"A Dan Josslyn memorial publication"--Title page verso. Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-299) and index.
Contents:
The Central South Carolina Coast : at the margins of South Appalachian Mississippian interaction -- A model of ceramic change for the eastern wing of South Appalachian Mississippian -- The fifteenth-century depopulation of the Central South Carolina Coast -- The cultural and natural geography of megadrought -- Regions of the Greater Desert of Ocute -- Migration to the ring of drought resilience -- Drought-related indigenous disease epidemics -- The broader implications of late prehistoric societal collapse and transformation in the southern latitudes of the United States during an age of global warming.
Summary:
"An enigma in southeastern archaeology is why a vast swath of land in coastal central South Carolina was abandoned in the 1400s. By 1540 and the Spanish Entrada of De Soto, this area was called the Desert of Ocute, after the Ocute people. Cable's long-term research shows that abandonment took place because of prolonged drought, in fact a megdraought, as there was elsewhere from Chaco Canyon to Cahokia in earlier centuries. This book considers the implications of the displacement of the Ocute into the surrounding settlements. Cable suggests that these immigrants experienced regional hostility and that new cultural groups formed that began to replace the old social structure of chiefdoms and platform mounds. Confederated societies emerged that had a much wider geographic reach. Crowding into the sustainable river valleys of the Piedmont and Mountain zones necessitated technological and social adaptations for an intensification of agriculture. Cable surmises that if European contact had been delayed several hundred years, these peoples would have developed as per the complex Cahokians"-- Provided by publisher.
Series:
Archaeology of the American South : new directions and perspectives
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.