In the helpful final chapter of Mississippian Women, coeditor Lynne P. Sullivan laments the late arrival of the book and enumerates many of the reasons archaeologists working in the southeastern United States have been slow to adopt, or even experiment with, an engendered perspective. I think, however, that this book could not have arrived at a better time: after the flurry of sessions and works on gender and archaeology at the turn of the millennia, there has been a noticeable drop-off in new books that grapple with the essential challenges of recovering gender from the material record, especially for Indigenous peoples of the Americas in the deep past. Thankfully, contributors to Mississippian Women have been thinking for some time (decades in some cases) about gender dynamics in Indigenous communities of the Southeast from the 1300s through the 1500s, and this book reflects not just new scholarship but also the kind of carefully considered scholarship on gendered experiences that makes the field so productive and transformative.
In addition, Mississippian Women assembles a group of scholars who have spent more than a decade conducting research in close collaboration with descendant communities. Much of that consultation occurred because of the requirements of NAGPRA and the National Historic Preservation Act, but it happened. The research presented in the book speaks to a scholarly engagement with living descendants who will potentially read and digest the results. It is hard to overstate the importance of this point to the field of engendered archaeology. Most archaeologists doing research on gender in all its complex manifestations are committed to a more just, equitable world, and the best of this scholarship has always been intended to make a positive difference in people’s lives today. From the foreword by Sheila Bird, an enrolled tribal member and former Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Cherokee Nation, to the use of existing collections in lieu of new excavation, to the focus on gender as a primary structuring principle within contemporary southeastern Indigenous cultures, this is a book that speaks to the concerns of 2025. Gender has always been a significant organizing principle of Indigenous societies in the Americas, and the research presented in these chapters will be read with interest by Indigenous scholars. It is refreshing and significant that the authors included in Mississippian Women know that their work will be accessible to their Indigenous colleagues, and each chapter has been written in a manner that demonstrates the respect for contemporary Indigenous culture that is a hallmark of how archaeology is best conducted in the Southeast today.
Although every edited volume is inherently a bit uneven in tone, the editors of Mississippian Women have done a commendable job in ensuring a consistently high level of clarity and precision throughout the book. Every contribution is grounded in an archaeological assemblage, often one with which the author has engaged for decades. Many of the chapters use novel and exciting methodological contributions to the recovery of gendered patterns—including embodied geographies (Jennifer Bengtson and Toni Alexander), social network mapping (Sullivan), and taskscapes (Ramie A. Gougeon). Even more exciting are the ways many chapters address long-standing questions about social complexity in the Indigenous Southeast through gendered perspectives. A chapter on the generative social power of cooking speaks to how Indigenous societies managed the upheavals of contacts with Spanish entradas during the sixteenth century (Rachel V. Briggs), and several authors explore the unique bases of feminine power, including caregiving (Michaelyn S. Harle et al.), craft production (Maureen S. Meyers), and figurine iconography (Robert V. Sharp).
All this is well contextualized within a rich archaeological record; the clear and detailed use of ethnohistoric documents that visibly convey the structures of matrilineal kinship, matrilocal residence, and compulsory clan membership; and, as mentioned earlier, the certainty that these reconstructions will play a part in ongoing conversations with current tribal members. As emphasized by many of the scholars contributing to this book, the ethnohistoric evidence for the central role of Indigenous women in decision-making, economics, and politics is so clear and well understood that in many ways archaeology is just catching up to what has been established for some time by other disciplines.
Yet unsurprisingly, archaeological data provide very important correctives to some persistent narratives drawn from ethnohistoric accounts. Documentary evidence speaks of Indigenous female chiefs but says nothing about how those women experienced their roles, how their cultures understood female authority, or how women who were not chiefs but perhaps clan mothers or accomplished healers also exercised extraordinary power in their communities. Whether it is elaborating on the importance of female-generated food surpluses that enabled diplomacy with sixteenth-century Spanish expeditions (Chris et al.), the hypothesis that coastal Mississippian peoples may have been less prone to warfare because of resource abundance (Nancy Marie White), how caregiving and food production were the bases of female power and not the result of a subservient status (Gayle J. Fritz, Harle et al.), or how menstruation seclusion was status-enhancing (Bengtson and Alexander), this book should be read by ethnohistorians curious about what their largely Eurocentric and masculine sources are missing.
Some readers will take issue with minor details in Mississippian Women; for instance, some overgeneralized statements about what “women” produce, or artifacts associated “with women,” or even the focus on women as opposed to gender. On this last point, Briggs and Harle deftly justify their approach as consistent with the aims of Indigenous feminism, which focuses on the lived experiences of Indigenous women as they navigate gender ideologies.
To this reviewer, however, the missteps are few and far between, and the book makes a huge contribution to the study of gender not only in the Indigenous cultures of the Southeast but also to engendered archaeology globally. Mississippian Women will be an exciting read for all archaeologists: at this moment in our country’s history, more than almost any other, our discipline needs to unite behind this book’s charge to embrace allyship as necessary and essential not only to Indigenous feminism but also to engaged and culturally relevant research on Indigenous cultures of today and yesterday.
