Home Center for Archaeological Studies Visit our Sites French Colonies in America Artifacts Book Shop Educator's Page Credits Great Links

Nationwide repercussions of a bloody battle on the southern frontier.

The Fort Mims massacre changed the course of American history. The Indian victory over the encroaching Americans horrified many and injured the young nation's pride. Such tragedies have always rallied Americans to a common cause: a single-minded determination to destroy the enemy and avenge the fallen. The August 30, 1813, massacre at Fort Mims, involving hundreds of dead men, women, and children, was just such a spark.

Archaeological excavations since 1989 have uncovered exciting evidence of the original townsite of Mobile, first capital of the Louisiana colony, and remnants of the colony's port on Dauphin Island.

A reprint of the 1916 classic study of French Louisiana's colonial economy.

Considered a classic study of southeastern Indians, Powhatan's Mantle demonstrates how ethnohistory, demography, archaeology, anthropology, and cartography can be brought together in fresh and meaningful ways to illuminate life in the early South.

This expanded and updated edition includes new chapters of the calumet ceremony, Creek concepts of race, and Cherokee agriculture.

William Bartram traveled throughout the American Southeast from 1773 to 1776. He occupies a unique place as an American Enlightenment explorer, naturalist, writer, and artist whose work was widely admired in his time and thereafter. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and other leading romantics found inspiration in his pages.

This volume contains all of Bartram's known writings on Native Americans: a new version of "Observations on Creek and Cherokee Indians," first published in 1852, "Some Hints and Observations Concerning the Civilization of the Indians, or Aborigines of America"; and extensive excerpts from Travels, his most famous work.

Monograph 2
The Little Market Well
at Springhill and Dauphin, Mobile, Alabama
by Gregory A. Waselkov, George W. Shorter, Jr., Amy S. Carruth, and Catherine M. Henderson (1996, 22 pages, paperbound; ISBN 1-893955-01-X), $10.00

The accidental discovery of a brick-lined well, found during repaving of a street in downtown Mobile, led to emergency excavations and a search of archival records for clues to its identity. This "textbook" case of archaeological sleuthing reveals the history of a well built in 1847 for the city's new market.

Monograph 3
Archaeology at Mobile's Exploreum:
Discovering the Buried Past
by Bonnie L. Gums and George W. Shorter, Jr. (1998, 82 pages, paperbound; ISBN 1-893955-02-8), $20.00

Excavations prior to construction of Mobile's new science center uncovered the first Spanish colonial (ca. 1800) domestic structure found in the city's downtown district, as well as a waterfront tavern dating to the 1820s. Among the recovered artifacts are continental Spanish Majolica, possible African colono ware, and historic Creek and Choctaw pottery. Substantial marsh reclamation features were also found along the original Mobile River bluff.

Monograph 4
The Archaeology of an African-American
Neighborhood in Mobile, Alabama
by Bonnie L. Gums (1998, 90 pages, paperbound;
ISBN 1-893955-03-6), $20.00

Construction of the Calloway-Smith Middle School in downtown Mobile was preceded by archaeological excavations in a neighborhood occupied predominately by African Americans from 1880 until urban renewal. Exploration of house features reconstructs the patterns of life in turn-of-the-century Mobile.

Monograph 5
Planning for the Past:
An Archaeological Resource Management Plan
for the City of Mobile, Alabama
by Bonnie L. Gums, Gregory A. Waselkov, and Sarah B. Mattics (1999, vi & 143 pages, paperbound;
ISBN 1-893955-05-2), $20.00

Fast-paced modern development of Mobile's colonial district raises concerns for preservation of the City's archaeological heritage. Along with a plan for long-term management, this monograph also includes a series of colonial and early federal-period maps and a comprehensive historical bibliography of Mobile.

Monograph 6
The Late Woodland Period
on the Lower Tombigbee River
by George W. Shorter, Jr. (1999, xiii & 183 pages,
paperbound; ISBN 1-893955-06-0), $20.00

The first archaeological investigation of the lower Tombigbee River valley in over half a century reveals the nature of Late Woodland life, ca. AD 800-1100. Studies of pottery, stone tools, and subsistence remains (including corn) offer an up-to-date perspective on a poorly-known segment of Alabama prehistory.

