Antiquities of the Southern Indians, Particularly of the Georgia Tribes
Antiquities of the Southern Indians, Particularly of the Georgia Tribes
A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication
This reissue of Charles Jones’s classic investigations of the Mound Builders will be an invaluable resource for archaeologists today
Long a classic of southeastern archaeology, Charles Jones’s Antiquities of the Southern Indians was a groundbreaking work that linked historic tribes with prehistoric “antiquities.” Published in 1873, it predated the work of Cyrus Thomas and Clarence Moore and remains a rich resource for modern scholars.
Jones was a pioneer of archaeology who not only excavated important sites but also related his findings to other sites, to contemporary Indians, and to artifacts from other areas. His work covers all of the southeastern states, from Virginia to Louisiana, and is noted for its insights into the De Soto expedition and the history of the Creek Indians.
Best known for refuting the popular myth of the Mound Builders, Jones proposed a connection between living Native Americans of the 1800s and the prehistoric peoples who had created the Southeast’s large earthen mounds. His early research and culture comparisons led to the eventual demise of the Mound Builder myth.
For this reissue of Jones’s book, a new introduction by Frank Schnell places Jones’s work in the context of his times and relates it to current research in the Southeast. An engagingly written work enhanced by numerous maps and engravings, Antiquities of the Southern Indians will serve today’s scholars and fascinate all readers interested in the region’s prehistory.
The University of Alabama Press has again done the right thing in publishing an affordable reprint of C. C. Jones, Jr.’s, Antiquities of the Southern Indians. Jones was the first anthropologist to be honored with an obituary in the American Anthropologist, and for a very long time he was the only one. Antiquities of the Southern Indians, his masterpiece, sets a very high critical standard for the nascent science of archaeology in the South. And as an exemplar of precise, graceful English prose, has another southern archaeologist surpassed him to this day?’
—Charles M. Hudson, University of Georgia
‘Though ethnohistorical and archaeological methodologies have changed significantly since Jones published his work, this classic volume will interest students of southeastern Indians as well as scholars of the history of archaeology.’
—Georgia Historical Quarterly
Frank T. Schnell Jr. is an Archaeologist and Historian at the Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia.
