Sponsored by: AIA-Boulder Society
In this lecture, Professor Ed Henry will discuss the monumental earthen architecture present at Pinson Mounds State Archaeological Park (PMSAP) in West Tennessee, which features prominently in the archaeology of the American Midsouth. However, the Johnston and Elijah Bray mound sites, situated west and east of PMSAP respectively, are considered the anchors in defining the broader Pinson Landscape. Recent research in this area has dramatically reshaped how archaeologists might consider the temporal and spatial extent of this enigmatic Middle Woodland landscape and its ties to Hopewell societies in the eastern U.S. In my lecture I will discuss the field verification of new monumental features at Johnston, new and unusual subsurface features identified at PMSAP, and the first archaeological investigations of the Elijah Bray site. Our new discoveries reveal how our knowledge of this unique area expands our understandings of, and approach to studying, deeply used places in the archaeological record.