David G. Anderson
Encyclopedia
David G. Anderson is an archaeologist in the department of anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who specializes in Southeastern archaeology. His professional interests include exploring the development of cultural complexity in Eastern North America, maintaining and improving the nation’s CRM program, teaching and writing about archaeology, and developing technical and popular syntheses of archaeological research. He is the project director of the on-line Paleoindian Database of the Americas (PIDBA).http://pidba.utk.edu/

The majority of Anderson’s career has been involved in Cultural Resources Management
Cultural resources management
In the broadest sense, Cultural Resources Management is the vocation and practice of managing cultural resources, such as the arts and heritage. It incorporates Cultural Heritage Management which is concerned with traditional and historic culture. It also delves into the material culture of...

 (CRM) archaeology. Graduating from high school in Milledgeville, Georgia, he went to Case Western Reserve University for his undergraduate education. He did not have an interest in anthropology initially, but switched to it after taking classes in physics, biology, and classics. The change was inspired by an introductory anthropology course he took during his sophomore year. Anthropology intrigued Anderson because it focused on major questions of human existence, such as why people fought wars, practice religion, or organized themselves the way they do in groups and cultures. The major historical figures of the field of anthropology were not afraid to tackle big questions or to challenge accepted stereotypes about race or culture, and this appealed to Anderson’s 1960s-era idealism. Because of his own experience, Anderson feels that well-taught introductory courses in archaeology or anthropology can be crucial in recruiting new members to the profession.

Upon graduation with a BA in 1972, Anderson volunteered on archaeological field projects in southwestern New Mexico for several months. Continuing with voluneteer work over the next two years, in 1974, Anderson began his first full time job in archaeology at the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology (SCIAA) in a research assistant’s position largely funded by CRM work. At SCIAA his mentors included Robert L. Stephenson, Leland Ferguson; Albert Goodyear
Albert Goodyear
Albert C. Goodyear III is an archaeologist who is founder and director of the Allendale PaleoIndian Expedition in South Carolina, where he has unearthed controversial evidence that may greatly move back the date of occupation of North America by humans to 50,000 years or more before the present...

, and Stanley A. South. He subsequently received an assistantship with the Arkansas Archaeological Survey that enabled him to complete an M.A. in anthropology at the University of Arkansas. While at Arkansas, Anderson worked with materials from the Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park
Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park
Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park , also known as Knapp Mounds, Toltec Mounds Site or Toltec Mounds, is an archaeological site from the Late Woodland period in Arkansas that protects an 18-mound complex with the tallest surviving prehistoric mounds in Arkansas. The site is on the banks of...

 in central Arkansas, and on the Zebree Homestead site, an early Mississippian
Mississippian culture
The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally....

 period village that was literally being draglined away during the final 1976 field season as a part of a Corps of Engineers channelization project. The research at Zebree, a project directed by Dan Morse
Dan Morse
Dan Franklin Morse is an archaeologist specializing in the prehistory of the midwestern United States and the central Mississippi Valley, research summarized in a number of books, monographs, and technical articles. He is best known for his 1983 synthesis of the "Archaeology of the Central...

 and Phyllis Morse
Phyllis Morse
Phyllis Morse is an American archaeologist. When she started at the University of Michigan to study Anthropology in 1953 she embarked on a lifetime immersed in archaeology by profession and marriage. Her expertise lay in the laboratory, where she worked with materials from prehistoric sites...

, explored the emergence of Mississippian culture
Mississippian culture
The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally....

 in this part of the Mississippi Valley. Anderson recognized very early in his career that CRM offered exciting research opportunities; occasionally with massive levels of funding, and that an M.A. was sufficient for a person to direct such projects. The way to continue to have these opportunities, he recognized, was to conduct the best possible research and to write informative and interesting reports that touched on the lives of past peoples and not merely the description of artifacts and features, so that the funding agencies could see that their money was actually providing valuable information about past human behavior.

Upon the conclusion of the Zebree project in 1977, Anderson took a job for seven years with a CRM firm in Michigan, Commonwealth Associates, Inc. In this position, Anderson directed progressively larger survey and excavation projects in the southeast and southwest. In 1983 Anderson enrolled in the University of Michigan anthropology doctoral program, where he spent the next three years on campus taking courses. After his classwork was completed in 1986, Anderson took a job with another CRM company, Garrow and Associates, in Atlanta, Georgia. With Garrow and associates, Anderson directed a major survey project in northeast Arkansas, examining approximately 90 miles (144.8 km) of the L'Anguille River
L'Anguille River
L'Anguille River is a tributary of the St. Francis River, approximately 110 mi long, in northeastern Arkansas in the United States. Via the St...

 channel margin, and also wrote two major archaeological syntheses, of the Richard B. Russell Multiple Resource Area
Richard B. Russell Multiple Resource Area
The Richard B. Russell Dam and Lake are located on the upper portion of the Savannah River drainage and its tributaries in Georgia and South Carolina. Many reservoirs were constructed in the southeast during the twentieth century, and archaeological investigations were conducted in many of them....

