Neutron-Activation Analysis of Campbell Appliquéd Pottery from Southeastern Missouri and Western Tennessee: Implications for Late Mississippian Intersite Relations

The pottery type Campbell Appliquéd is a late Mississippian-period (post-A. D. 1400) marker for archaeological sites in southeastern Missouri. Recent discoveries of Campbell Appliqued sherds in western Tennessee have raised the question of whether production centers of Campbell Appliqued were geogra...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Southeastern archaeology 1995-12, Vol.14 (2), p.181-194
Main Authors: O'brien, Michael J., Cogswell, James W., Mainfort, Robert C., Neff, Hector, Glascock, Michael D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applique
Archaeological sites
Archaeological surveys
Art pottery
Chemical composition
Lowlands
Pottery
Research universities
Soil samples
Valleys
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Summary:The pottery type Campbell Appliquéd is a late Mississippian-period (post-A. D. 1400) marker for archaeological sites in southeastern Missouri. Recent discoveries of Campbell Appliqued sherds in western Tennessee have raised the question of whether production centers of Campbell Appliqued were geographically limited or were dispersed across the central Mississippi River valley area. Stylistic and metric analyses of Campbell Appliqued sherds and vessels have not demonstrated consistent interassemblage variation. Neutron-activation analysis of 67 sherds from sites in southeastern Missouri and western Tennessee, conducted at the Missouri University Research Reactor, indicates that the pottery forms a single compositional group.Analysis of five fired-clay (daub) samples and 16 raw-clay samples from near the Missouri sites shows that the daub samples are compositionally distinct from the pottery samples and that 14 of the raw-clay samples are compositionally similar to the pottery samples but cannot be differentiated by soil series. Chemical similarity between previously analyzed Woodland-period pottery from Missouri's Eastern Lowlands and Mississippian pottery analyzed for this project suggests that the entire modern alluvial valley of the Mississippi River from its confluence with the Ohio River to its confluence with the Arkansas River may constitute a single compositional source.
ISSN:0734-578X