Thesis (Dr.P.H.)--Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, 2006 / Typescript (photocopy)

This dissertation used osteometrics to assess the level of congruence between biological distance and long-distance material exchange in three Middle and Late Archaic groups living in the mid-South United States. Dental and cranial data support greater biological affinity between groups in southern Illinois (represented by individuals from the Black Earth site) and central Tennessee (individuals from Eva and surrounding sites) while groups in the Green River region of western Kentucky (Shell Mound Archaic) were somewhat more removed or perhaps more isolated. Females were more biologically variable than males for the majority of metrics used. This finding is suggestive of a patrilocal residence pattern, if only loosely followed.

When Spanish explorers first arrived in the region later known as the southeastern United States in the early 16th century, they encountered complex, chiefdom level societies in many areas. These societies, with populations commonly numbering in the thousands and occasionally tens of thousands, were characterized by hereditary inequality of individuals and groups, monumental architecture, elaborate ceremonialism, and were engaged in constant warfare with one another. While state societies like those present in western South America and Mesoamerica were not found in the Southeast, most scholars believe they would have eventually emerged within the region. Indeed, some believe that a state did emerge briefly at Cahokia in the central Mississippi Valley around ca. AD 1050. The contact era societies the early European explorers saw, however, represented only the final chapter in a long record dating back thousands of years. Seemingly complex societies characterized by formal cemeteries and elaborate ceremonialism were present in the region as far back as the terminal Pleistocene some 12.000 years ago, as represented by the Dalton culture of the central Mississippi Valley, while the construction of massive mound complexes of earth and shell appears in many areas in the later Mid-Holocene era, after ca. 7000 cal yr BP. Complex societies thus persisted for thousands of years in the Southeast, with hunting and gathering providing the means of subsistence for much of this interval. Agricultural food production only became important in the final two millennia before contact, long after complex societies were widely established. / A principios del siglo XVI, cuando los exploradores españoles llegaron por primera vez a la región más tarde conocida como el Sureste de los Estados Unidos, encontraron sociedades complejas correspondientes al ámbito de las jefaturas en muchas áreas. Este tipo de organizaciones, con poblaciones que alcanzaban los miles y, ocasionalmente, las decenas de miles de personas, se caracterizaban por una desigualdad hereditaria de individuos y grupos, arquitectura monumental, ceremonialismo elaborado y constantes guerras entre ellas. Si bien sociedades del tipo que existieron en la parte occidental de Sudamérica y en Mesoamérica no se han encontrado en el Sureste, diversos estudiosos piensan que, en algún momento, esto pudo haber ocurrido en la región. Ciertamente, se sostiene que, si bien de manera breve, en Cahokia, en el valle central del Mississippi, surgió un Estado alrededor de 1050 d.C. Sin embargo, esta época particular, en que las comunidades entablaban contacto y que vieron los exploradores europeos tempranos, representaba solo el capítulo final de un largo registro que retrocede miles de años en el tiempo. Al parecer, las sociedades complejas caracterizadas por cementerios formales y un elaborado ceremonialismo existían ya hacia fines del Pleistoceno, alrededor de 12.000 a.p., tal como lo representa la cultura Dalton, del valle central del Mississippi, mientras que la construcción de complejos de montículos masivos de tierra y conchas aparece en muchas áreas en la parte tardía del Holoceno Medio, hacia alrededor de 7000 A.P. De esta manera, las sociedades complejas persistieron por miles de años en el Sureste y, en gran parte de este intervalo, sus medios de subsistencia fueron la caza y la recolección. La producción agrícola de alimentos solo cobró importancia en los dos últimos milenios antes del contacto con los europeos, mucho después de que este tipo de agrupaciones estuvieran ampliamente establecidas.

Many landowners in the southeastern United States have invested in southern yellow pine plantations and managed them using traditional management schemes. However, non-industrial private forest landowners often have goals and challenges that make traditional management less desirable or possible. This thesis contains two projects that offer potential solutions for these landowners. The first project is a management option for landowners with small parcels that wish to manage pine plantations and proposes low-density management paired with crown lifting for the production of saw logs without commercial thinning entries. The second proposes a method for incorporating mixed-species management into already existing plantations. This increases biodiversity and could be more ecologically stable than single-species plantations. These options present opportunities for non-industrial private forest landowners who do not fit into the traditional management framework due to differences in management goals or economic constraints on management.

No description available.

