Author

Abigail Geedy

Date of Award

Spring 2019

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

Anthropology

First Advisor

Adam King

Second Advisor

Gail Wagner

Abstract

This thesis interprets the place and archaeological collections of the Mulberry site (38KE12) through a community-focused lens and applies that interpretation into text for a museum exhibition. Mulberry is a multi-mound Mississippian town in central South Carolina that was likely inhabited by ancestral Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Muscogee (Creek), and/or Catawba Indian Nation peoples. Utilizing entanglement, place-making studies, and Indigenous worldview studies as grounding theory, oral histories and ethnographies are applied to the physical landscape and artifactual remains of the site in an effort to understand the ways that people interacted with objects and the landscape to create meaning-laden spaces. This interpretation coupled with the feedback of American Indian cultural advisors is used to create the text panels and a suggested outline of an exhibit on the site to be displayed in the future.

Rights

© 2019, Abigail Geedy

Included in

Anthropology Commons

Share

COinS