2026 Winter Showcase Series: Native American Ceramic Art of the Northern Gulf Coast

As part of the 2026 Winter Showcase Series presented by Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism, please join us for this presentation from Dr. Erin Nelson with South Alabama University.

Native American people of the southeast have been called the “DaVincis of Dirt,” referencing the engineering and artistic skills used to create things out of earth and clay – mounds, pottery vessels, and effigy figurines, to name a few. This talk explores the artistic side of Native American ceramics created on the Gulf Coast between AD 1200 and 1700. We focus on what these artifacts can tell us about the worldview of Native American communities of the past, as well as their connection to modern Native people.  

About Dr. Nelson:

Erin Nelson is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Alabama and a specialist in the archaeology of Native American communities of the southeastern United States. In addition to the southeast, she has conducted fieldwork in the Midwest, Great Plains, Greece and Peru. Her most recent research focuses on the origins and development of Pensacola culture, a Native American cultural tradition of the northern Gulf of Mexico Coast, ca. AD 1200-1700. Dr. Nelson is especially interested in ceramics, iconography, foodways, and monumental and domestic architecture, all of which speak to the ways people organized themselves into communities in the past. When she’s not doing archaeology, she enjoys exploring the outdoors on foot and in a kayak with her family in tow.