 CRM program (with J. W. Joseph). and of the Fort Polk
Fort Polk
Fort Polk is a United States Army installation located in Vernon Parish, approximately 7 miles east of Leesville, Louisiana and 20 miles north of DeRidder, Louisiana....

 CRM program. In 1988 he joined the National Park Service where he worked until 2004. That same year he was awarded a dissertation fellowship from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ Laboratory Graduate Participation Program. The DOE fellowship gave Anderson an office in the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site
Savannah River Site
The Savannah River Site is a nuclear reservation in the United States in the state of South Carolina, located on land in Aiken, Allendale and Barnwell Counties adjacent to the Savannah River, southeast of Augusta, Georgia. The site was built during the 1950s to refine nuclear materials for...

 facility near Williston, South Carolina
Williston, South Carolina
Williston is a town in Barnwell County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 3,307 at the 2000 census.The town lies in the center of the Charleston-Hamburg railroad line, the line of the Best Friend locomotive. The train tracks were removed in the 1990s, however, the track site has...

, the rural community where his family currently resides. Interestingly, in 1974 and 1975, while with SCIAA, he had participated in the initial archaeological survey of the 328 square miles (849.5 km²) complex. In 1990, Anderson completed his dissertation, Political Change in Chiefdom Societies: Cycling in the Late Prehistoric Southeastern United States, that focused on chiefly cycling
Social cycle theory
Social cycle theories are among the earliest social theories in sociology. Unlike the theory of social evolutionism, which views the evolution of society and human history as progressing in some new, unique direction, sociological cycle theory argues that events and stages of society and history...

, how and why these kinds of societies emerge, expand, and collapse. The dissertation was also a synthesis of Mississippian archaeology in the Savannah River
Savannah River
The Savannah River is a major river in the southeastern United States, forming most of the border between the states of South Carolina and Georgia. Two tributaries of the Savannah, the Tugaloo River and the Chattooga River, form the northernmost part of the border...

 basin, with much of the data obtained from CRM work. It was published in 1994 as The Savannah River Chiefdoms: Political Change in the Late Prehistoric Southeast. Upon completion of his dissertation, Anderson returned to the National Park Service’s Technical Assistance and Partnerships Division. In 2004, Anderson joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee.

At the Anderson's restored plantation home in South Carolina, they are known for their annual Carnivores' Ball, which draws leading paleontologists, archeologists and anthropologists from around the country. The home also is known for its atlatl practice range in the yard.

Background

Anderson was born in St. Louis, MO in 1949, but he spent his childhood and teenage years in various locations including in the northeast, midwest, and southeast, graduating from high school in Milledgeville, GA in 1967. Anderson received his BA in anthropology from Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...

 in 1972. He received his master’s degree in Anthropology in 1979 from the University of Arkansas
University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas is a public, co-educational, land-grant, space-grant, research university. It is classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a research university with very high research activity. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and is located in...

, and he received his PhD from the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 with a dissertation on Political Change in Chiefdom Societies: Cycling in the Late Prehistoric Southeastern United States in 1990. Anderson has conducted field work and led field projects in many locations in the Eastern United States, as well as projects in the southwest and the Caribbean. His work is documented in over 200 publications, some 30 technical monographs, and 6 books.http://web.utk.edu/~anthrop/pdfs/anderson.pdf

Employment history

Anderson has worked in many different jobs relating to archaeology. Currently (2009–present) he is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, where he was previously an associate professor from2004-2009. He joined the University of Tennessee faculty after spending 15 years with the National Park Service, first with the Interagency Archaeological Services Division from 1988-1996 in Atlanta, and from 1996-2003 with the Southeast Archeological Center in Tallahassee Florida. Anderson also worked as a research assistant with the University of South Carolina (1974–1975), as a Survey Assistant with the Arkansas Archeological Survey (1975–1977), and as an archaeologist with Commonwealth Associates, Inc. (1977–1983), and later, after attending graduate school at the University of Michigan (1983–1986), as an archaeologist with Garrow and Associates, Inc. (1986–1988).http://web.utk.edu/~anthrop/pdfs/anderson.pdf

Awards and honors

Anderson has received a number of professional awards from his colleagues, including the Excellence in Cultural Resource Management Research Award from the Society for American Archaeology
Society for American Archaeology
The Society for American Archaeology is the largest organization of professional archaeologists of the Americas in the world. The Society was founded in 1934 and today has over 7000 members. The Society holds an annual conference and publishes the flagship journal of American archaeology,...

