David Hally

Professor
Undergraduate Coordinator
Ph.D. Anthropology, Harvard University, 1972
dhally@uga.edu

My research over the years has focused on the post A.D. 1000 Mississippian culture of northern Georgia and adjacent portions of Alabama, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. Within this region and period, my interests range across the entire settlement and socio-political spectrum from individual households to interpolity relations on the regional level.

My early research focused on domestic life; specifically, reconstruction of domestic activities, identification of site formation processes affecting domestic contexts, and the relationship of pottery vessel form to function and to aboriginal food habits. While I continue to be interested in these topics, my interests in recent years have shifted up the settlement scale to the level of the community and the polity. I am currently writing a book on a 2.2 hectare town (King site) dating to the mid-16th century. Extensive excavation and mapping of this site has provided unparalleled evidence for how the town was organized and for how it developed over its 50 year life span. Among the community oriented questions that I have been able to address are: household growth through time, social exchange among community members, hierarchical and non-hierarchical status differences among community members, and the symbolism of domestic structure architecture and town plan.

I am also actively investigating the nature of the chiefdom type polities that are characteristic of the region and period. On the assumption that earthen platform mounds represent administrative and ritual centers, I have been able to identify approximately 40 distinct polities that existed at various times during the 600 year-long Mississippian period in northern Georgia. With this knowledge, I have been able to identify regularities in the spatial size and temporal duration of polities as well as certain features of their internal organization. Future research will focus on identifying environmental, economic, and political factors that affect polity location and life history. I expect eventually to be able to write a political history for the region beginning with the rise of the first chiefdoms and ending with their demise in the late 16th century.

Recent publications:

• Hally, David J. 1998. The Nature of Mississippian Towns in Georgia. Mississippian Towns and Sacred Spaces: Searching for an Architectural Grammar, edited by R. Barry Lewis and Charles Stout, pp. 49-63. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
• Hally, David J. 1999. The Settlement Pattern of Mississippian Chiefdoms in Northern Georgia. Fifty Years Since Viru: Recent Advances in Settlement Pattern Studies in the New World. Edited by Brian Billman and Gary Feinman, pp. 187-211. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
• Hally, David J. 1996. Platform Mound Construction and the Instability of Mississippian Chiefdoms. Political Structure and Change in the Prehistoric Southeastern United States, edited by John Scarry, pp. 92-127. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
• Hally, David J. 1994. Ocmulgee Archaeology: 1933-1986. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
• Hally, David J., Marvin Smith and James Langford. 1990. The Archaeological Reality of DeSoto's Coosa. Columbia Consequences, Vol. 2 Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands East, edited by David H. Thomas, pp. 121-138. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
• Hally, David J. 1986. The Identification of Vessel Function: A Case Study From Northwestern Georgia. American Antiquity 52:267-295.
• Hally, David J. 1981. Plant Preservation and the Content of Paleobotanical Samples: A Case Study. American Antiquity 46:723-742.