Lost Cities of the Ancient Southeast by Mallory McCane O'Connor; Barbara B. GibbsReview by: Wayne C.J. BoykoCanadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien d’Archéologie, Vol. 22, No. 2 (1999), pp.167-168Published by: Canadian Archaeological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41103363 .

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BOOK REVIEWS Edited by Marti Latta

Lost Cities of the Ancient South- east Mallory McCane O'Connor with site pho- tographs by Barbara B. Gibbs. University Press of Florida: Gainesville. 145 pp + bibliography and index. 108 b/w illustrations. ISBN 09- 8130-1350-x (cloth) US$ 49.95. 1995.

Mallory McCane O'Connor, an art gallery direc- tor and art historian from Gainesville, Florida sets out to take the reader on a tour of the major Mississippian period sites of the American mid- west and southeast. Along with Barbara Gibbs, site photographer, O'Connor has produced a lavishly illustrated review of twenty of these sites. Along with artifact and site photographs, many of the sites are also illustrated by architec- tural plans reproduced from Prehistoric Architecture in the Eastern United States by William N. Morgan.

After a brief preface, O'Connor lays the groundwork for the following concise art histor- ical analysis for the major earthworks of the Mississippian sites she examines, as well as the objects of art recovered from these sites that are most often identified as part of the larger 'Southeastern Ceremonial Complex'.

In this initial chapter, she reviews, albeit briefly and generally, the history of earthwork construction in the southeast, the development of Native American ceramics and stonework, and the development of Native polities we gen- erally call middle range societies, or chiefdoms.

Starting with Cahokia, the massive Mississippian site outside St. Louis with the largest earthen mound north of Mexico (Monks Mound), she examines a series of large Mississippian and 'pseudo' Mississippian sites - the Lost Cities of the book's title - by bringing together information generated through ethno- historical, architectural, archaeological, and iconographical research. With this corpus of information backing her, she describes the reli- gious patterns of the sites' inhabitants, as well as the sophisticated art works produced that vali- dated and codified the religious patterns.

Although much of the Mississippian reli- gious symbolism (Knight 1981) and artifacts identified as part of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (Galloway 1989) have been examined previously, it has been done by archaeologists, with the concomitant bias that a single discipline perspective brings. O'Connor, with her art historical perspective, brings a fresh view of these sites, and Mississippian culture in general. Even though she misses the mark in some instances, as explained below, she still is able to add important information to the body of facts and their interpretation that currently exists. In an ironic twist, as a non-anthropolo- gist, she is able to 'flesh out' the cold archaeo- logical facts and place them in an anthropologi- cal context that enables us to view Mississippian peoples as dynamic and vibrant, more so than archaeologists trained in anthropological archaeology departments are often able to do.

Examples of this are found throughout the book, beginning with her analyses of the images portrayed by several figurines recovered in and around Cahokia, in Chapter 2.

Although the book is very well illustrated and generally a good read, when O'Connor moves away from the art historical analysis to the interpretation of Mississippian archaeology and culture process, her extrapolations and insights become fewer and more tenuous.

Her description of the "wave-like effect of infiltration from the heartland" (p. 119), while creating an aesthetically appealing image, is not grounded in Mississippian archaeology as we currently understand it. The idea that there is this Mississippian heartland from which Mississippian culture springs outward to the uninitiated has little support among scholars dealing with those cultures today (Smith 1984).

Mississippian cultures and the items of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex appear to have developed independently in several areas throughout the midwest and southeast, so one cannot track the wave-like infiltration of ideas or people from some supposed heartland, that then radiated out to the Mississippian hinterlands.

Journal Canadien d'Archeologie 22, 1999 167

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Book Reviews For instance, the Mississippian Lamar peri-

od chiefdoms of north Georgia in the Oconee Valley were reaching their apogee at the time the De Soto entrada reached the region, but Cahokia, part of the Mississippian 'heartland' identified by O'Connor, had been pretty much abandoned for generations. We cannot track the incremental development of Mississippian from the heartland Mississippi Valley to northern Georgia, but we can trace a long developmental history of Mississippian in the region, that had its origins when Cahokia was still young.

The whole idea that Mississippian was a proselytizing force, a veneer that was overlaid on a basic Woodland pattern of life is problem- atical. As stated above, the Mississippian peri- od had long developmental histories in many areas of the southeast. Many early Missis- sippian concepts were probably initially devel- oped by Late Woodland groups and maybe adopted by other Late Woodland groups, but there was undoubtedly a synergy between these Woodland and emergent Mississippian groups that created new art forms, a dynamic Mississippian iconography and symbolism. O'Connor does recognize this process taking place, but only in the Florida chiefdoms, which in her analysis were not really fully "Mississippianized' as they lacked some "typi- cal' traits such as agriculture.

All things considered, this is more than just a coffee table book, of interest to the general public. Professional archaeologists, particularly those working with Mississippian societies, would benefit from the look at these societies through a fresh pair of eyes, a fresh perspective. Its when O'Connor deviates far from her art his- torical analysis that the book tends to veer off into an area where her footing is a lot more unsure.

REFERENCES

Galloway, P. (editor) 1989 The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Artifacts and Analysis. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

Knight, V.J., Jr. 1981 Mississippian Ritual. Ph.D. Dissertation on

file at the Dept. of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville.

Smith, B.D. 1984 Mississippian Expansion: Tracing the Historical Development of an Explanatory Model. Southeastern Archaeology 3(1): 13-32.

Wayne CJ. Boyko Cultural Resource Program Fort Bragg, North Carolina

Evolutionary Archaeology: Theory and Application Edited by Michael J. O 'Brian. University of Utah Press: Salt Lake City. 283 pp, 14 articles + bibliography, (hardcover) $US 55.00; (paper) ISBN 0-87480-514-7 $US 25.00. 1996

Darwinian Archaeologies Edited by Herbert Donald Graham Maschner. Plenum Press, Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology: New York. 231 pp (12 articles) + index. ISBN 0-306-45328-2 (hardcover). 1996

Darwinian theory has become increasingly pop- ular in archaeology over the past decade and one of the most prominent forms - selectionism - is attracting some harsh criticism (e.g., Feinman 1994; Spencer 1997; Boone and Smith 1998; cf. Schiffer 1996). For example, Feinman (1994:31) characterizes selectionism as having "...a narrow revisionist (artifact-centric) bent that would contract the archaeological focus, thereby largely serving to isolate us from the rest of the human sciences."

However, selectionism is not the only body of anthropological theory that explicitly draws on Darwin's insight. What follows is a review of two Darwinian-inspired volumes: the first is a compilation of selectionist programmatic essays and the second presents many uses of Darwinian cultural analogy.

Evolutionary Archaeology: Theory and Application is part of the University of Utah Press 'Foundations of Archaeological Inquiry' series. The book includes much of the primary selectionist literature. It is divided into three sec-

168 Canadian Journal of Archaeology 22, 1999

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