Maureen Meyers (Faculty Member is Retired, or has otherwise left the University)
Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
Phone Number:
Email: memeyer1@olemiss.edu
http://socanth.olemiss.edu/2013/08/maureen-meyers/

Key Words: Archaeology of the southeastern U.S.

Research Description: I am an archaeologist who has worked extensively in the Southeastern United States in both academic and cultural resource management settings. After receiving my master�s degree, I taught for a year at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and then worked at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville; I also assisted with the University of Georgia excavations of the Mississippian period Lamar Mounds in central Georgia. In 1998 I began a career in cultural resource management, working as a Principal Investigator for The Louis Berger Group and later for Gray & Pape, Inc., in Richmond, Virginia. In 2004 I returned to graduate school to study Mississippian frontier chiefdoms in southwestern Virginia. My dissertation fieldwork was conducted at the fourteenth-century Carter Robinson mound site, and was supported by a National Geographic Exploration Fund grant.

My primary area of research is Mississippian chiefdoms, particularly those located on the periphery of the Mississippian world. Specifically, I examine the role of exchange at these sites, and the emergence of complexity within chiefdoms. Methodologically, I do this through the analysis of ceramic vessels and trade goods, including the manufacture of shell beads and salt, as well as comparisons of domestic structures within and between sites. In addition to my Mississippian Period research I am actively engaged in research about the Westos, a mid-seventeenth century Northeastern Native American group who initiated Indian slaving in the Southeast. More recently I have examined native and colonial interactions in seventeenth-century Virginia to understand how frontier groups used trade to amass power within colonial Virginia and South Carolina.

Honors Theses:

Husslein, Sophie (2021) Archaeological Analysis of an Early Mississippian Frontier Structure in Southwestern Virginia (full text)

Mize, Martha Grace (2017) History and Heritage Made Accessible: The Lee County, Virginia Story. (full text)

Available Research Projects: