T. R. KIDDER Professor, Archaeology Department Chair Ph.D., Harvard, 1988 314-935-5252 trkidder@wustl.edu |
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T. R. KIDDER Professor, Archaeology Department Chair Ph.D., Harvard, 1988 314-935-5252 trkidder@wustl.edu |
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My research over the past 15 years has focused on archaeological study of the evolution of human societies in the Southeastern United States. I have been especially interested in the emergence of social ranking, the development of domesticated food crops, and the causal (or potentially causal) relationship among and between these variables. I have also been exploring the relationship between humans and the dynamic landscape of the alluvial valley of the Mississippi Valley. My interest in geoarchaeology has led me to undertake studies of the evolution and chronology of the Holocene Mississippi River using archaeological data. My studies have also led into the fields of historical ecology and, more recently, climate history.
A significant part of my recent research has turned to using geoarchaeological and geomorphic analyses to understand the dynamics of human settlement in the Mississippi River Valley. I am currently studying the hypothesis that global climate change ca. 1200-400 B.C. affected populations throughout eastern North America. Research in the Mississippi Valley has provided evidence for sudden and apparently catastrophic flooding. Evidence for this flooding comes from extensive geological and soils mapping, archaeological and stratigraphic investigations, and an extensive program of coring. This work is ongoing and will be expanded in the next few years.
Another long-term interest is to explore the nature of social evolution in Native American societies with the goal of understanding the circumstances that led to periods of greater or lesser social and political complexity. The emergence and decline of mound building among Middle and Late Archaic cultures in eastern North America is an example of the waxing and waning of seemingly complex behavior that I am exploring in greater detail. Towards this end I am working at several Middle to Late Archaic mound sites in the Lower Mississippi Valley, including the well-known Poverty Point site in northeast Louisiana.
Much of my work is interdisciplinary in nature and involves collaborative research with scholars in many different fields. My students have conducted work in a number of locations in eastern North America and are encouraged to pursue their own geographic and intellectual interests.
For more information see the overview of the department's research in archaeology.
Climate, Culture, and Human History; Geoarchaeology; Ceramic Analysis; Mississippi River Past Present & Future; Feast or Famine, The Archaeology of Climate Change
Kidder, T.R.
2004 Plazas as Architecture: An Example from the Raffman Site in Northeast Louisiana . American Antiquity 69:513-532.
2004 Prehistory of the Lower Mississippi Valley After 800 B.C. In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 14, Southeast , edited by R. D. Fogelson, pp. 545-559, W. Sturtevant, general editor. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington , D.C.
2004 Testing Mounds B and E at Poverty Point. Southeastern Archaeology 23:98-113. (with Anthony Ortmann and Thurman Allen)
2004 Petrographic Thin-Section Analysis of Poverty Point Ceramics. In Early Pottery: Technology, Function, Style, and Interaction in the Lower Southeast , edited by R. Saunders and C. Hayes, pp. 193-209. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. (with Anthony Ortmann)
2004 Petrographic Thin-Section Analysis of Poverty Point Ceramics. In Early Pottery: Technology, Function, Style, and Interaction in the Lower Southeast , edited by R. Saunders and C. Hayes, pp. 193-209. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa .
2003 Late Woodland and Mississippian in the Lower Mississippi Valley . In Woodland-Mississippian Transition in the Mid-South: Proceedings of the 22nd Mid-South Archaeological Conference , edited by C.H. McNutt, S. Williams, and M. Jeter, pp. 125-133. Occasional Paper 25. University of Memphis Anthropological Research Center, Memphis.
2002 The Lower Mississippi Valley. In The Woodland Southeast, edited by D. Anderson and R.C. Mainfort, Jr., pp. 65-91. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
2002 Mapping Poverty Point. American Antiquity 67: 89-101.
2000 Making the City Inevitable: Native Americans and the Geography of New Orleans . In Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs: Centuries of Change, edited by C. Colten, pp. 9-21. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh.
1998 The Rat that Ate Louisiana: Aspects of Historical Ecology in the Mississippi River Delta. In Advances in Historical Ecology, edited by W. Balée, pp. 141-168. Columbia University Press, New York.
1998 Mississippi Period Mound Groups and Communities in the Lower Mississippi Valley. In Mississippian Towns and Sacred Spaces: Searching for an Architectural Grammar, edited by R. B. Lewis and C. Stout, pp.123-150. University of Alabama Press.
1996 Revised Chronology for Mississippi River Subdeltas. Science 273: 1693-1696 (with others).
