Mississippian (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Nelson.

Late Mississippi period (AD 1350-1541) archaeological sites in the northern Yazoo Basin typically consist of one or more earthen platform mounds adjacent to a large plaza surrounded by multiple residential areas. Sites are closely spaced throughout the region and evidence for smaller non-mound settlements is lacking. These observations suggest a distinctive Mississippian settlement pattern for the northern Yazoo, but they only partially address questions about past communities and the people who...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edmond Boudreaux.

Archaeological uses of the term “community” incorporate elements of the physical environment, which often include a particular place on the landscape, and elements of the built environment, such as the structures and spaces that people created there. In addition to being a place, the concept of “community” also entails the social, economic, and political relationships that existed among the individuals and groups that lived there. This paper presents an overview of the Mississippian community at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Howell.

Increasing intensity and frequency of conflict over time is a noted characteristic of the Mississippian Period in the southeastern United States. To examine the question of why violence increases, researchers have examined many cultural institutions and environmental mechanisms that can defuse tensions as well as those that exacerbate chances for warfare. A key theoretical construct is the use of bufferzones that help to lower tensions by creating separation between competing groups. However...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Krus. Charles Cobb.

Bayesian chronological modeling is used to investigate the chronology for a large-scale human depopulation event during the Mississippi period (A.D. 1000–1700) known as the Vacant Quarter phenomenon. The Middle Cumberland Region (MCR) of Tennessee is within the Vacant Quarter area and six villages from the final phase of Mississippian activity in the MCR have been subjected to radiocarbon dating. Complete radiocarbon datasets from these sites are presented within an interpretative Bayesian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dean Blumenfeld.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study investigates changes in distribution at the ancient Mississippian site of Cahokia using social network analysis. Over the course of its history, Cahokia transformed from a small village to a large macroregional center. This transformation was accompanied by a marked increase in institutional complexity, specialization, rank/class differences,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Dye.

This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Within a hundred years of Cahokia’s Big Bang around AD 1050, warfare becomes evident in the construction of defensive structures, especially massive, bastioned palisades. The first of these palisades at Cahokia dates to ca. AD 1135 and stands as the earliest Mississippian fortified community. This signaling of intensive and organized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Schubert.

Three Mississippian villages from the Pisgah period (AD 1200 – 1600) in western North Carolina are reviewed and discussed – the Cane River Site (31Yc91), the Warren Wilson Site (31Bn29), and the mound and village at the Garden Creek Site (31Hw1). The elements of each community’s built environment, household architecture and domestic practices are evaluated and considered along with new radiocarbon dates from each site. These three Pisgah communities are situated in an unusual mountain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Briggs.

By A.D. 1120 in the Black Warrior Valley of west-central Alabama, a Mississippian identity, predicated on the dissemination and subsequent adoption of maize, had firmly begun to take root at what would become the ritual-ceremonial center of Moundville. Traditionally, researchers have modelled the origins of Moundville within a political-economic lens: the growing aspirations of elites, who are implied to be male, are supported and fueled by stores of and feasts of maize, which is treated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donald Booth.

In the Spring of 2015, SCI Engineering, Inc. was contracted to conduct archaeological investigations ahead of the expansion of the Cedar Creek Lumberyard situated in the northeast portion of the Mitchell site (11MS30) in Madison County, Illinois. These investigations resulted in the delineation of multiple wall trench structures of varying size and shape. Most of what is known of this important Mississippian mound center comes from James W. Porter’s dissertation on his 1960s salvage excavations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brandon Ritchison. Matthew Davidson.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic- and lithic-based phase-level chronologies, built on assumptions of gradual change over time, have traditionally comprised the foundation of archaeological reconstructions. Recent reevaluations of long-standing regional chronologies, often based on pre-AMS radiocarbon dates and the presence or absence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jayne-Leigh Thomas. Dan Knudsen. Rebecca Hawkins.

This is an abstract from the "Advancing the Archaeology of Indigenous Agriculture in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Agricultural research in archaeology has predominantly focused on the presence or absence of food refuse, dietary data from isotopic studies, or the origins of agriculture. Fewer studies exist that focus on how crops were actually grown and what yields would be needed to viably support a specific population,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madelaine Azar.

This is an abstract from the "Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Symbolically charged ceramic rim-effigy bowls, characterized by figural head and tail adornments, are hallmarks of the Late Mississippian period in the central Mississippi River valley (CMV). Hundreds of whole rim-effigy bowls, most often depicting serpents, birds, or humans, have been collected at sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Trevor Duke. Neill Wallis.

