Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South

During the two centuries following European contact, the world of late prehistoric Mississippian chiefdoms collapsed and Native communities there fragmented, migrated, coalesced, and reorganized into new and often quite different societies. The editors of this volume, Robbie Ethridge and Sheri M. Shuck-Hall, argue that such a period and region of instability and regrouping constituted a "shatter zone."

In this anthology, archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and anthropologists analyze the shat...