Director, ITARP Adjunct Professor, Anthropology BA Political Science and Sociology University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire MA, PhD Anthropology University of Wisconsin E-mail: teee@uiuc.edu

Thomas Emerson is a specialist in North American Eastern Woodlands archaeology, especially of the Upper Mississippi River Valley region. His research has generally centered on the archaeology, religious ideology, and political economy of late prehistoric Mississippian cultures. However, his interests are diverse and his work has included mortuary analyses, subsistence studies, archaeological ethnicity, archaeometric sourcing of raw materials, faunal analysis, Great Lakes maritime research, archaeological law and compliance, heritage management, and cultural resource management. He has conducted fieldwork throughout the Great Lakes region, the Plains (Missouri Trench), and Norway.

Emerson is dedicated to the publication of archeological materials and in this role has founded nine publication series, most recently, Issues in Eastern Woodlands Archaeology with Timothy Pauketat for AltaMira Press. He has served as editor for South Dakota Archeology and Illinois Archaeology and book review editor for Illinois Archaeology. His professional services have included activities/memberships with such groups as the National Association of State Archaeologists; Committee on Public Archaeology, Society for American Archaeology; the Illinois Interagency Coal Mining Committee; Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials Steering Committee, Midcontinental Archaeometry Working Group, UIUC; RPA Recruitment Committee; and the SAA Cultural Resource Management Award Committee. He was also the primary author of Illinois’ major archaeological laws, Archaeological and Paleontological Resources Protection Act (20 ILCS 3435) and the Human Skeletal Remains Protection Act (20 ILCS 3440), as well as, portions of the Illinois State Agency Historic Resources Preservation Act (20 ILCS 3420).

Current Research

• Pipestone Sourcing Project. Joint project with Randall Hughes, Illinois State Geological Survey and Sarah Wisseman, Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials Program, to identify the pipestone sources used for Cahokia-style figurines and Hopewell effigy and plain platform pipes. Currently developing PIMA technology to source artifacts throughout the North American midcontinent. The latest NSF grant has expanded our research to consider Middle Woodland uses of catlinite and Illinois and Ohio pipestone.

• Upper Mississippian Tribalization Project. This research focuses on diet, health, and mortuary practice of Upper Mississippian populations in the Midwest and the impact of the Cahokian political, religious, and cultural florescence on these populations. It involves analysis of physical attributes of populations including isotopic and C14 data and a reanalysis of earlier cultural and mortuary evidence collected by UIUC investigators.

• Cahokian Collapse Project. Project began in 1993 and involves the detailed re–examination of the physical anthropology, isotope analysis, C14 dating, and cultural history of the Moorehead–Sand Prairie transition to address the timing and conditions preceding the collapse of the Cahokian polity.
  

Previous Positions

1973-1974 Field Director, Orendorf Project, Upper Mississippi Valley Archaeological Research Program

1976-1977, 1982-1984 Private Archaeological Consultant

1978-1979 Field Director, Lake Francis Case and Crow Creek Projects, University of South Dakota

1979-1982 Site Director, FAI-270 Archaeological Mitigation Project, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

1984-1994 Chief Archaeologist/State Archeologist, Illinois Historic Preservation Agency

1994 Appointed to present position as Director, Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Selected Bibliography

1978 A new method for calculating the live weight of the northern white-tailed deer from osteoarchaeological material. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology3(1): 35-44.

1983 A Settlement-Subsistence Model of the Terminal Late Archaic adaptation in the American Bottom, Illinois (Emerson and D. McElrath). In Archaic Hunters and Gatherers in the American Midwest, edited by J. Phillips and J. Brown, pp. 219-242. Academic Press, New York.

1986 Early Woodland cultural variation, subsistence, and settlement in the American Bottom (With A. Fortier). In Early Woodland Archeology, edited by K. Farnsworth and T. Emerson, pp. 475-522. Center for American Archeology Press, Kampsville.

1989 Water, Serpents, and the Underworld: An Exploration into Cahokian Symbolism. In The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Artifacts and Analysis, edited by P. Galloway, pp. 45-92. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

1990 The socio-politics of the living and the dead: the treatment of historic and prehistoric human remains in contemporary Midwest America (T. Emerson and P. Cross). Death Studies 14(6):543-564.

1991 Some perspectives on Cahokia and the northern Mississippian expansion. In Cahokia and the Hinterlands: Middle Mississippian Cultures of the Midwest edited by T. Emerson and R.B. Lewis, pp. 221-236. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.

