Cobb Institute of Archaeology

The Cobb Institute of Archaeology is a research and service unit of the College of Arts and Sciences at Mississippi State University (MSU). It was established in 1971 with a goal of promoting archaeological research and education at Mississippi State University.^[1] The Lois Dowdle Cobb Museum of Archaeology and its artifact collections are included in the Institute's facilities, and many of the Institute's staff serve as teaching faculty while having formal cross-affiliations with the Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures.^[2] The Institute's archaeological research projects cover a wide geographic and temporal range, but focus on the cultures of the Near East and the Southeastern United States. Through collaboration with academic departments on campus, the Institute offers a wide range of opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students at Mississippi State University to engage in archaeological-related research and learning activities.^[3]

Cobb Institute of Archaeology

Founders	Cully A. Cobb, Lois Dowdle Cobb
Established	1971
Address	340 Lee Blvd., Mississippi State, MS 39762
Location	Mississippi State University , Starkville , Mississippi , United States
Website	cobb.msstate.edu

History

Foundation and Endowment

The Cobb Institute of Archaeology was established in June 1971 by Mississippi State University alumnus Cully A. Cobb and his wife, Lois Dowdle Cobb.^[4] An initial donation of just over $1 million in stock of the Ruralist Press for endowment support was made in 1971, and an additional $500,000 was donated in order to fund the construction of a building (in a letter written to then-University President William L. Giles) in July 1972. On April 14, 1973, the groundbreaking ceremony took place, and the building was officially dedicated in October 1975.^[5] Mr. Cobb died in May 1975, shortly before the Institute formally opened, but left a bequest in his will which continues to fund research there.

Mission

The stated mission of the Cobb Institute is to provide sponsorship and support for research, outreach and instructional programs related "to the Middle Eastern origins of Western Civilization and to the Indians of the South, particularly in Mississippi." Its efforts are to be directed to "the specific purposes of archaeological research, study, travel, excavations and explorations, publications and reports, and other similar uses or purposes."^[5]

To this end, the research staff at the Institute have focused their energies on a variety of archaeological excavations in the Middle East and the Southeastern United States, often collaborating with the Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures^[6] at Mississippi State University to offer opportunities for student involvement in fieldwork.

Directors

E. Jerry Vardaman 1972-1988

Joe D. Seger 1988-2014

Michael L. Galaty 2015-2017

Evan Peacock 2017-2018

James W. Hardin 2018–present

Research Activities

Since its inception, the Cobb Institute has provided funding and assistance for archaeological research and fieldwork in the Near East, the Mediterranean Basin, the Southeastern United States, and the Caribbean.

Near Eastern Archaeology

In 1980, the Roman Nabataean site of Elusa that located in the southern of Israel was the first sponsored place by the Cobb institute to conduct the research work in Middle East.^[5] The Hebrew University in Jerusalem was involved in one of the research seasons.^[5] In order to achieve better cooperation results, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem provided a teaching program of the Middle East work to the MSU students. In 1981, Jack D. Elliott, Jr completed an associated research article named The Elusa Oikumene and the Cobb institute has published it to achieve promoting and educating results.^[5]

Joe D. Seger organized the "Lahav Research Project" (LRP) in 1974.^[5] There are four phases in this project. The first phase of the work was performed from 1976 to 1980, and the sponsorship of this phase was provided by the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the second and third phases were conducted by the Cobb Institute auspices during the period 1983-1989 and 1992-1999, respectively, the fourth phase began in 2007 with the sponsorship of Emory University. Throughout the process, the American Schools of Oriental Research has been working with the Institute. In all of phases, staff members, subscribers, and worker participants provide financial support to the consortium institutions.^[7][8]

The following are some of the mining results of this project:

