Archaeology of Aboriginal Culture Change in the Interior Southeast Depopulation During the Early Historic Period

"For much of the Southeast, a challenging question has long been what happened to the Indian nations described by members of de Soto's 1540 expedition?… Smith's study admirably bridges the history of interior Southeastern Indian nations between the Late Prehistoric and the eighteenth century." Alice B. Kehoe, American Indian Quarterly "[Contributes] not only to a better understanding of the process of disintegration of chiefdoms, but to archaeological method necessary when dealing with the contact period. It argues for the introduction of European diseases as a major cause of the collapse of chiefdoms in the interior… Smith is a major figure among those 'exploring our forgotten century.'" Stanley South, American Anthropologist "This superb archaeological study establishes the chronological controls that finally make it possible to discriminate the dynamic events of depopulation and culture change that occurred during the historical interregnum of the late sixteenth and most of the seventeenth centuries in the Southeast."--Jeffrey P. Brain, Peabody Museum, Harvard University "Smith has cast the first ray of light into the great black hole of southern history--the century from about 1570 to about 1670. It has long been known that during this century the native population declined sharply and that social geography of the region changed drastically. With admirable doggedness and ingenuity, Smith has reconstructed some details on how these momentous changes occurred in one area."-- Charles Hudson, University of GeorgiaSmith, Marvin T. is the author of 'Archaeology of Aboriginal Culture Change in the Interior Southeast Depopulation During the Early Historic Period' with ISBN 9780813011585 and ISBN 0813011582.