Etowah, Hightower Style
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Notes:
How do we define our problems in dealing with the complex history of Southeastern art?
In a recent publication, Jeffery P. Brain has said (Brain and Philips 1996), "The generally accepted dating of the [Southern] Cult to the period A.D. 1200 to 1350 becomes untenable." He further says that "We suggest that the discrepancy could be on the order of two centuries" (p. 1). and "We will argue that most of the gorgets described ... were deposited in the archaeological contexts ... after 1400 and before 1650" (pp. 2-3).
Practically everyone, it seems, has been "misled" (p. 1) by associations at Cahokia and by Kneberg's gorget seriation into accepting dates that are far too early. It is claimed that if the prejudice of a 13th-century Cult is eliminated, the facts will speak for themselves.
This is an extraordinary claim; and, if true, it has major implications for our interpretations of the prehistoric Southeast.
Can Brain's claims be so?
I , for one, still consider the "main-stream" Southern Cult, including such styles as Eddyville and Hightower (as originally defined by me as far back as 1966 and more recently in 1989), to date to the late 13th and early 14th centuries. What is clear is that this session and others like it are necessary to help see what the record on these matters really is.
What I will try to do in this paper is first to present some cautions for interpretation in the form of three of my favorite parables,
Then I will discuss a few examples of the temporal and spatial relationships that indicate a long duration and complex regional differentiation within the iconographic traditions of the Southeast.