• A detailed excavation report on stratigraphic data was found in the eastern side of Tel Halif^[7]
• Nine flint cores, including Canaan-style blade and sheet scraper ("fan scrapers")^[7]
• About 800 ceramic figurines, majority of them belonged to the Persian era, and some of them belonged to the Iron second period of Judah^[7]
• Many modified vessels and whole pottery were discovered in the fourth Field of Tel Halif^[7]
• On behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Paul F. Jacobs directed a salvage work in 1985. A three-week excavation was carried out in an area at the foot of the Tel Halif, which later extended to the fields of Kibbutz Lahav. This salvation was established as a result of the planning to build a home in Kibbutz^[7]

Since 2011, Dr. James Hardin has co-directed excavations at the site of Khirbet Summeily in Israel, leading multiple summer archaeology field schools at the site. Khirbet Summeily is a small, rural site best known for the discovery of multiple clay bullae that support the existence of economic and political complexity in the early Iron Age. The site is a satellite of Tel el-Hesi. The field school ran from 2015- 2017, and came back in 2023. The field school will continue when conditions permit. The site was found by a survey field school. GIS and photogrammetry has been done at the site as well. ^[9]

Surveys in Morocco have been conducted in and around Bizmoune Cave for Middle and Late Stone Age archaeological sites. This project is led by Dr. Shane Miller. Surveys have been ongoing since 2022 and have been partners with the University of Arizona and Institut National des Sciences de l'Archéologie et du Patrimoine (INSAP).^[10] The survey around the cave has produced multiple findings of Middle and Late Stone Age artifacts as well as slag of unknown origins. Excavations within the cave started in 2024.

North American Archaeology

View of the Pocahontas Mound A, located in a park along U.S. Route 49 near Pocahontas in Hinds County, Mississippi, United States.

Over the past fifty years, researchers at the Cobb Institute have conducted several archaeological investigations at the Lyon's Bluff site (22OK520). The site was first excavated by Moreau Chambers in the 1930s;^[11] Mississippi State's involvement began with Richard Marshall in the 1960s and continued with field schools supervised by Janet Rafferty and Evan Peacock in 2001 and 2003.

During the summer of 2004, Cobb Institute crews conducted excavations at the Mount Pocahontas Mound A site (22Hi500) in Hinds County, MS. The goals of the fieldwork were to delimit the site boundaries and to locate intact cultural deposits, so that the construction of a new visitor's center and rest stop would not impact the site.^[12] Two mounds (A and B) at the site have been added to the National Register of Historic Places; it was occupied during both the Late Archaic and Mississippian periods. Archaeological District. Derek Anderson has been directing excavations of the Topper hilltop since 2010, and Dr. Shane Miller and Derek Anderson have been working at the nearby Swag site since 2015. Both sites have produced large amounts of tools and production debris from quarry-related activities, along with diagnostic points and radiocarbon dates from the Early and Late Paleoindian and Early Archaic periods.^[13]

 From 2012 to 2015, Dr. Molly Zuckerman and Derek Anderson (along with former Cobb research associate Dr. Nicholas Herrmann) co-directed excavations and monitored construction projects at the site of the former Mississippi state insane asylum cemetery on the current UMMC campus in Jackson, Mississippi. The initial work at the site resulted in the recovery of 67 individuals who were buried there sometime between 1855 and 1935; those remains are now being analyzed by Zuckerman and her students at MSU. Zuckerman and Anderson are both members of the recently formed Asylum Hill Research Consortium, which is developing plans for future excavations and outreach related to the project. 
 Dr. Shane Miller and Derek Anderson are currently directing an excavation project of a Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene site. The Hester site, near Amory, MS, was initially excavated in the 1970's and was reopened by a MSU crew during the summer of 2017 and is an ongoing research site; it contains multiple Late Paleoindian and Early Archaic components and will be the focus of ongoing field schools offered through Mississippi State University’s department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures.[14]

