M.A.R.I. Lunch Talks - Nathanael Heller of R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates

We are excited to kick off another year of the Middle American Research Institute Lunch Talk Series. Every few weeks we host a scholar for an informal midday talk on archaeology, history, and ethnography, drawing on work from Mesoamerica and well beyond it. Talks run about forty-five minutes with time for questions; lunch is served, and everyone is welcome. No RSVP is needed, and you do not need to be an anthropologist to enjoy them.

We are opening the year close to home. On Friday, August 28, Nathanael Heller of R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates joins us to talk about the Early Woodland occupation of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin, revisiting Tchefuncte sites first excavated by WPA crews in the 1930s. It is a good reminder that some of the most interesting archaeology in the world is happening in our own backyard.

Talk Abstract-

Between 2011 and 2013, R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates, Inc. completed a two-year study of the Tchefuncte culture in coastal Louisiana. This effort included the analysis of previously excavated materials from the Bayou Jasmine (16SJB2), Tchefuncte (16ST1), Little Woods (16OR1-4), and Lafayette Mounds (16SM17) sites.  Much of the material examined for this study originated from Depression-era excavations conducted by the FERA and WPA between 1934 and 1942, which formed the basis for James Ford and George Quimby’s classic 1945 WPA monograph on the Tchefuncte culture. The study also included materials from the Bayou Jasmine Site that were recovered by an LSU field crew in 1975, and a small collection of materials from an LAS field school excavation at the Tchefuncte Site in 1986.

Foremost of the accomplishments of this study was to provide comprehensive descriptions of the Tchefuncte, Bayou Jasmine, Lafayette Mounds and Little Woods sites, and analyses of the data from the excavation of these sites. The discussions of these individual sites included examinations of excavation histories, site structure, stratigraphy, chronology, and artifact distribution, whenever possible. Some of the more important results included recognition of discrete activity areas within Midden A at the Tchefuncte Site, a proposed resolution of site chronology at the Bayou Jasmine Site, and confirmation of an Early Woodland date for Mound 1 at the Lafayette Mounds Site.

Speaker Bio - 

Nathanael Heller, M.A., R.P.A. has worked for the past 30+ years as a professional archaeologist. Although originally trained in the Near East and having worked on archaeological sites of Jezreel and Dothan in Israel, Nathanael has since shifted his focus to the archaeology of the southeastern United States. His first experiences with U.S. archaeology came in 1994 when he participated in a series of large excavations in Mississippi and Florida for the FGT Phase III pipeline project. After stints with the Louisiana Division of Archaeology and the Louisiana State Museum and completion of his Master’s degree, Nathanael was hired by Goodwin & Associates to run their New Orleans archaeology lab. Nathanael now serves as Senior Research Archaeologist for Goodwin and oversees projects across the eastern U.S. Nathanael grew up in Kenner and lives in Metairie with his family.