In recent years the pace of research on the late prehistoric Mississippian societies of eastern North America has accelerated. New data, methods, and theoretical goals are changing perspectives in Mississippian archaeology. Regional overviews and site syntheses provide unprecedented insights into the Mississippian phenomenon at local, regional, and continental scales. Traditional culture history, processualism, historical processualism, iconography, and neo-Darwinian archaeology are active theoretical orientations. Important research focuses on variability in Mississippian sociopolitical formations over time, organizational diversity among contemporaneous societies, and sources of political power. The new historicism and iconography place agency, identity, origins, factionalism, ideology, and meaning at the center of culture change, while many processualists continue to focus on developmental histories, economy, and control of material resources. Advances in physical and chemical analyses and the availability of remote sensing techniques are changing how Mississippian archaeology is conducted and expanding the kinds of data that are recovered. These diverse interests, methods, and goals have created considerable eclecticism in Mississippian archaeology.

New Perspectives in Mississippian Archaeology

Seeds, as small and unobtrusive as they seem, are an essential part of the life cycle of plants. In addition, they are useful for indentification of plants and, in fact, are often superior for that purpose that other parts of a plant. Thant's because seedds have distinctive characteristics, tend to outlast all other plant parts, and vary little within a species-unlike other parts such as leaves. Since weeds interfere with the growth, harvesting, and quality of crops, Linda Dvais says, the ability to identify weed seeds before they are indavertently planted affords an economic advantage. Other weed-control measures-herbicides and mechanical removal of unwanted plants-are enormously costly in comparison. Lavishly illustrated with more than 600 photographs and drawings, this handbook provides information about the seeds of 280 species of weedy plants of the Great Plains, including ones commonly found in crops, rangeland, lawns, and along roadsides. This is the only book available that covers a large number of Great Plains plants. For each species it provides a high-quality color photograph showing minute details, a black-and-white life-size silhouette (against which actual seeds can be compared), and a full description. An easy-to-use set of finding lists facilitates identification of unknown seeds. Both scientific and common names are used throughout, and an illustrated glossary clarifies technical terms.

Weed seeds of the Great Plains: a handbook for identification.

Within ongoing work, Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is demonstrating that copper coatings can be developed as viable corrosion barriers for used fuel nuclear containers, emplaced in a deep geological repository As a means of assessing container design and feasibility, coated samples, manufactured via cold spray and electrodeposition have been produced and characterised Corrosion testing for coated samples and wrought samples reveals that cold spray samples behave similar to wrought samples in 3 mol L−1 NaCl solution at room temperature When oxygen is absent, corrosion has not been observed

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Design and development of copper coatings for long term storage of used nuclear fuel

Mechanical performance of integrally bonded copper coatings for the long term disposal of used nuclear fuel

Gold in the Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula during the 3rd Millennium BC

The context for the early evidence of the southeastern ceremonial complex at Cahokia

Making Ancient Cities: Cahokia: The Processes and Principles of the Creation of an Early Mississippian City

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Surplus Labor, Ceremonial Feasting, and Social Inequality at Cahokia: A Study in Social Process

https://www.nulearningforlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/JArchSci11-Cahokia-Copper.pdf

Metallurgical analysis of copper artifacts from Cahokia

Flotation-recovered plant remains from a series of 11 sod block samples, 7 features, a limestone concentration, and a mass of organic debris provide insights into the construction of Monks Mound. The presence of uncarbonized seeds exclusively of annuals (other than those of perennial elderberry and wild grape, which probably represent food remains) indicates that the construction of Monks Mound was relatively continuous. The presence of quillwort megaspores and other indicators of wetlands provide additional data on how Monks Mound was constructed and where some borrow and/or sod blocks were likely obtained to construct at least part of this monument.

John E. Kelly

Papers

The context for the early evidence of the southeastern ceremonial complex at Cahokia

Making Ancient Cities: Cahokia: The Processes and Principles of the Creation of an Early Mississippian City

Surplus Labor, Ceremonial Feasting, and Social Inequality at Cahokia: A Study in Social Process

Metallurgical analysis of copper artifacts from Cahokia

Implications of Plant Remains from the East Face of Monks Mound