Department of Anthropology
|
|
University of Arkansas Department of Anthropology |
|
Stigler
Stigler
Stigler
Stigler
Stigler
|
The Robert
L. Stigler, Jr.
|
 |
Department of Anthropology Old Main 330, University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR 72701 Phone: (501)575-2508; Fax: (501)575-6595 E-mail: chitt@comp.uark.edu Maintained by Web Guy |
Thomas
E. Emerson is a senior Midwestern archaeologist who has devoted
much of his professional career to the evaluation of late prehistoric
complex society. His current administrative responsibilities include the
direction and management of Illinois statewide archaeological, historical,
and architectural programs. His view of the Mississippian Period urban
center of Cahokia now constitutes one of two competing ideas about the
development of ranked society in the southeastern United States, and the
collapse of the Cahokian polity as a result of rapid political failure.
His research of the Crow Creek massacre in South Dakota also was a catalyst
in recognizing the scope of pre-Columbian warfare. Dr. Emerson is a graduate
of University of Wisconsin, Madison, from 1984-1994 was Chief Archaeologist,
Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, and has held teaching positions
at University of South Dakota and Belloit College. The National Science
Foundation supports his current research on sourcing flintclays from which
Cahokian style figures were sculpted. He publishes widely and extensively
on Midwestern and Plains archaeology, is the editor of nine celebrated
volumes on Midwestern prehistory, and has edited the journals South
Dakota Archaeology and Illinois Archaeology. Among his more
recent publications are two books from 1997, Cahokia: Ideology and
Domination in the Mississippian World (edited with T. Pauketat) and
Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power. 
Michelle
Hegmon's career in Southwest archaeology is truly stellar. Her graduate
education at the University of Michigan advanced a more general interest
in artifact style as a social strategy. She also is proficient in the
technology of ceramics, one of the mainstays of Southwest archaeology
and crucial to her research of its Mimbres culture. Since 1996, she and
Margaret C. Nelson have received two major multiyear grants from the Turner
Foundation for their Mimbres research. Other related grants have come
from National Geographic Society, and doctoral dissertation improvement
grants for her students from the National Science Foundation. While centered
in the Southwest, Dr. Hegmon's research knows no geographic boundaries
and is widely published. Her research showcases gender in archaeology,
the archaeology of the social realm, food production and village communities,
regional exchange and interaction, and style and material culture. These
concerns reflect modern theoretical trends in American archaeology. Her
scholarship and forceful, persuasive advocacy of these issues are balanced
by a well-appreciated keen sense of humor. Prior to coming to Arizona
State University, Dr. Hegmon taught at New Mexico State University, Las
Cruces. Her most recent book, published in 2000 by University Press of
Colorado, is the edited volume, The Archaeology of Regional Interaction:
Religion, Warfare and Exchange in the American Southwest. 
Professor
Knight is a gifted speaker who brings a wealth of experience to
this subject. He and his colleagues have published widely and persuasively
about the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Its imagery of otherworldly
beings includes bird serpents, bird-men, human-headed snakes, and other
fanciful creations. In Oklahoma just west of Fort Smith, Arkansas is
Spiro, where a central element of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
is identified as the Classic Braden style complex of engraved objects
of marine shell and copper; its iconic connections span much of the
American Southeast. This complex represents a vital element of prehistoric
art in eastern North America found most spectacularly at Spiro, at Etowah,
Georgia, at Cahokia, Illinois, and at Moundville, Alabama, where Knight
has devoted much of his professional career. The Smithsonian Institution
Press volume, Studies in Moundville Archaeology, published in
1998 and co-edited by Knight and Vincas P. Steponaitis is a primary
source on this site. This volume is a natural outgrowth of Knight's
doctoral dissertation, Mississippian Ritual, completed in 1981
at the University of Florida. In 2001, Knight, James A. Brown, and George
E. Lankford published the seminal article, "On the subject matter
of Southeastern Ceremonial Complex art," in the journal Southeastern
Archaeology. The more than half century of lively debate about this
complex's meaning undoubtedly will continue. Knight and his colleagues'
efforts have shifted this debate to the underlying ritual structure
of Southeastern Ceremonial Complex art.