 (1999), the Dissertation Prize from the Society for American Archaeology
Society for American Archaeology
The Society for American Archaeology is the largest organization of professional archaeologists of the Americas in the world. The Society was founded in 1934 and today has over 7000 members. The Society holds an annual conference and publishes the flagship journal of American archaeology,...

 (1991), and the first C. B. Moore
Clarence Bloomfield Moore
Clarence Bloomfield Moore was an American archaeologist and writer...

 Award for Excellence in Southeastern Archaeological Studies by the Lower Mississippi Valley Survey/Southeastern Archaeological Conference (1990). In 2006 he was elected President-elect of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference and served as President of that organization from 2008 to 2010. He has served as president of the South Carolina Council of Professional Archaeologists (1992–1993), The Tennessee Council for Professional Archaeology (2006–2007), and the Archaeological Society of South Carolina (1998–1999), and as an officer or board member in a number of state, regional, and national professional organizations.http://web.utk.edu/~anthrop/pdfs/anderson.pdf

Key excavations

Anderson has led or participated in numerous field or analysis projects, including at the Winn Canyon site, New Mexico (1972); the Cal Smoak site, South Carolina (1973–1974).; the Zebree Homestead and Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park
Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park
Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park , also known as Knapp Mounds, Toltec Mounds Site or Toltec Mounds, is an archaeological site from the Late Woodland period in Arkansas that protects an 18-mound complex with the tallest surviving prehistoric mounds in Arkansas. The site is on the banks of...

 sites, Arkansas (1975–1977); at several sites along Congaree Creek in South Carolina (1974–1978); at the Mattassee Lake sites, South Carolina (1979).; at Rucker's Bottom and several other sites in the Richard B. Russell Multiple Resource Area
Richard B. Russell Multiple Resource Area
The Richard B. Russell Dam and Lake are located on the upper portion of the Savannah River drainage and its tributaries in Georgia and South Carolina. Many reservoirs were constructed in the southeast during the twentieth century, and archaeological investigations were conducted in many of them....

 area, Georgia and South Carolina (1980–1988)..; in the L'Anguille River
L'Anguille River
L'Anguille River is a tributary of the St. Francis River, approximately 110 mi long, in northeastern Arkansas in the United States. Via the St...

 basin, Arkansas (1987).; at Fort Polk
Fort Polk
Fort Polk is a United States Army installation located in Vernon Parish, approximately 7 miles east of Leesville, Louisiana and 20 miles north of DeRidder, Louisiana....

, Louisiana (1987–2003).., at Fort Pulaski, Georgia (1990); on Water Island, U.S. Virgin Islands
Water Island, U.S. Virgin Islands
Water Island was acquired by the USA in 1917 from Denmark but continued to be owned by a corporation until several decades later. Since 1996, it has formed part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, a United States territory located in the Caribbean Sea. The island is of volcanic origin and lies to the...

 (1991–2000); at the Shiloh Indian Mounds with John E. Cornelison, Jr., Shiloh National Military Park
Shiloh National Military Park
Shiloh National Military Park preserves the American Civil War Shiloh and Corinth battlefields. The main section of the park is in the unincorporated town of Shiloh, about nine miles south of Savannah, Tennessee, with an additional area located in the city of Corinth, Mississippi, 23 miles ...

 (1999–2004); on the Francis Marion National Forest
Francis Marion National Forest
The Francis Marion National Forest is located north of Charleston, South Carolina. It is named for revolutionary war hero Francis Marion, who was known to the British as the Swamp Fox. It lies entirely within the Middle Atlantic coastal forests ecoregion....

, South Carolina (1980–present), and along the Cumberland River near Nashville, Tennessee (2009-present).

