This extensively illustrated volume provides the first complete visual documentation and a pioneering iconographic analysis of Picture Cave, an eastern Missouri cavern filled with Native American pictographs that is one of the most important prehistoric sites in North America. A millennia ago, Native Americans entered the dark recesses of a cave in eastern Missouri and painted an astonishing array of human, animal, and supernatural creatures on its walls. Known as Picture Cave, it was a hallowed site for sacred rituals and rites of passage, for explaining the multi-layered cosmos, for vision quests, for communing with spirits in the "other world," and for burying the dead. The number, variety, and complexity of images make Picture Cave one of the most significant prehistoric sites in North America, similar in importance to Cahokia and Chaco Canyon. Indeed, scholars will be able to use it to reconstruct much of the Native American symbolism of the early Western Mississippian world. The Picture Cave Interdisciplinary Project brought together specialists in American Indian art and iconography, two artists, Osage Indian elders, a museum curator, a folklorist, and an internationally renowned cave archaeologist to produce the first complete documentation of the pictographs on the cave walls and the first interpretations of their meanings and significance. This extensively illustrated volume presents the Project's findings, including an introduction to Picture Cave and prehistoric cave art and technical analyses of pigments, radiocarbon dating, spatial order, and archaeological remains. Interpretations of the cave's imagery, from individual motifs to complex panels; the responses of contemporary artists; and interviews with Osage elders (descendants of the people who made the art), describing what Picture Cave means to them today, are also included. A visual glossary of all the images in Picture Cave as well as panoramic views complete this pathfinding volume.

The eight case studies in this book -- each a synthesis of available knowledge about the origins of agriculture in a specific region of the globe -- enable scholars in diverse disciplines to examine humanity's transition to agricultural societies. Contributors include: Gary W. Crawford, Robin W. Dennell, and Jack R. Harlan.

The shell-bearing sites of the middle Green River region in western Kentucky have played a defining role in how archaeologists conceptualize Middle Holocene fisher-hunter-gatherers. This book presents new interpretations of data gathered over a 30-year period about the Native American people who lived along the middle Green River from about 4500 to 2000 B.C. Interdisciplinary by design, the Shell Mound Archaeological Project directed by William Marquardt and Patty Jo Watson focused first on subsistence, particularly the emergence of indigenous agriculture in eastern North America. As more was learned, the research focus broadened to include not only archaeobotany and zooarchaeology, but also geoarchaeology, pedoarchaeology, archaeomalacology, paleodemography, dental biology, and other specialties. Results of all these investigations are included, as well as comparative studies of stone, bone, and shell artifacts. Accounts of how archaeologists have revised their interpretations of the Green River sites over time provide insight into the history of archaeology in the Mid-South and Midwest. In the final chapter, the co-editors synthesize their findings and suggest research directions for the future. Richly illustrated with over 240 photos and drawings, this volume will serve as an invaluable reference work for all those interested in eastern United States archaeology.