264 THE FLORIDA ANTHROPOLOGIST

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orientation are evident. At the regional scale the arrangement
of mound complexes appear to mirror that of individual sites.
The arrangements of mounds create internal spaces, plazas, and
these are taken as evidence for hierarchy based on similarities
to ethnographic cases from Amazonia. The lack of attendant
changes in economy or demography does not make this any less
significant and once the transformation took place, once it was
written onto the landscape, there was no going back.

Further evidence suggestive of complexity, at least in terms
of relationships between Archaic groups, can be found in the
material culture they produced. Jefferies (Chapter 4) broaches
the topic of organizational complexity among groups in the
southern Midwest and Southeast through a stylistic and techno-
logical analysis of bone pins. Regional exchange networks
emerged during the Mid-Holocene as a result of increased
sedentism and reductions in band range in order to establish
relationships and maintain the flow of information between
neighboring groups as a means of averting environmental and
social risk. The restricted distribution of certain bone pin types
is taken to mean that intraregional interaction was more
common than interregional interaction, that socially distinct
groups and networks existed over an approximately 1000 year
period, and that the emergence of organizationally complex
hunter-gatherers occurred in some places and not in others.
Sam Brookes (Chapter 6) examines and evaluates the role of
“special” artifact classes and their implications for complexity
in the Middle Archaic of Mississippi. The role of oversized
Benton bifaces, bannerstones, and stone beads are considered
and thought to be ritual items calling into question their status
as utilitarian items. Brookes argues that the skill required to
produce these artifacts, especially the beads, suggests the
existence part-time specialists. He concludes that complexity
in the Middle Archaic of Mississippi is almost a given with
historical antecedents possibly dating back to Paleoindian
times. Carr and Stewart (Chapter 8) attempt to deduce social
and economic strategies at Poverty Point based on an analysis
of the lithic raw materials at this site using an organizational
approach to lithic technology. Identifying the ways that lithic
raw materials arrived at Poverty Point is a central goal and
pursued through a comparison of the lithic raw material patterns
to multiple hypothesized scenarios for both direct and indirect
acquisition. Numerous far-off sources of lithic material, the
state it arrived in, and its great abundance fit most closely with
strategies predicted for indirect acquisition. Carr and Stewart
present an excellent discussion of lithic raw material procure-
ment strategies at Poverty Point and demonstrate the usefulness
of this approach for answering questions related to the political
economy of Poverty Point’s inhabitants.

Widmer and Gibson examine social processes for evidence to
suggest how complexity may have arisen. Widmer (Chapter
12) considers the role of demography, kinship, and ecology in
the emergence of sociopolitical complexity and advocates a
model favoring a “punctuated” development hinging on kinship,
population growth, improvements in subsistence technology,
and productive environments. The emergence of power centers
on lineages and kin groups. Productive environments promote
population growth and groups with unilineal kinship systems
are in a position to mobilize greater productive (and reproduc-

tive) force and this ability is the source of power. Too often the
role and potential of kinship is not well developed or is absent
entirely in discussions of complexity among hunter-gatherer
groups and Widmer’s contribution is a significant one. Gibson
(Chapter 13) too searches for the sources of power among the
earliest mound building societies. He notes that power has
many shades and should be distinguished from authority.
Moreover, traditional models are thought to be insufficient to
interpret Archaic mound building societies. For Gibson, power
is not in the hands of individuals but originates from the group,
the people themselves, representing their core beliefs and
serving as the impetus for mound construction. Obligation in
the form of debts of gratitude compelled Archaic groups to
build mounds in repayment for life, joy, sustenance, etc. from
the spirit world citing Choctaw notions civic and religious
honor and responsibility as an example. In short, the building
and veneration of mounds is the repayment of debts to the
ancestors and the great spirit.

Anderson and Milner’s chapters seem to have been intended
as counter balances to the others. Anderson (Chapter 14)
accepts that Archaic mound-building societies existed in the
Southeast and, rather than forcing them to conform to long held
assumptions of what “complexity” is supposed to look like,
offers an alternative: tribal social formations. Tribal societies
for Anderson are highly flexible in terms of their organization
and are capable of undergoing great change in short periods of
time. They are economically autonomous associations of kin
groups with variability in leadership, wealth, status, prestige,
and power but even these are achieved and ephemeral. It is
exactly this flexibility that makes the tribal society a potentially
fruitful avenue to explore Archaic societies; it accommodates
variation in timing, location, and scale of mound construction.
Milner (Chapter 15) on the other hand is skeptical about the
level of complexity and actual labor requirements needed to
construct mounds and takes a gradualist view of their formation.
He is similarly skeptical of the level of planning suggested by
Clarke for the layout and construction of mound groups. Such
an appraisal may be intended to temper the enthusiasm of
researchers who may be reading too much into Archaic mounds.
In spite of his skepticism, Milner sees the importance of
studying mounds and recognizes the quality of the work being
done in the region along with the implications this research has
for those studying later societies.

In this review I wanted to provide prospective readers with
brief summaries of the chapters in this volume as well as
additional appraisals which might help the reader decide if this
book is for them. All of the contributions are top-notch
professional research and this is clear, but it seems to have been
written with the professional audience in mind and several
chapters are thick with jargon and theoretical discourse that
might be a turn-off for the lay public. At times the writing is
uneven, ranging from engaging, quick reads to plodding
verbosity. In spite of this some authors write in a way that is
both informative and easy to read, regardless of the reader’s
background (John Gibson’s and Sam Brooks’ chapters come to
mind), One of the chapters seems as though it were lifted
directly from an excavation report and seems out of place
compared to the rest. Typos and other editing gaffs are rare and