Collected Papers on the Archaeology of North Carolina (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Collected Papers on the Archaeology of North Carolina Whether or not living in the Southern Appalachian mountains required or fostered special adaptations - social, ideological, technological, and psychological - has been broached by scholars in such fields as history, sociology, economics, anthropology, and political science. For many years, and to a greater or lesser extent in the present, Southern Appalachia has been viewed as a harsh, virtual desert; intimidating to Native populations and only partially conquerable by more advanced euro-americans. It was a cultural backwater which many passed through but where few settled. Those who did remain were as harsh and backwards as the land itself. In the 19708 the scholarly pendulum seemed to swing away from this perspective toward the idea that Appalachian populations had specific and definably different highland cultural characteristics which, instead of being backwards, were adaptive. Among North Carolina anthropologists, one of the leading advocates of highland adaptation studies was Burton L. Purrington (eg. 1974; 1977z40-54; The new construct, although concerned with the complex set of variables that influenced prehistoric and historic Appalachian culture, continued to focus on the same basic Appalachian characteristic: conservatism. Explicit in Appalachian studies through the l970s was the belief that such a thing as a distinct Appalachian culture did exist. Although behavioral traits took on less denigrating appellations, such as conservative and stable versus non progressive and stagnant, the basic ideas shared some similarities. Now, into the 19808, it again appears that theoretical perspectives are undergoing a change. Appalachian scholars, at least, are neither conservative nor stagnating. A recent lecture series sponsored by the Appalachian Consortium (1982) strongly questioned the long - held assumption that a unique entity called Appalachian culture exists. Before the reader becomes too hopeful of receiving an answer, let it be said that no one seems particularly certain. It has taken over a decade to arrive at a consideration of the base assumption and from this point building starts anew. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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  Collected Papers on the Archaeology of North Carolina (Classic Reprint)

  • 2018-08-21
  • 108 pages
  • Paperback
  • Forgotten Books