Episode 24: Early Village Formation

# AnthroAlert## Episode 24: Early Village FormationOriginally aired 1 December 2017 on bullsradio.orgGuest Dr. Thomas J. Pluckhahn, Ph.D., talks us through his research in early village formation along the Gulf Coast. > Why and how did people begin living together in villages, a process that ultimately led to denser aggregations like cities and states? In our increasingly urbanized world of 7 billion inhabitants, this question may seem arcane or even a little odd. But it presents a major conundrum for many social scientists. Evolutionary anthropologists assume---following the tenets of natural selection---that people act in their own self interests; the sharing of food and labor that are generally a prerequisite to village life seem to contradict this assumption, especially in light of the existence of potential "free riders" who may enjoy the fruits of others' labor without working themselves. One possible explanation, that people aggregate into villages for mutual defense in the face of external threats, seems belied by the evidence that the early villages in many areas of the world demonstrate little evidence for conflict. > My research examines the development of "early villages" along the Gulf Coast of the Southeast during the first millennium AD, with a particular focus on Crystal River and related sites to the north of Tampa. Crystal River earned notoriety more than a century ago with the excavations by the antiquarian CB Moore. Moore's excavations in the burial mounds at Crystal River revealed items of copper, quartz, and exotic stone, often carved into symbolic or religious forms, which must have been imported from great distances. These artifacts, and the mounds that produced them, made Crystal River famous, and played a big role in the eventual acquisition and preservation of the site for a Florida state park. But the excavations were poorly controlled and inadequately documented, and the singular focus on grave goods revealed little about everyday life. Unfortunately, the archaeology that followed over the course of the rest of the twentieth century did little to rectify this situation.> My forthcoming book The Archaeology of Village Life at Crystal River (University Press of Florida, Gainesville, expected release spring 2018), co-authored with my close friend and colleague Victor D. Thompson (University of Georgia), describes our NSF-funded archaeological research at Crystal River, focusing on the development of village life here, at related sites along the Gulf Coast, and---by comparison---elsewhere in the world.## Podcast link## Video link## Album art photo credit:Oliver Thompsonhttps://flic.kr/p/9zVPYBCC License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/## Intro music credit:Awel by stefsaxhttp://ccmixter.org/files/stefsax/7785http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/Urbana-Metronica (wooh-yeah mix) by spinningmerkabahttp://ccmixter.org/files/jlbrock44/33345https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/There's A Better WAY ! by   Loveshadowhttp://ccmixter.org/files/Loveshadow/34402https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/"Jungle Tracking" by pingnewshttp://ccmixter.org/files/pingnews/13481https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.