Transport and mixing of momentum and salt in an estuary varies in time and space due to river discharge, changes in tidal amplitude and phase, wind stress, and lateral mixing processes, such as secondary circulation. This dissertation focuses on observing, describing, parameterizing, and quantifying secondary circulation in a sinuous coastal plain estuary using acoustic Doppler current meters. This endeavor is made to improve our general understanding of secondary circulation, to identify its primary driving forces, and to better parameterize key physical processes necessary for further study in current numerical models. Secondary circulation is used to describe several mechanisms whose result is to vertically overturn the water column along the transverse axis of a channel. Secondary circulation is commonly generated by one or more of the following mechanisms: channel curvature, unusual bottom topography or channel geometry, planetary rotation, and/or the differential advection of density. Data for this dissertation was collected in the naturally sinuous Satilla River in southeast Georgia. A shallow coastal plain estuary, the Satilla is a partially-mixed estuary characterized by 2 meter range semidiurnal tides. It has a strong neap-to-spring axial current inequality and strong neap-to-spring vertical salinity differences. The balance of mechanisms responsible for the strength and location of secondary flow in the Satilla River varies with spatial location, phase of the tide, and lateral cross-channel position. A simple steady-state momentum balance between the Coriolis acceleration, centrifugal acceleration, the lateral baroclinic gradient, and bottom stress is sufficient to explain secondary circulation in the Satilla River under a wide variety of conditions. The primary momentum balance for this river is a three-way balance between the centrifugal acceleration, bottom stress, and the lateral baroclinic gradient. The dominant mechanism that drives the local secondary circulation depends on the phase of the tide and the lateral placement of the acoustic current profiler.

A growing trend in Mississippian research in the archaeology of the southeastern United States stresses the need to shift away from categorizing generalizations (e.g., the concept of chiefdoms) that have been used to characterize Mississippi-period (A.D. 1000-1600) societies and advocates elucidating the unique occupational histories of Mississippian communities. This dissertation follows this trend with the goal of identifying and interpreting the particular historical and developmental trajectory of the Yon mound and village site (8Li2), a Fort Walton Mississippian site situated in the middle Apalachicola River valley, northwest Florida. Since its initial recording by Clarence Bloomfield Moore at the turn of the 20th century, Yon has been intermittently investigated by various researchers, but the data from these multiple investigations until now have been severely underreported or not reported at all. In this dissertation, these archaeological data from Yon are synthesized and used to identify the site's particular developmental history. The study proceeds through a careful examination of Yon's radiocarbon dates, artifact assemblage, platform mound construction, structural remains, and to a lesser extent, subsistence data, in an effort to tease apart its occupational components and contextualize them within the wider Fort Walton and Mississippian milieu. To this end, particular attention is given to the wider Fort Walton manifestation of the Apalachicola-lower Chattahoochee River valley and the Rood and later Lamar Mississippian regional variants that were located upriver from Yon in the upper reaches of the lower Chattahoochee River valley. This study demonstrates that Yon emerged rather precipitously as a Middle Fort Walton period center circa A.D.1200, a time marked by initial mound construction and the first intense village occupation at the site, which was preceded only by a very small, pre-Fort Walton, Swift Creek occupation there around A.D. 320. Probable antecedent events at a nearby Fort Walton mound center, Cayson (8Ca3), as well as contact with Rood Mississippian groups to the north are hypothesized as influencing Yon's Middle Fort Walton development and florescence. Evidence indicates that this initial Middle Fort Walton occupation was followed by an occupation of Lamar groups. Regional data and radiocarbon evidence from Yon suggest that this Lamar component likely began during protohistoric times (circa A.D. 1600) and continued into the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries. It is hypothesized that this Lamar occupation was the result of Lamar groups migrating down the lower Chattahoochee-Apalachicola River in the wake of European contact. As a whole, this study represents the most complete documentation of the occupational history of any Fort Walton mound center to date. As such, it can provide an important foundation for future studies of Fort Walton mound centers and sites in the Apalachicola-lower Chattahoochee River region.

The Georgia General Assembly, like many states, has enacted pre-defined, comprehensive, drought-mitigation apparatus, but they need rainfall outlooks. Global circulation models (GCMs) provide rainfall outlooks, but they are too spatially course for jurisdictional impact assessment. To wed these efforts, spatially averaged, time-smoothed, daily precipitation observations from the National Weather Service cooperative network are fitted to eight points of 700 mbar atmospheric data from the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis Project for climate downscaling and drought prediction in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) river basin. The domain is regionalized with a factor analysis to create specialized models. All models complied well with mathematical assumptions, though the residuals were somewhat skewed and flattened. All models had an R-squared > 0.2. The models revealed map points to the south to be especially influential. A leave-one-out cross-validation showed the models to be unbiased with a percent error of < 20%. Atmospheric parameters are estimated for 2008–2011 with GCMs and empirical extrapolations. The transfer function was invoked on both these data sets for drought predictions. All models and data indicate drought especially for 2010 and especially in the south.

No description available.

No description available.