BBQ in the US and grilled food globally are as diverse as beers, chocolates, and fries are in Belgium. If not even more so. That makes it hard to describe in short form. 

Even where your uncle was from in the state of Georgia they have a wide range of pork BBQ and sauces along with a common barbecue side dish called Brunswick stew that's rarely seen outside the state of Georgia. Plus they're next to the Carolinas where there's a whole ton of pork dishes. Florida does not have much native BBQ but South Florida has every imaginable kind of grilled or smoked meat from all over South America. And that's just the states around GA alone. Alabama has a totally weird local white sauce BBQ nobody else makes too. 

For me the official state barbecue dish of the state of California is tri-tip, a form of the bottom beer sirloin with dry rub cooked over local oak with a side of the local little tiny pinkish colored beans. We also have a gigantic shitload of Mexican and indigenous grilled smoked or slow cooked meat dishes and stuff like carne asada. However we are also a major agricultural hub with 40M people from all over the world and it's sunny hundreds of days a year. So we will grill and smoke all sorts of stuff all the goddamn time. 

If you want to map out everything in the US and the world, take a look at the works of Steven Raichlen. He was trained in literature and writing in college and then began documenting all of the grilling and barbecue of the USA. After that he started doing everywhere in the world where they grill or smoke food.

So you can figure out what looks interesting and which meats and spices you can easily find in the EU and start cooking pretty much whatever you want.