Monograph 7
Plantation Archaeology
at Rivière aux Chiens, ca. 1725-1848
by Gregory A. Waselkov and Bonnie L. Gums (2000,
xiv & 280 pages, paperbound; ISBN 1-893955-07-9), $35.00

Excavations at the mouth of Dog River (Rivière aux Chiens) south of Mobile on Mobile Bay, uncovered extensive evidence of plantations dating to the French, British, and Spanish colonial periods and the antebellum era. Contextual studies of Native Americans, colonial plantations, and plantation occupants puts the site's enormous collection of over 170,000 artifacts in historical perspective.

Monograph 8
Made of Alabama Clay:
Historic Potteries on Mobile Bay
by Bonnie L. Gums (2001, viii & 73 pages, paperbound;
ISBN 1-893955-08-7) $20.00

Pottery production was the principal industry of Mobile Bay's Eastern Shore communities during the nineteenth century. This thorough survey of the potters, their kiln sites, and their pots tells the little-known story of a European stoneware tradition in the deep South.

Monograph 9
Continuity and Change in
Apalachee Pottery Manufacture
by Ann S. Cordell (2001, viii & 154 pages, paperbound;
ISBN 1-893955-08-7) $20.00

This is a comprehensive technological study of Indian-made pottery recovered from the French colonial site of Old Mobile in Alabama and the Spanish colonial mission site of San Luis de la Talimali in Florida. The focus on paste characteristics, vessel forms, and decorations reveal the presence of traditional Apalachee-style pottery and the introduction of Colono Ware.

Monograph 10
"Privies in Case of Seige."
Expeditions 21 and 22 at the Fort Morgan Citadel
by George W. Shorter, Jr. (2001, x & 66 pages, paperbound;
ISBN 1-893955-10-9), $20.00

Two summers of Expeditions, a scientific excavation program sponsored by the Alabama Museum of Natural History and the Alabama Historical Commission, revealed building features, including an officer's latrine and bathouse. Artifacts were diverse, including discarded artillery projectiles, medicine bottles, military buttons, and smoking pipes. Also detailed is the construction of the Fort Morgan fortifications and their role in the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War.

Monograph 11
Lucrecia's Well:
An Archaeological Glimpse of an
African-American Midwife's Household
by Laurie A. Wilkie and George W. Shorter, Jr.
(2001,v +56 pages, paperbound;
ISBN 1-893955-11-7), $20.00

This study follows the Perryman family who were living and working in Mobile in the late 1800s and early 1900s. As a widow in her fifties with a family to support, Lucrecia Perryman became a midwife, and many of the artifacts recovered from her homestead reflect this practice, which was based, in part, on traditional African spiritual, gender, and ethnomedical ideologies.

Monograph 12
Archaeology at Fort Mims:
Excavation Contents and Artifact Catalog
by Gregory A. Waselkov, Bonnie L. Gums, and
James W. Parker
(2006, x +214 pages, paperbound;
ISBN 1-893955-15-X), $25.00

A thorough review of the site's archaeological exploration is complemented by a descriptive analysis of recovered artifacts. In the process, the artifacts from Samuel Mims' frontier plantation (1797-1813) are contrasted with the posessions of the fort's 400+ refugees and garrison prior to the battle of August 30, 1813.

The Archaeology of French Colonial North America/
L'Archéologie coloniale française en Amérique du Nord (English-French Edition)
by Gregory A. Waselkov, Guide to Historical Archaeological Literature No. 5 (1997, 149 pages, paperbound;
ISSN 1-886818-04-5), $20.00

This fifth volume of the series, Guides to Historical Archaeological Literature, presents a bibliography on the archaeology of French colonies in North America.

French Colonial Archaeology At Old Mobile:
Selected Studies
Gregory A. Waselkov, Editor
Historical Archaeology, Volume 36, Number 1 (2002, 150 pages, paperbound;
ISSN 0440-9213)

This collection of essays documents the ongoing study of the Old Mobile site, French colonial capital of Louisiana from 1702 to 1711, and how it relates to our understanding of the history of the Southeast.

Copyright © 2006 by The University of South Alabama
We welcome your comments
Updated: Wednesday, March 21, 2007