The Lyon's Bluff Site is a large mound and village site located in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi. Archaeological investigations have demonstrated that occupation of the site dates predominately to the Mississippi and Protohistoric periods (ca. A.D. 1000-1650). Several seasons of investigations have occurred at the site beginning in the 1930s with the work of Moreau Chambers, continuing in the late 1960s and early 1970s under the direction of Richard Marshall of MSU, and during the summers of 2001 and 2003 by Dr. Evan Peacock of MSU. Research in the site picked up again in 2022 with surveys and excavations and are ongoing. The fieldwork conducted at Lyon’s Bluff in 2024 is part of a collaborative effort among Chickasaw Nation and the Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State University to better understand the cultural landscape of northeast Mississippi, the Chickasaw homeland, during the Mississippian (AD 1000-1540) through Contact (AD 1540-1650) periods. In 2021 a National Park Service grant helped the Cobb Institute of Archaeology work to assess and return ancestral remains found at Lyon’s Bluff in coordination with the Native American nations of Mississippi. Dr. Lambert said he and co-principal investigators, Anna Osterholtz and Molly Zuckerman, consulted with all Native American nations who have cultural and historical connections to Mississippi to repatriate and return remains back to their respective descendent communities. This project helped showcase the value of respecting and implementing tribal cultural protocols into archaeological practice.^[15]

 The Grand Village, also known as the Fatherland archaeological site (22Ad501), is one of the most extensively investigated sites in the region. The Cobb Institute participated in the 2019 and 2021 field seasons. The project aimed to evaluate a recent map-based reconstruction of the 1730 battlefield using landscape features still visible as well as eighteenth-century maps to propose possible locations for battlefield features and ‘missing’ mounds no longer present. Investigations at the Grand Village employed remote sensing, coring, and excavation techniques. In 2024, artifacts and associated documents from the project were transferred to MDAH, who also curated materials from earlier excavations at the site. Digital files, including remote-sensing and GIS data are being archived at MDAH and the Cobb Institute of Archaeology.   This project, located in Natchez Mississippi, was a collaborative effort among Mississippi State University (MSU), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians (GVNI), the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH), and the University of Mississippi (UM). Field investigations were conducted through the Center for Archaeological Research at UM, and the final report was completed at MSU’s Cobb Institute of Archaeology. This project was funded by the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP).[16]

 The fieldwork conducted at Butler is part of a collaborative effort among Chickasaw Nation (CN), the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida (UF), and the Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State University (MSU) to better understand the cultural landscape of northeast Mississippi, the Chickasaw homeland, during the Mississippian (AD 1000-1540) through Contact (AD 1540-1650) periods. Investigations at Butler can provide important information about Mississippian polities in the region prior to and at the time of Contact, although it appears that the site was not occupied during the Contact period A gradiometer survey of open areas around the mound was conducted at Butler in 2016 and 2017. Fieldwork was conducted at Butler in Summer 2017 as part of the Chickasaw Explorers program. In 2022 fieldwork continued with the goal of providing an opportunity for the Chickasaw Explorers to assist in significant archaeological field research, ascertaining the density and cultural content of archaeological deposits present at the site, and classifying artifacts, ecofacts, and features recovered for the purpose of developing interpretations. Research at the Butler Mound Site is ongoing with the 2025 Mississippi State AMEC survey field school.[17]

Curation, Equipment, Museum and Activity

Curation

The Cobb Institute manages a separate 6,000-square-foot curation facility that allows for storage and analysis of archaeological research collections and records. In 1986, the Cobb Institute Curation Laboratory was built with funding provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Mississippi State University. It currently holds all materials from any major local and regional research collections including those generated by MSU's anthropology program. It is one of only two facilities in Mississippi that meets the requirements for curating federal collections. Its large storage area has special environmental controls and security systems. This laboratory meets Federal curation standards and can accept additional collections. At present, collections are held under formal agreements with the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Navy, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Bureau of Prisons, and the Vicksburg and Mobile Districts, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Collections are also held for several private entities, some of which have federal sourcing. ^[18]