Research Emphases

Anderson has helped develop models of Early Archaic settlement in the Southeast involving mobility and interaction at the band
Band society
A band society is the simplest form of human society. A band generally consists of a small kin group, no larger than an extended family or clan; it has been defined as consisting of no more than 30 to 50 individuals.Bands have a loose organization...

 and macroband scale (with Glen Hanson)).; Paleoindian colonization scenarios in the Americas, including the idea of 'staging areas' where early populations concentrated and from which they later radiated out over the surrounding region; least cost movement pathways for initial colonizing populations in the Americas (with Chris Gillam); and the causes of late prehistoric chiefly cycling
Social cycle theory
Social cycle theories are among the earliest social theories in sociology. Unlike the theory of social evolutionism, which views the evolution of society and human history as progressing in some new, unique direction, sociological cycle theory argues that events and stages of society and history...

 behavior, the emergence and collapse of complex chiefdom
Chiefdom
A chiefdom is a political economy that organizes regional populations through a hierarchy of the chief.In anthropological theory, one model of human social development rooted in ideas of cultural evolution describes a chiefdom as a form of social organization more complex than a tribe or a band...

s against a regional background of simple chiefdoms, a concept initially noted by Marshall Sahlins
Marshall Sahlins
Marshall David Sahlins is a prominent American anthropologist. He received both a Bachelors and Masters degree at the University of Michigan where he studied with Leslie White, and earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1954 where his main intellectual influences included Karl Polanyi and...

 and elaborated upon by Henry T. Wright. Anderson has also examined global climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

 and its impacts on prehistoric and early historic cultures in the Southeast and beyond; and has helped prepare edited volumes synthesizing research on the Paleoindian and Early Archaic, Middle Archaic, and Woodland periods in the southeastern United States.

Selected books and monographs

  • Climate Change and Cultural Dynamics: A Global Perspective on Mid-Holocene Transitions (David G. Anderson, Kirk A. Maasch, and Daniel H. Sandweiss, editors). 2007. Academic Press, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
  • The Archaeology and History of Water Island, U.S. Virgin Islands. 2003 (David G. Anderson, David Knight, and Emily M. Yates). Southeast Archeological Center, National Park Service, Tallahassee, Florida. 310 pp + CD.
  • Archaeology, History, and Predictive Modeling: Research on Fort Polk 1972-2002. (David G. Anderson and Steven D. Smith). 2003. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
  • The Woodland Southeast. (David G. Anderson and Robert C. Mainfort, Jr., editors). 2002. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
  • The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast. (David G. Anderson and Kenneth E. Sassaman, editors). 1996. University of Alabama Press.
  • The Archaeology of the Mid-Holocene Southeast. (Kenneth E. Sassaman and David G. Anderson, editors). 1996. University Presses of Florida.
  • The Savannah River Chiefdoms: Political Change in the Late Prehistoric Southeast. (1994) University of Alabama Press.
  • Cultural Resource Investigations in the L'Anguille River Basin, Lee, St. Francis, Cross, and Poinsett Counties, Arkansas. 1989. (David G. Anderson, Hazel R. Delcourt, Paul A. Delcourt, John E. Foss, and Phyllis A. Morse). Garrow & Associates, Inc. Final Contract DACW66–87–C–0046 Report, Memphis District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
  • Prehistory and History Along the Upper Savannah River: Technical Synthesis of Cultural Resource Investigations, Richard B. Russell Multiple Resource Area. 1988 (David G. Anderson and J. W. Joseph). National Park Service, Interagency Archeological Services–Atlanta, Russell Papers.
  • Prehistoric Human Ecology Along the Upper Savannah River: Excavations at the Rucker's Bottom, Abbeville and Bullard Site Groups. 1985 (David G. Anderson and Joseph Schuldenrein, assemblers). National Park Service, Interagency Archaeological Services–Atlanta, Russell Papers.
  • The Mattassee Lake Sites: Archaeological Investigations along the Lower Santee River in the Coastal Plain of South Carolina. 1982 (David G. Anderson, Charles E. Cantley, and A. Lee Novick). National Park Service, Interagency Archaeological Services–Atlanta, Special Publication 1.
  • Francis Marion National Forest; Cultural Resources Overview 1981 (David G. Anderson and Patricia A. Logan). USDA Forest Service, Washington, D.C.
  • Cal Smoak: Archaeological Investigations Along the Edisto River in the Coastal Plain of South Carolina (David G. Anderson, Sammy T. Lee and A. Robert Parler). Occasional Papers No. 1, Archaeological Society of South Carolina.

