Shannon Hodge
Middle Tennessee State University, Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty Member
ABSTRACT Biocultural patterns surrounding the emergence of agriculture from 11 sites in the central Tombigbee River valley (500–1200 AD), 50–100 km west of the emerging Moundville polity, suggest that while food production may have... more
ABSTRACT Biocultural patterns surrounding the emergence of agriculture from 11 sites in the central Tombigbee River valley (500–1200 AD), 50–100 km west of the emerging Moundville polity, suggest that while food production may have alleviated some ecological stress, it came at a cost. Markers of childhood arrest indicate earlier weaning, likely creating a cycle of rising fertility and competition, but surviving adults appear better off following intensification. Health disparities at farmsteads, including more prevalent anemia, growth defects, lower limb infections, and accidental trauma, are consistent with increasingly competing demands of domestic and corporate modes of production. Although these agricultural settlements in the hinterlands were not severely compromised as predicted by a strictly top down model of provisioning, health risks assumed by farmsteads may have resulted from provisioning to centers and/or corporate lineages while simultaneously mitigating larger risks (e.g., raiding). The greater health risks assumed by farmstead females suggest that they had less control over production and decision-making than women buried at centers, while height and upper body strength at mound centers, in addition to rare but extreme trauma, point to identities that were mapped not only onto the landscape, but onto the bodies of men and women occupying elite spaces.
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The Myth of Syphilis: The Natural History of Treponematosis in North America. MARY LUCAS POWELL and DELLA COLLINS COOK (eds.). Florida Museum of Natural History, Ripley P. Bullen series; Jerald T. Milanich, series editor. University Press... more
The Myth of Syphilis: The Natural History of Treponematosis in North America. MARY LUCAS POWELL and DELLA COLLINS COOK (eds.). Florida Museum of Natural History, Ripley P. Bullen series; Jerald T. Milanich, series editor. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 2005. xx + 528 pp., series editor's foreword, foreword, 49 tables, 125 figs., 15 maps, index. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8130-2794-2. Reviewed by Shannon Chappell Hodge Powell and Cook's Myth of Syphilis is a welcome addition to a recent and notable trend in the bioarchaeological literature of intensive and extensive exploration of a single disease, including studies such as Susan Kent and Patricia Stuart-Macadam's 1992 volume on anemia (Diet, Demography, and Disease: Changing Perspectives on Anemia [Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter]) and Charlotte A. Roberts and Jane E. Buikstra's 2003 volume on tuberculosis (The Bioarchaeology of Tuberculosis: A Global View on a Reemerging Disease [Gainesville: University Pr...
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Research Interests: Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Zooarchaeology, Archaeozoology, Tennessee history, and 14 moreNational Science Foundation, Archaeology of shell middens, Flooding, Looting Art, Shell Mound Archaic, Floods, Archaic, Looting, Freshwater Mussels, Shell Midden, Hunter Gatherer, Zooarchaeoogy, Cumberland River, and Freshwater Gastropods
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The Thompson Village site (40HY5) in Henry County, TN was excavated in 1939 prior to its inundation by Kentucky Lake. Those investigations resulted in the recovery of one of Tennessee’s most unusual artifacts: the skull of an adult male... more
The Thompson Village site (40HY5) in Henry County, TN was excavated in 1939 prior to its inundation by Kentucky Lake. Those investigations resulted in the recovery of one of Tennessee’s most unusual artifacts: the skull of an adult male embellished with a deliberately-carved pattern across the forehead. The skull has long enjoyed notoriety in the collection of the McClung Museum, and was published in /Tennessee Archaeologist/ in 1974. This presentation discusses new examinations of the Henry County skull, beginning with the results of a fresh skeletal assessment. We then use cross-cultural data to identify evidence and motivations for cranial carving. Finally, we present iconographic and historic evidence that may inform our understanding of this unique artifact.
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Ancient Native American use of caves in the Eastern Woodlands occurred throughout the entire span of regional prehistory; however, the ways that these natural features were used varied considerably over time. To date only 25 cave sites... more
Ancient Native American use of caves in the Eastern Woodlands occurred throughout the entire span of regional prehistory; however, the ways that these natural features were used varied considerably over time. To date only 25 cave sites containing deposits dated to the Archaic period (ca. 10,000 - 3000 B.P.) are recorded in the state of Tennessee, representing just 0.4 percent of the total known Archaic sites. In 2014 the authors conducted a salvage operation, bucket auger survey, and limited testing at the site of Black Cat Cave (40RD299) in Rutherford County, Tennessee to assess looting damage and assist in the installation of a security gate across the cave entrance. These investigations identified Black Cat Cave as the site of significant mortuary activity during the Middle Archaic (ca. 6460 - 6360 B.P.), and resulted in the recovery of rare Archaic faunal data from a cave setting. Analysis of faunal materials from the site allows us to add important new information to our understanding of ancient Native American landscape use in the Eastern Woodlands during the mid-Holocene.