Curation Equipment

The design of the curation building of Cobb Institute consists of a standing seam metal roof, corrugated-metal exterior walls, a covered loading dock, and a poured concrete floor, its interior consists of a work space of laboratory, washroom, shower bathroom, a large storage area for collections and two front offices. The collection has two storage spaces. All shelves are made up of commercial grade adjustable steel.^[19] The lower floor is constructed of cast concrete and includes many early artifact collections and all archaeological records, the upper layer holds all atlas, negative plate, lantern slide, reports, and recent collections of artifact. The collection space has a total area of approximately 7,000 cubic feet and can accommodate approximately 6,500 TEUs, and space in some collections can also be used to store items in the process, photo filing cabinets and supplies.^[19] So far, approximately 5,000 boxes of artifacts and records have been stored in the repository houses. Two separate HVAC systems provide environmental control for curatorial laboratories and repositories: one for collections storage space and one for office and laboratory area. Annual temperature and humidity control is provided by a closed collections system. 68 degrees Fahrenheit is the standard temperature and 50% relative humidity is the standard humidity.^[19]

The campus, local police and the fire department are the main sources of security for this curation, and security measures are theft and fire alarm systems. The Intrusion Detection System consists of a motion detector, high frequency break detector, an infrared and door switches, the fire alarm system consists of detector of smoke and heat located strategically, and a flow monitor on a wet pipe sprinkler system used to ensure the safety all parts of the building.^[19] In addition, some of the laboratory and office areas are separated from the collections area by a two-hour firewall, and the campus police responded to the burglar alarms to alert collections staff who needed to enter the building. Access to the facility is limited to the director of the institute, the curator and the collection manager, who have the key and access code, except for the above persons, no one is allowed to enter the collections storage room unless they have written permission.^[19]

Activity

The Cobb Institute of Archaeology values public outreach and public archaeology, with many of our staff having focused on Public Archaeology as a subdiscipline. The Cobb maintains a variety of outreach opportunities throughout the year. The institute hosts lectures on topics of both the American Southeast and the Ancient Near East. Science Night happens once a year on the Mississippi State University campus, the institute is a proud participant with our Night at the Museum exhibits and opportunities of all ages to engage in archaeology. Dr. Tim Frank and graduate student Dillion Karges have hosted mock excavations for the public as an introduction to the discipline. The Cobb Institute also does several kid centered outreach events with the local community. .^[20]

Museum

The Lois Dowdle Cobb Museum of Archaeology

Code of Hammurabi replica stele REM

The research results of the Cobb Institute will be presented in The Lois Dowdle Cobb Museum of Archaeology. This museum not only serves as a display platform for the Cobb Institute, but also provides a lot of help for the research work of the Cobb Institute. Relevant exhibition activities will be held regularly to promote and achieve teaching results.^[21] The Lois Dowdle Cobb Museum of Archaeology mainly displays artifacts related to the Middle East and the Mediterranean.^[22]

Partial collection list：

• Ancient Eastern sculptures^[2]
• Replica of the Hammurabi Code^[22]
• Moab stone monument^[2]
• Black Obelisk of Shalmanezer III^[22]
• Rosetta Stone^[22]
• Ancient coin^[2]

Cultural Resource Management Services (CRM services)

ALSEP Passive Seismic Experiment

Remote Sensing Illustration

The Professional protection history personnel from this institute are in charge of perform this cultural resource management services, and the main purpose of the service is to help clients who want to develop projects, such as companies and developers, government agencies and citizens, to satisfy the law and provide assistance of the relationship between clients and local, state and federal agencies and tribes.^[23]

Projects

Some CRM projects that The Office of Public Archaeology engaged:

• Seismic surveys^[23]
• Mines^[23]
• Linear pipeline surveys^[23]

Compliance services:

• Historic and archival research^[23]
• Geophysical/remote sensing survey^[23]
• Cultural resource survey^[23]
• Archaeological testing^[23]

See also

• Machaerus
• Mississippi State University