Mississippian (Other Keyword)
301-318 (318 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mitchell site is a major Mississippian (1050–1400 CE) mound center located roughly 10 km north of Cahokia Mounds, Illinois, the largest mound center in North America. At a minimum, Mitchell consisted of 11 earthen mounds; however, only one mound is visible today. In 1960, salvage...
Vegetation Survey Methods at Inland Shell Mound Sites (2024)
This is an abstract from the "*SE The New Normal: Approaches to Studying, Documenting, and Mitigating Climate Change Impacts to Archaeological Sites" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Reconnaissance and initial phase fieldwork for the Gulf Resilience COPE Research HUB began in 2022 and continued in Summer 2023. Experimental investigations into potential variations in vegetative vigor, abundance, diversity, and density at a local archaeological site...
Vibrancy of Place and Cahokia's Emergence (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The city of Cahokia sits in a landscape occupied by bodies of water, distinctive biota, and unique stone and mineral deposits. This flood plain landscape of the Mississippi River served for millennia as home to Indigenous peoples who lived in semi sedentary communities...
Vibrant Recipes: The Variability and Composition of Special Clay Linings in Mississippian Shrines from the Illinois Uplands of Greater Cahokia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In several Mississippian sites circa 1050 CE, shrine houses and some other features were lined with a special bright yellow clay or clay mixture. This study looks at the variability and composition of these clay linings to determine what is the key vibrant ingredient in these ceremonially active clay linings. In this study methods of texture analysis, X-Ray...
Vicksburg before the Siege: Paleoenvironment, Population Expansion, and a Delayed Woodland to Mississippian Transition in the Lower Mississippi Valley (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Vicksburg Is the Key: Recent Archaeological Investigations and New Perspectives from the Gibraltar of the South" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Based on recent archaeological work at Vicksburg National Military Park, the Late Woodland to Mississippian transition in the Lower Mississippi Valley extended beyond the traditionally defined end of the Woodland period, with evidence suggesting the Coles Creek-Kings Crossing...
Violence, Dislocation, and Social Transformation in the Chesapeake, AD 1300–1500 (2018)
Beyond the Mississippian frontier in Southwest Virginia, Algonquian and Siouan societies in the Chesapeake pursued their own culture histories, evidently independent of developments in the American Midcontinent and Southeast. And yet, between AD 1300 and 1500 a set of social changes cascaded from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay which may correspond with developments highlighted in this symposium. How did the late precolonial collapse, social fragmentation, and violence of the...
Visible and Invisible workings of Cahokia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "States, Confederacies, and Nations: Reenvisioning Early Large-Scale Collectives." session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cahokia has long been subjected to terminological contention, failing to fit categorical configurations such as state or chiefdom but has now become commonly referred to as an urbanism — effectively dodging the chiefdom/state terminological quandary. What if much of the categorical problem lies in looking...
War, Power, and History in the Mississippian Period Central Illinois Valley (2023)
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. This paper considers the impact of warfare-induced settlement nucleation on the sociopolitical organization of the thirteenth-century Central Illinois River Valley. Concurrent with the beginning of a period of intense warfare, Mississippian groups in the region abandoned their small, dispersed farmsteads and aggregated into the region’s...
Warfare in the Mississippian World: Comparing Variation in War across Small and Multi-Mound Centers (2017)
Warfare during the Mississippian Period (ca. AD 1000-1500) of the U.S. Midcontinent and Southeast has been hypothesized as an important political and social practice throughout the region. This paper will explore diachronic and synchronic evidence of warfare, comparing and contrasting evidence between large and small sites. Particular emphasis will be placed on observations of warfare patterns in the Central Illinois Valley of west-central Illinois. Skeletal remains with warfare-trauma have been...
“What Was Our Ancestors’ Pottery Like?” Exploring Ceramic Heritage with the Shawnee Tribe (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part I: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A hallmark of Tom Dillehay’s career is his engagement with local and descendant communities. This is exemplified by his tireless work for the Mapuche, the establishment of anthropology departments throughout South America, and the instrumental role he played in creating the Kentucky Archaeological Survey....
The Wheel of Conflict: Physical and Spiritual Permanence of Mississippian Violence (2017)
Violence in the daily lives of individuals in late prehistoric eastern North America took many forms. Exposure to violence was pervasive and persistent. From the time you were born until the time you died you were a witness, a participant, and possibly a victim. In some instances death was a not release. In the Tennessee Valley of northern Alabama two Mississippian sites, Kogers Island (1LU92) and Perry (1LU25), demonstrate a range of evidence for interpolity violence. Familiar examples of...
When and Where Did They Go? More Fully Conceptualizing Fort Ancient’s Descendants (2018)
There were two distinct cultural systems in a key part of the Fort Ancient region – Anderson and Madisonville – with the general understanding that one changed into the other in situ ca. AD 1400 and then left the region en masse ca. AD 1650, becoming one of several contemporary Central Algonquian tribes. However, new data raise the possibility that this interpretation needs revision. First, through a biodistance analysis we learn that at least some Anderson and Madisonville groups were not...
When is a Living Shoreline Erosion Control Project Suitable to Protect a Coastal Mound Site? Establishing Preliminary Suitability Criteria Based on a Case Study, Adams Bay (16PL8) Mound 1, in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many archaeologists studying coastal archaeological sites are weighing the costs vs. benefits of implementing erosion control structures to protect sites threatened by sea level rise and/or land loss. However, little literature is available about the types and applicability of erosion control structures, such as living shorelines, as protection measures...
Whirlwind of Power: Mississippian Tornado Iconography and Mythology (2021)
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. Mississippian cosmologies were inextricably entangled with the sacred environment and landscape, often materialized through iconographic imagery and motifs. One example of such interwoven relationships may be seen in the imagery of other-than human beings; that is, preternaturals who control and often...
Who Was Where: Georectification and Radiometric Dating of a Mississippian Mortuary Complex (2018)
The Orendorf site is a Mississippian village and mortuary complex located in west-central Illinois. Salvage excavations between 1970 to 1990 have yielded one of the largest and best-preserved skeletal assemblages in the central Illinois River valley. The human skeletal assemblage from the Orendorf site has been ideal for a wide variety of bioarchaeological research, both invasive and non-invasive. Despite the attention given to the individuals, research focusing on the burial contexts and...
Wild and Cultivated Plant Usage of a Late Precontact Site (11S1754) in the American Bottom (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Stemler Site (11S1754), a small Mississippian settlement in the American Bottom, was occupied during the Late Stirling and Early Moorehead Phases (ca. AD 1150-1275), as the population at Cahokia and the broader region was decreasing. It has been theorized that an over-reliance upon maize (Zea mays) led to the dispersal of people from and collapse at...
Women's Networks and the Foundations of Mississippian Politics (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mississippian societies were undoubtedly underwritten by networks of kin, clan, and other social relationships that are difficult to discern in the archaeological record. Structures of social networks provide contexts for social, political, and economic institutions and serve as conduits through...
The Works Progress Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority, and Geophysics: Bringing Together Digital Geophysical Data and Historic Excavation Results for Comprehensive Data Sets (2018)
Under contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), New South Associates, Inc. conducted comprehensive geophysical surveys of five Mississippian sites in the Tennessee River Valley between 2013 and 2017: the Bell Site (40RE1), the Cox Mound (1JA176), Hiwassee Island (40MG31), Ledford Island (40BY13), and Long Island (40RE17). The Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted salvage excavations on all of these sites in the 1930’s and the information available from their notes and limited...