KASSABAUM, M.C., 2021, A History of Platform Mound Ceremonialism: Finding Meaning in Elevated Ground, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 288 pp., ISBN: 978-1-68340-241-1

Dr. Megan Kassabaum reviews the 7,500-year-long history of platform mound ceremonialism in the southeastern US with a clear objective: to write the biography of this monumental architectural feature chronologically, thoroughly, and accurately to the archaeological sequence of events. By offering a forward-looking and multiscalar storyline, the author succeeds in presenting platform moundbuilding as a consistent tradition both geographically – as mounds are distributed from southern Florida throughout the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains, west to Oklahoma, and north to the upper Midwest, and temporally – from the earliest iterations in the Archaic period to the Historic times, continued past European contact.

The monograph is divided into five chapters, followed by an epilogue. Chapters 1 and 2 have great contextual value in introducing the tradition of mound architecture among Native American cultures in the American Southeast, the scientific research conducted on mounds for the past 150 years, and Dr. Kassabaum’s goals for this book.

Chapters 3 to 5 synthesize seven centuries of moundbuilding. In Chapter 3, Kassabaum examines 24 Archaic sites in the St. John’s River Valley (SJRV) in Florida and the Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV) in Louisiana that feature some of the earliest monumental platform constructions. Although these mounds vary greatly in size, shape, construction materials and techniques, and functions, platform mounds share one common feature—they are diachronically persistent forms of public architecture that appeared in the monumental repertoire since the inception of moundbuilding in the late Middle and early Late Archaic (ca.5500 BCE)

Chapter 4 details the proliferation of platform mounds during the Middle Woodland period (100BCE-500), which was associated with the Hopewell phenomenon but influenced by the preexisting Archaic background. The analysis of 111 sites from the coastal Southeast, STRV, MRV, and Middle Ohio Valley indicates Woodland communities appropriated earlier local rites, symbols, ceremonial processes, site layouts, and architectural forms. The continuation of mound ritualism, through the constant inhabitation or the sporadic or periodic return to these sites over generations, not only shows the persistence of memory tied to the landscape but the indisputable knowledge of, or the connection to, previous cultures and traditions. Consequently, Kassabaum claims the transition from the Archaic to the Woodland periods is better described as phyletic gradualism than a revolution (p.101).

In Chapter 5, the author addresses the continuation of Woodland platform ceremonialism at the Woodland-Mississippi temporal frontier around the year 1000, and its peak in the Mississippian period. In addition to archaeological data, she uses instances of language, folklore, and ritual practices of the Muskogee, Yuchi, Seminole, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Cherokee to prove the unbrokenness of platform ceremonialism through temporal horizons and the maintenance of precontact traditions among post-contact tribal groups. This connection is highlighted in the Epilogue: the author concludes that the history of platform mound construction in the US is not over, thus it is essential to incorporate contemporary native voices in the study of mounds.

The most valuable contribution of this book is Kassabaum’s attention to time as a multifaceted resource