This study focuses on the causes and consequences of depopulation in the Lower Mississippi Valley during the Protohistoric period (ca. AD 1500-1700). The Protohistoric period in the region is characterized by indirect and infrequent contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, dramatic population losses and/or regional abandonments accompanied the collapse, transformation, and coalescence of Native American societies during this period across the interior southeastern United States. The causes and timing of these phenomena, however, were often multiple and occurred in a time-transgressive manner. The goal of the research presented in this dissertation was the identification of the forces and processes of cultural and demographic change that were responsible for transformation experienced by a Late Mississippian population represented by the Tillar Complex in southeast Arkansas during the Protohistoric period. Multiple lines of evidence, including archaeological, historical and environmental data, were employed to test a multi-causal model of population decline, adaptation, and abandonment of Bayou Bartholomew by Tillar phase peoples sometime during the seventeenth century. The external forces hypothesized to have been catalysts that drove social and cultural transformations and eventual depopulation include the military expedition of Hernando De Soto, disease, and a series of prolonged droughts that impacted large areas of the Southeast in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

No description available.

Late Mississippian, Mauch Chunk Group strata constitute a westward-thinning clastic wedge of strata up to 1000m thick that developed in the Central Appalachian Basin over a ~ 7 million year time interval. Included within the Mauch Chunk Group are multiple incised-valley fills and a distinctive prodeltaic succession of laminated sandstones and mudstones. Calculated estimates of drainage basin areas for incised-valley fills in the Mauch Chunk Group range from > 1,000,000 km2 for the Stony Gap Sandstone to < 100,000 km2 for the Princeton Formation. Drainage area estimates are consistent with detrital zircon geochronology and petrographic data and suggest that the Stony Gap and Ravencliff incised-valley fills were derived from distal, northern and northwestern cratonic sources that dispersed sediment into NE-SW-oriented, longitudinal incised-valley drainages and that the Princeton Formation was derived from proximal tectonic highland sources along the eastern margin of the Appalachian Basin which dispersed sediment into a transverse incised-valley. The Pride Shale overlies the Princeton incised valley fill and records a hierarchy of tidal periodicities is preserved in the Pride Shale. Microlaminated, semi-diurnal sandstone-siltstone/shale couplets record the dominant ebb tide of the day. Up to 17 semi-diurnal couplets are stacked into neap-spring (fortnightly) tidal cycles. Neap-spring cycles are arranged in thickening and thinning that record seasonal cycles driven by the annual monsoon. Total organic carbon (TOC) values are a proxy for annual climatic cycles. TOC contents are higher within intermonsoonal and lower within monsoonal components of annual cycles reflecting, respectively, lesser and greater dilution by terrestrial flux. / Master of Science

Native American societies in the Yazoo Basin during the Mississippian Period (ca. 1000 – 1700 A.D.) extensively built platform mounds often associated with “elite” or “sacred” areas, and exotic or energy expensive artifacts. Excessive energy expenditure, or “waste” behaviors, may be explained with costly signaling and bet-hedging, hypotheses stemming from evolutionary theory. I argue that costly signaling may best explain the waste evident in hierarchical and agricultural Mississippian Period societies of the Mississippi Valley. Consequently, I feel that differing levels of energy expenditure may be evident from the remains of perishable construction excavated from mound summits and off-mound contexts. During that time, wattle and daub was a common method of wall construction in the Yazoo Basin, leaving abundant evidence at Mississippian sites. By studying imprints from preserved daub fragments, the use of specific construction methods can be compared between mound and non-mound contexts and relative energy expenditure assessed.

No description available.

No description available.

Multiple sections at 13 localities in West Virginia and Virginia, that expose the Early Carboniferous (Late Mississippian) Bluefield, Hinton, and Bluestone Formations, were measured. Geological structures and paleontological occurrences were recorded. In situ rooted plants were compared with transported plant and animal assemblages from fluvially dominated terrestrial beds and interdistributary channel-dominated, bay-fill, marine beds in order to interpret the paleoecology of this subtropical Early Carboniferous coastal landscape. Interdistributary wetlands of the Bluefield, Hinton and Bluestone Formations resemble earlier swamps more than those of the younger Pennsylvanian. In both Hampshire (Late Devonian, Famennian) and Price Formation (Early Carboniferous, Toumaisian) coal swamps, diversity is so low that only one taxon of plant is present: Rhacophyton ceratangium in the Late Devonian and Lepidodendropsis vandergrachtii in the Early Mississippian. The presence of Lepidodendron veltheimii as the apparent sole occupant of these younger Early Carboniferous plant communities makes them most similar to the arborescent lycopod-dominated Price Formation swamps. Although many Pennsylvanian (Late Carboniferous) swamps were also dominated by tree lycopods, including species of Lepidodendron sensu lato, other plants were present as well. Thus, these Late Mississippian communities incorporate some features of both younger and older swamps and can be considered ecologically transitional between them. Swamps have been stressful environments for plant growth for as long as they have existed. This is manifested by their low diversity since the Paleozoic and continues to be true today. / Ph. D.

