The Land Run of 1889 and the oil boom in the early 20th century cemented Oklahoma's reputation as a place where fortunes could be made and lost seemingly overnight. In eastern Oklahoma, a group of men formed the Pocola Mining Company to loot the Spiro Mounds and make a fortune selling their finds. Their remarkable discovery was billed in newspapers as 'King Tut's Tomb in Oklahoma.' With only profit in mind, the looters gave little care to the archaeological value of their finds, allowing many valuable and perishable items to be destroyed. A handful of young archaeologists from the University of Oklahoma and crews of local men were left to salvage what they could at Spiro; their work was funded by relief money provided by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. In three years, the team excavated dozens of sites in eastern Oklahoma. The photographs in this volume tell the story of the looting of Spiro and professional archaeological excavations in eastern Oklahoma.
Revisits and updates WPA-funded archaeological research on key Oklahoma mound sites As part of Great Depression relief projects started in the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) sponsored massive archaeological projects across Oklahoma. The WPA crews excavated eight mound sites and dozens of nonmound residential sites in the Arkansas River Valley that date between AD 1000 and 1450. These sites are considered the westernmost representations of Mississippian culture in the Southeast. The results of these excavations were documented in field journals and photographs prepared by the field supervisors and submitted in a series of quarterly reports to WPA headquarters. These reports contain a wealth of unpublished information summarizing excavations at the mound sites and residential sites, including mound profiles, burial descriptions, house maps, artifact tables, and artifact sketches. Of the excavated mound sites, results from only one, Spiro, have been extensively studied and synthesized in academic literature. The seven additional WPA-excavated mound sites—Norman, Hughes, Brackett, Eufaula, Skidgel, Reed, and Lillie Creek—are known to archaeologists outside of Oklahoma only as unlabeled points on maps of mound sites in the Southeast. The Ritual Landscape of Late Precontact Eastern Oklahoma curates and contextualizes the results of the WPA excavations, showing how they inform archaeological understanding of Mississippian occupation in the Arkansas Valley. Regnier, Hammerstedt, and Savage also relate the history and experiences of practicing archaeology in the 1930s, incorporating colorful excerpts from field journals of the young, inexperienced archaeologists. Finally, the authors update current knowledge of mound and nonmound sites in the region, providing an excellent example of historical archaeology.
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