1991 The Search for French Peoria (Emerson and F. Mansberger). In French Colonial Archaeology: The Illinois Country, edited by J. Walthall, pp. 149-164. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.

1991 The Ideology of Authority and the Power of the Pot (T. Pauketat and T. Emerson). American Anthropologist 93: 919-941.

1992 The Late Prehistory and Protohistory of Illinois (Emerson and J. Brown). In Calumet and Fleur–De–Lys: French and Indian Interaction in the Midcontinent, edited by J. Walthall and T. Emerson, pp. 77-125. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.

1993 Saving the Great Nobb: A Case Study in the Preservation of Cahokia's Monks Mound through Passive Management (Emerson and W. Woods). In Highways into the Past, edited by T. Emerson, A. Fortier, and D. McElrath. Illinois Archaeology,Volume 5(1&2): 100–107. Illinois Archaeological Survey, Urbana.

1993 The Osteology and Archaeology of the Crow Creek Massacre (P. Willey and T. Emerson). In Prehistory and Human Ecology of the Western Prairies and Northern Plains, edited by J. Tiffany. Plains Anthropologist 38(145), Memoir 27:227–269.

1996 Preserving the Shipwrecks of the Prairie State. Illinois Archaeology 8(1&2): 1-22.

1997 Reflections from the Countryside on Cahokian Hegemony. Cahokia: Ideology and Domination in the Mississippian World, edited by T. Pauketat and T. Emerson, pp.167-189. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

1997 Cahokia Elite Ideology and the Mississippian Cosmos. Cahokia: Ideology and Domination in the Mississippian World, edited by T. Pauketat and T. Emerson, pp. 190-228. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

1997 Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

1999 Representations of Hegemony as Community at Cahokia (T. Pauketat and Emerson). Material Symbols: Culture and Economy in Prehistory, edited by J. Robb, pp. 302-317. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Occasional Paper No. 26, Carbondale, Illinois.

1999 The Langford Tradition and the Process of Tribalization on the Middle Mississippian Borders. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 24(1): 3-56.

1999 Review Feature: Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power (Emerson, W. Dancey, T. Pauketat, A. Whittle, E. DeMarrais, W. DeBoer, and A. Kehoe). Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9(2): 249-275.

2000 Figurines, Flint Clay Sourcing, the Ozark Highlands, and Cahokian Acquisition (Emerson and Randall E. Hughes). American Antiquity 65(1):79-101.

2000 Strangers in Paradise: Recognizing Ethnic Mortuary Diversity on the Fringes of Cahokia (Emerson and Eve Hargrave). Southeastern Archaeology 19:1-23.

2001 Interpreting Discontinuity and Historical Process in Midcontinential Late Archaic and Early Woodland Societies. (T. Emerson, and D. McElrath). In The Archaeology of Traditions: Agency and History Before and After Columbus, edited by T.R. Pauketat, pp. 195-217. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

2002 An Introduction to Cahokia 2002: Diversity, Complexity, and History. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 27(2): 127-148.

2002 Mineralogical Approaches to Sourcing Eastern Woodlands Pipes and Figurines. (Sarah U. Wisseman, Duane M. Moore, Randall E. Hughes, Mary R. Hynes, Thomas E. Emerson.) Geoarchaeology 17(7): 689-715.

2002 Embodying Power and Resistance at Cahokia (T. Emerson and T. Pauketat). In The Dynamics of Power edited by M. O'Donovan, pp. 105-125. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Occasional Paper No. 30. Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

2003 Death and Ritual in Early Rural Cahokia. (T. Emerson, Eve Hargrave, and Kristin Hedman). In Theory, Method, and Practice in Modern Archaeology, edited by R. J. Jeske, and D. K. Charles, pp. 163-181. Praeger, Westport, CT.

2003 The Sourcing and Interpretation of Cahokia-Style Figures in the Trans-Mississippi South and Southeast. (T. Emerson, R. Hughes, M. Hynes, S. Wisseman). American Antiquity 68(2): 287-314.

2003 Materializing Cahokia Shamans. Southeastern Archaeology 22(2): 135-154.

2004 Using a Portable Spectrometer to Source Archaeological Materials and to Detect Restorations in Museum Objects. (S. Wisseman, T. Emerson, M. Hynes, R. Hughes). Journal of American Institute of Conservation. (in Press).

2005 Cahokia and the Evidence for Late Pre-Columbian Warfare in the North American Midcontinent. Chapter contribution in Problems in Paradise: Conflict and Violence Among the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, edited by Richard J. Chacon and Ruben G. Mendoza. Submitted to University of Arizona, Tucson (In Press).

Complete Vitae (pdf)

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