Marvin D. Jeter

During the 1880s a massive scientific effort was launched by the Smithsonian Institution to discover who had built the prehistoric burial mounds found throughout the United States. Arkansaw Mounds tells the story of this exploration and of Edward Palmer, one of the nineteenth century’s greatest natural historians and archaeologists, who was recruited to lead the research project.

First major work to deal solely with the Plaquemine societies.

Plaquemine, Louisiana, about 10 miles south of Baton Rouge on the banks of the Mississippi River, seems an unassuming southern community for which to designate an entire culture. Archaeological research conducted in the region between 1938 and 1941, however, revealed distinctive cultural materials that provided the basis for distinguishing a unique cultural manifestation in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Plaquemine was first cited in the archaeological literature by James Ford and Gordon Willey in their 1941 synthesis of eastern U.S. prehistory.