This is an abstract from the "Ceramic Petrographers in the Americas: Recent Research and Methodological Advances" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Technological innovations can have profound social consequences. Alterations to a given potting network change the pacing and tempo of interactions between experts and apprentices, effectively restructuring intergenerational relationships within a community. For this reason, experienced potters may...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Schilling.

Monks Mound stands as the pinnacle of platform mound building at Cahokia and in North America. Built very rapidly near the end of the 11th century AD, it was the largest single public works project undertaken in North America until the 19th century. At first glance, the mound appears as an immutable fixture on the landscape yet a closer examination shows that the mound has several severe structural deficiencies that may eventually lead to collapse. Archaeologists and site managers have long...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Polk. Jeremy Wilson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since early archaeological investigations in the Ohio River Valley, scholars have speculated on the relationship between late pre-contact Fort Ancient villages and earlier Woodland mounds and earthworks. However, few have empirically addressed the association between these sites and their placement on a persistent landscape. We seek to determine the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Cooper.

During the 18th century, European-Americans created a myth regarding the earthen mounds found throughout the eastern United States. This myth indicated that a western people, possibly the Lost Tribe of Israel, had inhabited North America and established cities throughout this region. They then succumbed to Native American savagery and brutality and were eradicated. Over time, archaeologists disproved the myth by conducting excavations and demonstrated the cultural similarities between the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Steere. Ashley Schubert.

The Appalachian Summit is the southernmost and highest part of the Appalachian Mountain system, extending across western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Beginning in the early 1300s, evidence for Mississippian practices appear within Late Pisgah phase communities in the central portion of the Appalachian Summit. These settlements include small farmsteads, palisaded villages, and sites with platform mounds. In addition to the Pisgah culture, the late Mississippian Qualla phase (1450 -1838...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Rutecki.

Informed by ethnographic accounts, iconography has helped clarify how people materialized otherwise intangible aspects of their realities. In this paper, I examine the use of raccoons in imagery from Mississippian archaeological contexts. By considering placement of independent raccoon motifs in iconographic scenes, as well as raccoon motifs associated with figures, I identify use patterns of raccoon imagery. Considering these iconographic data alongside faunal data generated from Spiro,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Butler.

The relationship between cultural interaction and religion as a catalyst for long-term historical change is an underdeveloped line of inquiry in pre-Columbian archaeology. Particularly in North American archaeology, Mississippian cultural expansions and intrusions have been considered primarily in political or economic terms. Missionizing – defined as the intent to convert someone or something to a new idea or religion - in cultural and religious change may have facilitated the spread of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Burtt. Larisa DeSantis.

This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Angel site (12VG1) is located in southern Indiana, USA, on the Ohio River, and was occupied from approximately 1100 to 1450 CE. This site is part of a larger Mississippian cultural landscape. Research presented in this paper employs two methods for investigating the dietary behavior of domestic dogs recovered from the Angel site. Both dental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Bossio.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Woodland-Late Prehistoric transitional period of Northwestern Ohio (ca. AD 1250) has been the subject of much debate in past decades. Both the details and cause of Upper Mississippian influence in the Western Lake Erie region currently remain unclear. My project focuses on a 3-mile span of the First Rapids of the Maumee River floodplain, where I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Lulewicz.

The scale and structure of the relationships through which social capital is generated, amassed, and controlled must be understood if we are to evaluate the emergence and evolution of organizationally complex social, political, and economic institutions. At any one point in time however, actors or entities are undoubtedly embedded and engaged in a number of distinct, yet overlapping, relational fields. In this paper I interrogate three networks, representing three separate sets of relationships,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erica Ausel.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The connection between migration and violence is complex and occurs in many social spheres within a single community. Data accessible through archaeological excavations, partnered with bioarchaeological analyses, can provide insights that are otherwise invisible regarding these experiences. To this end, my research explores the patterns of interpersonal trauma...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Fuller.

Working hypotheses link selected rock art sites in Missouri with the religious and political ideologies of the Mississippian tradition. For example, petroglyph sites such as the Bushnell Ceremonial Cave (23SG89), Washington State Park (23WA01), Madden Creek (23WA26), and the Commerce Site (23ST255) have been linked with the Mississippian tradition. Likewise, a cluster of three pictograph sites preserve Mississippian iconography: Rattlesnake Bluff (23FR95), Willenberg Shelter (23FR96), and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Howell.

This is an abstract from the "Music Archaeology's Paradox: Contextual Dependency and Contextual Expressivity" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper chronicles an instrument replication and composition project, using archaeological materials, historic and ethnohistoric documentation, and interviews with archaeologists, music consultants, project commission personnel, craftspersons, composer, and others with a vested interested. Three instrument...