Entries - Entry Category: Archaeology - Starting with A

The Archaic Period refers to the time between 9500 and 650 BC in the Native American history of Arkansas. As was the case in other regions in North America, Arkansas’s Archaic Period was a long span of cultural development and innovation that transformed small-scale Paleoindian groups into the larger and more complex societies seen during the Woodland and Mississippian periods. Within the Archaic Period, archaeologists have identified more specific regional cultures, such as the Dalton, San Patrice, Tom’s Brook, Big Creek, and Poverty Point cultures. These do not correspond directly to the tribes that lived in Arkansas during the Archaic period but do show that Native American societies were adapting to different environments and to each other across Arkansas in …

The Arkansas Archeological Society (AAS) is a statewide organization created for the purpose of uniting all persons interested in the archaeology of Arkansas, fostering the recognition and preservation of cultural heritage and prehistory, and encouraging the public’s interest in the preservation of the past. There was an unsuccessful effort to form a similar society in 1932. Little is known of this organization because it produced no publications and relied solely on semi-annual meetings to bring the membership together. The current AAS was formed in 1960. Its primary founders were Samuel C. Dellinger (president); Harry McPherson, Cecil Cleavenger, Marvin Riddle, and H. Dudley Glass (vice presidents); Dr. Charles R. McGimsey III (secretary and newsletter editor); and Hester Davis (treasurer). It was …

In 1967, the Arkansas legislature created the Arkansas Archeological Survey (Act 39), the first statewide coordinated archaeological research and public service organization in the country. The survey’s mission is to study and protect archaeological sites (both prehistoric and historical) in Arkansas, to preserve and manage information about those sites, and to communicate that information to the people of Arkansas. The Arkansas Archeological Survey is part of the University of Arkansas System. This interest in Arkansas’s archaeological past originated from Representative John Bethel, who had a lifelong interest in archaeology, particularly around his Des Arc (Prairie County) home. In 1959, he had also sponsored the creation of an archaeological laboratory at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), but no funds …