Hudson, Charles M.

Charles Melvin Hudson Jr. (1932–2013) was an anthropologist, a professor of anthropology and history at the University of Georgia. He was a leading scholar on the history and culture of Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the present-day United States. He is known for his book mapping the expedition of Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in the mid-16th century in the Southeast, based on both the expedition's records and sites identified through archeology and anthropology. He also published books with detailed discussion of two 16th-century Spanish expeditions in the Southeast: Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando De Soto and the South's Ancient Chiefdoms (1997) and The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Exploration of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566–1568 (2005).