Department of Anthropology - Graduate Program

Paul D. Welch
Associate Professor

Treasurer-elect, Society for American Archaeology

3521 Faner Hall
Department of Anthropology
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale IL 62901-4502
Phone: (618) 453-4740
Fax: (618) 453-5037
Email pwelch@siu.edu

Research interests	Courses

I study the interaction of economics with social and political organization in small-scale societies. My research focuses on Native American (Indian) societies of the southeastern US before the arrival of Europeans. These societies did not have the organizational complexity of states, yet appear to have had institutionalized social inequalities. They were subsistence farmers, mostly self-sufficient at the level of households and communities. Yet some kinds of goods did move from producers to (other) consumers, apparently because of kinship and other social obligations and also for political reasons. How do these social and political considerations interact with economic considerations, and what does the archaeologically measurable movement of goods tell us about social relations within and between communities?	Anth 300C: Intro to Archaeology Anth 304: Origins of Civilization Anth 405: How to Do Anthropological Research Anth 430A: Archaeology of North America Anth 480: Senior Seminar resources: Paper on colored mounds Anth 496: Field Methods in Archaeology Anth 510: Seminar in Archaeology of North America
Links

Excavations at the Kincaid Mounds site by the 2005 SIUC Archaeological field school Excavations on Mound Mx 8 by the 2008 SIUC Archaeological field school Poster (in pdf format, 2.7 MB) from the 2004 SEAC/MAC conference, about Magnetometry at Kincaid Mounds in southern Illinois Archaeology of Shiloh Indian Mounds: Excavation of Mound A , House-mounds , Remote sensing , News reports Web site for the Southeastern Archaeological Conference (students: see the Student Paper Comptetition and Book Prize page) On-line paper about The effect of boiling maize in lye before pounding it to make corn meal
Selected publications

2006 Leadership and Polity in Mississippian Society, edited by Brian M. Butler and Paul D. Welch. Occasional Papers No. 33, Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. 2006 Archaeology at Shiloh Indian Mounds, 1899 to 1999. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. 2004 Fieldwork at Swallow Bluff Island Mounds (40HR16) in 2003. Tennessee Archaeology 1:36-48. 2001 Political economy in the late prehistoric period in the southern Appalachians. In Integrating Appalachian Highlands Archaeology, edited by Lynne Sullivan and Susan C. Prezzano, pp. 222-237. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. 1995 Status-related variation in foodways in the Moundville chiefdom. American Antiquity 60:397-419. (Co-authored with C. Margaret Scarry). 1991 Moundville's Economy. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.