Calvin S. Brown has been described as a "Renaissance man" by Janet Ford. He was born in Tennessee, in 1866, and attended Vanderbilt where he also served as an instructor of English and Literature. He earned a doctoral degree in Geology in 1892, and published several articles and books in this field. Following a period of study in Paris and Leipzig, Brown returned to the United States and earned another degree, this time in Comparative Literature from the University of Colorado (1899). He then taught at Rutgers College and the University of Missouri, and studied in Spain, Italy and Greece. He arrived at the University of Mississippi in 1905 where he taught until his death in 1945. Brown published poetry, studied music and was a Phi Beta Kappa as well as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His interest in Archaeology came about through an association with Dr. E. N. Lowe, Director of the Mississippi Geological Survey, from whom he obtained his position as archaeologist. In producing this book, Calvin Brown borrowed freely from the people he met and from previously published works. Though some of his effort consisted of literature review, the bulk of his time was spent contacting people, and travelling throughout the region to inventory collections.
The value of this book lies in the photographs of mounds now destroyed, in the variety of extremely rare artifacts depicted, and in the fact that it is a "period piece" for archaeological literature in America. There are several photographs that show settings and landscapes no longer in existence in which people are used for scale. The book contains 13 photos of mounds, and 10 borrowed sketch maps of mound groups. Almost all of the remaining pages have a photo of some artifact or grouping of artifacts. Effort on Brown's part to include only artifacts and features from Mississippi is noteworthy. Most of these features and artifacts were found on the ground surface, or actually in mounds, and their location is recorded in terms of the property on which they were found, usually to the nearest mile or the nearest land owner. Mound size and shape, and artifacts length or height are described in detail, but there is little or no consideration of what "culture" might have produced such objects. For example, projectile points from all periods of prehistory are grouped together simply because they are recognizable as arrow-heads, spear points, or drills.
The book is clearly a manifestation of what Willey and Sabloff (1974, 1980) term "The Classificatory-Descriptive Period" of American Archaeology. The first chapter deals only with mounds and earthworks, most of which are grouped by county, however some groups are described in relation to a rivers, cities, and regions within the state. The remaining eight chapters deal with artifacts grouped only by speculative function beginning with arrow-heads, spear-heads and perforators, followed by axes and celts, ornamental, ceremonial and problematic stones, agricultural and domestic implements, pipes, shell, bone and copper, pottery, and finally Post-Columbian material. Problematic aspects of the archaeological literature from this era are exemplified by this book in the dearth of information with respect to horizontal stratigraphy, the complete absence of chronological considerations, and the nationalistic flavor of the original preface.