With National Science Foundation support Dr. Karl Steinen will conduct one season of fieldwork in southwestern Georgia. He will carry out a survey in the 10 kilometer area immediately surrounding the prehistoric site of Kolomoki. This large impressive site contains multiple raised earthen mounds associated with a crescent shaped village area. Some of the mounds served burial purposes while others likely provided bases for wooden structures. Although Kolomoki exhibits some of the traits characteristic of highly developed prehistoric `Mississippian` societies, it lacks others such a fortifications and the elaborate status markers known from Mississippian centers. Dr. Steinen wishes to examine this anomaly and in this first stage of the research will attempt to relate Kolomoki to the broader surrounding region. He wishes to know if the site served as focal point for a larger regional system or whether it functioned independently and in isolation. To accomplish this he will conduct a systematic surface survey to locate ceramics, lithics and other cultural remains. In some areas he will undertake shovel testing to locate buried materials. In promising areas limited test excavations will be carried out. Ceramics will be stylistically dated to time period to determine whether synchroniety with Kolomoki exists. Before the arrival of the Spanish, complex societies had developed in many parts of the US Southeast. These societies integrated large numbers of individuals into hierarchically organized political systems which were able to mobilize enough labor to construct large and impressive burial and religious mounds. Trade networks transported shells, implements of exotic stone and other materials over long distances and the burial of such objects with limited numbers of individuals indicates the emergence of social elites. Archaeologists with to know how such societies developed and were maintained. Dr. Steinen believes that study of regional failures can be just as informative as successes and his research is based on this premise. He proposes that local ecological characteristics provide the proximate cause and therefore he wishes to situate Kolomoke in a regional environmental context. This research is important for several reasons. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists and shed new light on a poorly understood aspect of American prehistory. It will increase our understanding of how complex societies develop and it will assist in increasing the educational capabilities of an undergraduate teaching institution.