The Lower Mississippian Lodgepole/lower Madison Formations (20-225 m thick) developed along a broad (>700 km) stormdominated cratonic ramp. Three types of shallowing-upward cycles (5th order) are recognized across the ramp-to-basin transition. Peritidal cycles consist of very shallow subtidal facies overlain by algal-laminated tidal flat deposits, which are rarely capped by paleosol/breccia layers. Shallow subtidal cycles consist of stacked ooid grainstone shoal deposits or deeper subtidal facies overlain by ooid-skeletal grainstone caps. Deep subtidal cycles occur along the outer ramp and ramp-slope and consist of sub-storm wave base limestone-argillite, overlain by graded limestone, and are capped by storm-deposited skeletal-ooid grainstone. They pass downslope into rhythmically interbedded limestone and argillite with local deepwater mud mounds; no shallowing-upward cycles occur within the ramp-slope facies. Average cycle periods calculated along the outer ramp range from 30-110 k.y. The cycles likely formed in response to 5th order (20-100 k.y.) sea level oscillations. The cycles are stacked to form three 3rd to 4th order depositional sequences which are defined by regional transgressive-regressive facies trends. The ramp margin wedge (RMW) developed during long-term sea level fall lowstand conditions and consists of cyclic crinoidal bank and oolitic shoal facies which pass downdip into deep subtidal cycles. The transgressive systems tract (TST),which onlapped the ramp during long-term sea level rise, includes thick deep and shallow subtidal cycles; peritidal cycles are restricted to the inner ramp. The highstand systems tract (HST) developed during long-term sea level highstand and fall, and along the ramp is composed of early HST shallow subtidal cycles which are overlain by late HST peritidal cycles; shallow through deep subtidal cycles composed the HST along the ramp-slope. / Ph. D.

Eight 4th-order (~400 k.y.) disconformity-bounded mixed carbonate-siliciclastic sequences were deposited in the tectonically-active, tide-dominated Illinois basin during the Late Mississippian greenhouse to icehouse transition. Detailed, lithologic cross-sections were constructed through the Chesterian Ste. Genevieve through Glen Dean interval which show an upward change in character from carbonate-dominated sequences bounded by caliche and breccia paleosols to mixed-carbonate siliciclastic sequences bounded by red, slickensided mudrock paleosols and incised valleys. The 4th-order sequences are composed of 5th-order parasequences that can be correlated basin-wide. Parasequences in the basal, dominantly carbonate sequences are composed of patchy ooid grainstone tidal ridge reservoir facies which interfinger with skeletal limestone and are capped by laterally extensive muddy carbonate units. Parasequences in the overlying mixed carbonate siliciclastic interval commonly have basal quartz sandstone valley fill and tidal sand ridge reservoir facies overlain by skeletal limestone and shale-dominated siliciclastics. The sequences can be bundled into sequence pairs and composite sequences. Composite sequences are composed of 4 sequences and are bounded by better developed disconformities that commonly coincide with biostratigraphic zone boundaries. High energy reservoir facies are widespread in transgressive sequence tracts and late highstand sequence tract (where present) and confined to updip areas in the early highstand sequence tracts. Increasing amplitude 4th-order glacio-eustasy produced the sequences and caused the upward increase in incised valleys and deeper water carbonate deposition. Parasequences were produced by 5th-order glacio-eustatic sea-level fluctuations (20-100 k.y.). Sequence pairs and composite sequences were produced by 3rd-order sea-level fluctuations possibly in combination with local tectonics. Spatial and temporal variations in differential subsidence between the eastern and western shelves and the more rapidly subsiding basin interior caused variations in onlap/offlap geometries of sequences and parasequences. Increasingly wetter wet-dry seasonality caused an upward increase in siliciclastic influx and concurrent decrease in ooid deposition. The increasing-amplitude eustasy and progressively more humid climate were caused by the onset of continental glaciation on Gondwana. / Ph. D.

Middle Mississippian ramp carbonates in Kentucky (Fort Payne to Salem interval) form a large scale depositional supersequence (0 to 500 feet thick, approximately 8 m. y. duration). It formed on and in front of the abandoned Early Mississippian Borden deltaic marine paleoshelf, which had up to 100 m of relief above the adjacent starved basin. Major facies consist of marine quartz sandstone and shale; peritidal carbonates; high-energy ramp margin, crinoidal-bryozoan grainstones; deeper ramp mounds, skeletal grainstone/packstone sheets and channel-fills interlayered with shale or calcisiltite; and slope deposits of siliceous calcisiltite. Regional slopes on the paleoshelf edge and ramp margin are 0.5 to 2.5 mIkm (less than 0.25 degrees), although clinoforms of 2 to 10 degrees occur locally associated with mounds and depositional lobes. The supersequence LST is dominated by mounds interlayered with green shaly, deeper ramp facies. The mounded units are located in a fairway that is normal to the Borden margin but parallel to the Appalachian Grainger deltaic shelf. No TST is evident, except for a glauconite horizon capping the Borden paleoshelf. The supersequence HST consists of at least eight third-order sequences (each approximately 1 m.y. duration), the older ones downlapping onto the shelf 20 to 30 m deep, the younger ones downlapping into the deeper basin (over 150 m water depth). Sequences show marked toplap with the upper sequence boundary. The third-order sequences locally have lowstand sands, some of which may be associated with a paleodrainage system off the Borden paleo shelf. They lack recognizable TSTs, but have well-developed prograding HST units of nearshore shale and peritidal dolomite, skeletal packstone/grainstone banks, and siliceous calcisiltite slope facies. The supersequence correlates with a global sea level cycle in the lower Visean terminating in a major sea-level fall. The highly clinofonned toplapping supersequence reflects this long term, sea-level fall which prevented space from being created on the old delta top. The third-order sequences, although mappable between the sections, are not easily correlated with global third order cycles. / Master of Science