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2024 AAS Annual Meeting's Keynote Address- FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC *You will need to still register on the AAS website.
Dr. Ashley Dumas, University of West Alabama, will present this year's keynote address titled Discovering Mabila: A Sixteenth-Century Province in Alabama's Black Prairie.
The collapse of the Moundville polity around 1450 AD led to the displacement of thousands of people from the Black Warrior River Valley. Some of them retreated to the black prairies of central Alabama, where they adapted to a new environment with novel settlement patterns and altered subsistence practices. In October 1540, these people encountered Spanish conquistador, Hernando de Soto, and battled his army at the town of Mabila. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of Spanish presence in this region and are assembling the narrative of the indigenous people who resisted Soto and survived as a distinct ethnic group for at least another century.
Ashley Dumas (Ph.D., University of Alabama) focuses on the late precolonial and colonial eras in the Southeast, including the history and archaeology of 18th-century Fort Tombecbe, excavations of salt springs, and a study of extant slave dwellings. Her current Search for Mabila Project is multi-year effort to understand the sixteenth-century cultural landscape of central Alabama and indigenous responses to European incursions. She is a professor of anthropology at the University of West Alabama.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Embassy Suites by Hilton Jonesboro Red Wolf Convention Center (Jonesboro, AR), 226 Olympic Dr, Jonesboro, AR 72401, United States,Jonesboro, Arkansas
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