Robert Cook

Focuses on the development of village social structure within a broad geographic and temporal framework, recognizing border areas as particularly dynamic contexts of social change

The last prehistoric cultures to inhabit the Middle Ohio Valley  (ca. A.D. 1000–1650) are referred to as Fort Ancient societies, which exhibited a wide variety of Mississippian period characteristics. What is less well-known and little understood are the social processes by which Mississippian characteristics spread to Fort Ancient communities. Through a comprehensive study of SunWatch, one of the few thoroughly excavated Fort Ancient settlements, the author focuses on the development of village social structure within a broad geographic and temporal framework, recognizing border areas as particularly dynamic contexts of social change. As a fundamental study of social patterning of Fort Ancient villages, this work reveals the interrelationships of small social units in culture change and social structure development and provides a full reconsideration of the Mississippian dimensions of Fort Ancient societies and a model for future investigations of larger patterning in the lateprehistory of the region.

Genres: Nonfiction

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Russell Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dry and scholarly at first, but after the first chapter, it begins to be more readable. There is not a lot written about this group since they are prehistoric and were decimated by the wiping out of many of their sites in the name of progress in the 19th and 20th centuries. A good explanation however of what is going on and how we know so much about the site today.