Selected papers

  • The End of the Southeastern Archaic: Regional Interaction and Archaeological Interpretation. 2010. In Trend, Tradition, and Turmoil: What Happened to the Southeastern Archaic? edited by David Hurst Thomas and Matthew C. Sanger, pp 273-302. Proceedings of the Third Caldwell Conference, St. Catherines Island, Georgia, May 9–11, 2008. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY.
  • Human Settlement in the New World: Multidisciplinary Approaches, the ‘Beringian’ Standstill, and the Shape of Things to Come. 2010. In Human Variation in the Americas: The Integration of Archaeology and Biological Anthropology, edited by Benjamin M. Auerbach, pp. 311-346. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Occasional Paper 38, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
  • Cycling in the Complexity of Early Societies. 2010. (Sergey Gavrilets, David G. Anderson, and Peter Turchin). Cliodynamics: The Journal of Theoretical and Mathematical History 1:58–80. (Sergey Gavrilets, David G. Anderson, and Peter Turchin). Also available at http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5536t55r
  • PIDBA (Paleoindian Database of the Americas) 2010: Current Status and Findings. 2010. (David G. Anderson, D. Shane Miller, Stephen J. Yerka, J. Christopher Gillam, Erik N. Johanson, Derek T. Anderson, Albert C. Goodyear, and Ashley M. Smallwood). Archaeology of Eastern North America 38:63-90.
  • The Toltec Mounds Site in Southeastern Prehistory: Inferences from Early Collections. 2008. The Arkansas Archeologist 47:9-30.
  • Eco-Cultural Niche Modeling: New Tools for Reconstructing the Geography and Ecology of Past Human Populations. 2006. PaleoAnthropology 2006:68-83. (William E. Banks, Francesco d’Errico, Harold L. Dibble, Leonard Krishtalka, DixieWest, Deborah I. Olszewski, A. Townsend Peterson, David G. Anderson, J. Christopher Gillam, Anta Montet-White, Michel Crucifix, Curtis W. Marean, María-Fernanda Sánchez-Goñi, Barbara Wohlfarth, and Marian Vanhaeran)
  • Pleistocene Human Occupation of the Southeastern United States: Research Directions for the Early 21st Century. 2005. In Paleoamerican Origins: Beyond Clovis, edited by Robson Bonnichsem, Bradley T. Lepper, Dennis Stanford, and Michael R. Waters, pp. 29–43. Texas A&M University Press, College Station.
  • Early and Middle Holocene Periods, 9500-3750 B.C. 2004. (David G. Anderson and Kenneth E. Sassaman). Southeast volume, Smithsonian Handbook of North American Indians, edited by Raymond D. Fogelson, pp. 87–100. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
  • Late Holocene Period, 3750 to 650 B.C. 2004. (Kenneth E. Sassaman and David G. Anderson) Southeast volume, Smithsonian Handbook of North American Indians, edited by Raymond D. Fogelson, pp. 101–114. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
  • Archaic Mounds and the Archaeology of Southeastern Tribal Societies. 2004. In Signs of Power: The Development of Complexity in the Southeast, edited by Jon L. Gibson and Philip J. Carr, pp. 270–299. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
  • Archaeology and Anthropology in the 21st Century Strategies for Working Together. 2003. In Archaeology is Anthropology, edited by Susan D. Gillespie and Deborah L. Nichols, pp. 111–127. Anthropological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 13. Arlington, Virginia.
  • Evolution of Tribal Social Organization in the Southeast. The Archaeology of Tribal Societies, edited by William A. Parkinson. 2002. International Monographs in Prehistory, Ann Arbor.
  • Climate and Culture Change in Prehistoric and Early Historic Eastern North America. 2001. Archaeology of Eastern North America 29:143-186.
  • Paleoindian Colonization of the Americas: Implications from an Examination of Physiography, Demography, and Artifact Distributions. (David G. Anderson and J. Christopher Gillam). 2000. American Antiquity 65:43-66.
  • Paleoclimate and the Potential Food Reserves of Mississippian Societies: A Case Study from the Savannah River Valley. 1995 (David G. Anderson, David W. Stahle, and Malcolm R. Cleaveland). American Antiquity 60:258–286.
  • The Paleoindian Colonization of Eastern North America: A View from the Southeastern United States. In Early Paleoindian Economies of Eastern North America, edited by Kenneth Tankersley and Barry Isaac, pp. 163–216. Research in Economic Anthropology Supplement 5.
  • Early Archaic Occupations in the Southeastern United States: A Case Study from the Savannah River Basin. 1988.(David G. Anderson and Glen T. Hanson). American Antiquity 53:262–286.

External links

  • http://web.utk.edu/~anthrop/faculty/anderson.html
  • http://pidba.utk.edu/
  • http://web.utk.edu/~anthrop/research/TennesseeArchaeology/index.html
  • http://web.utk.edu/~anthrop/pdfs/anderson.pdf
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