Borgo Publishing
In the Shadow of Carson Mound A​​
October 1, 2024
List Price: $32.00 PB
228 pages, full color
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Cahokians were in the Yazoo Basin during the second half of the 11th century. What were they doing here? What were the historical implications of their being here, in northwest Mississippi at the very beginning of the Mississippian era? And what was the historical relationship between them and Carson’s 89 mounds, including its enigmatic biconical mounds and its unusual pentagonal platform, all oriented or aligned relative to a “Carson grid.” ...Carson was anything but a village! Its momentous and highly contingent history bespeaks one of the great Indigenous places of the precolonial Midsouth. That history began with the construction of two or three biconical mounds during the Middle Woodland period, if not also numerous other now-destroyed (mono) conical mounds. It continued with the arrival of Cahokians around A.D. 1070 ± 20 (based on pottery and one C14 date) and, after a 12th century hiatus, with a late Mississippian town on the Montgomery portion of the site. That town ended for reasons unknown, leaving behind the many houses and domestic remains that would be rediscovered by John Connaway and his crew ...Because of his tireless 11-year effort, the Native people who built Carson, as well as the place itself, can today be recognized as having played a truly pivotal role in the precolonial history of the American Southeast. And for that, archaeology in the Midsouth owes John Connaway its enduring admiration.
Certain Studies of European Trade Bells in the
Southeastern United States
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Ian W. Brown and John M. Connaway
September 15, 2023
List Price: $24.95 PB
144 pages, full color text
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Brown and Connaway have each devoted over 50 years of their lives to investigating the archaeology of the Southeastern United States. The Lower Mississippi Valley has been a point of overlap in their work, as has the study of historic trade bells. In this volume they
each contribute three essays relating to trade bells, four of the works having been published previously and two being new to the field.
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Jeffrey M. Mitchem, noted Southeastern U.S. scholar, says in his Foreword to the book, "Both Ian and John have published several bell studies in diverse venues, and some of these are difficult to find. Some are out of print, and others are in periodicals that are difficult to
locate. Archaeologists and other researchers will therefore welcome this compendium of papers in a single volume. For the first time all the pertinent papers are in a single volume, and researchers will no longer have to gather a big stack of books to clutter their lab space and strain their pocketbooks. A welcome addition to the archaeologist’s toolkit!"
About The Author
John M. Connaway, has been a leading voice in Mississippi archaeology for half a century. After earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in anthropology from the University of Mississippi, Connaway began working at the Department of Archives and History's Clarksdale field office in 1968. Since that time he has made extraordinary contributions to the preservation and study of the archaeology of the northern Yazoo Basin of northwestern Mississippi. Connaway is the author of numerous scholarly articles and monographs, including the definitive 2007 book Fishweirs: A World Perspective with Emphasis on the Fishweirs of Mississippi and the first of three volumes on the Oliver Site in 2016. In 2017 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference.
