Interpretation of everyday life in the past is a task more often associated with museum educators or historic site interpreters than “real” archaeologists. This innovative book challenges that perception and convincingly argues that investigating the ordinary does matter in “real” archaeology for many reasons, including formulating research questions, integrating data, collaborative research, and even theory building. The book is dedicated to Kit Wesler, remembered especially for his research and interpretive work at the Mississippian Wickliffe Mounds in western Kentucky. The authors use varied approaches to reveal an everyday perspective on the past, from data-based fictional narratives to artifact “histories,” ecological regimes and engineering to chaos theory. These studies run the gamut from site-specific to regional.
The especially enjoyable fictional narratives draw upon not only the authors’ breadth of knowledge but their imaginations in creating interpretive scenarios that forefront everyday human relationships and activities. Lance Greene, Kandace Hollenbach and Stephen Carmody, Ashley Dumas, and Renee Walker employ narratives as part of explorations of a postremoval Cherokee town, Early Archaic foragers in the Mid-South, salt extraction by Mississippian farmers in south Alabama, and the life of an Archaic dog with his human “family,” respectively. These authors note that creating narratives forced them to think through the details of who, what, when, and how things were done, resulting in new research questions.
Two chapters consider human-deer relations. Shane Miller and Jesse Tune investigate Paleoindian hunting practices that exploited deer stranded during river floods in middle Tennessee. Everyday decisions to kill many available deer possibly had the long-term effect of decreasing the deer population during the Younger Dryas. Christopher Moore and Richard Jefferies examine Middle Archaic deer hunting and use in the Ohio River valley. They review the many contexts in which deer were daily components of life, including clothing, ornaments, containers, food, and tools. The physical presence of deer and preparations for hunting them, including magic and rituals, also likely were a part of everyday human interactions.
Artifacts and their use trajectories are another path for accessing the everyday past. Asa Randall and Zackary Gilmore follow the “itineraries” of Late Archaic containers in Florida's St. Johns River region, highlighting possible uses, the shift in technology from shell to pottery, and the everyday work of creating these artifacts. Philip Carr and Andrew Bradbury advocate an Organization of Technology model for aligning the life cycles of stone tools and activities. Ethnographic and ethnohistorical accounts, and special preservation conditions, provide fodder for analyses and interpretations.
Also related to craft production, Thomas Pluckhahn, Martin Menz, and Lori O'Neal discuss Middle and Late Woodland crafting related to the Kolomoki (Georgia) and Crystal River (Florida) sites. Distributions of raw materials and reduction debris indicate that craft production by part-time specialists was an aspect of everyday life in domestic contexts.
Mounds and plazas were important places in everyday life. Tristram Kidder and Sarah Sherwood discuss the everyday work of mound building and maintenance. These auspicious structures served communities every day but required huge efforts in planning, engineering, building, and repair. Casey Barrier and Megan Kassabaum describe plazas as central to Late Woodland communities in the Mississippi Valley, using the Feltus (Mississippi) and Range (Illinois) sites as examples. Some plazas, as at Feltus, were used for special occasions, but associated aggregations of people nonetheless influenced social and ritual relationships in everyday lives. Other plazas, such as domestic courtyards at Range, were gathering places where people worked together on the business of everyday life.
Christopher Rodning, Jayur Mehta, Bryan Haley, and David Watt relate chaos theory to a comparison of European contact in the Yazoo Basin (Mississippi), Apalachee province (Florida), Cherokee towns (southern Appalachia), and the Natchez and Taensa area (Mississippi and Louisiana). They suggest that chaos theory clarifies how seemingly unpredictable developments at the local, everyday scale are not random when considered from the perspective of a developing global colonial system.
Beth Conklin, an ethnographer of Amazonia, provides a discussion chapter emphasizing that examining everyday life encouages a holistic perspective, exploring entanglements among people, animals, and things. She writes,
The challenge . . . is to keep sight of all these dimensions simultaneously . . . [because] regardless of differences in methods or theory, the question that we all want to answer [is]: what was it like back then? [p. 191].
In the final chapter, the editors prod “real” archaeologists to make archaeology more accessible. They suggest that an everyday life perspective resonates with many people and could spark interest in the significance of archaeological resources. Their pleas for “real” archaeologists to find ways to communicate with “real” people are particularly relevant in today's everyday “real” world.
