Examining the Non-Mississippian Southeast: A Comparison of the Intrasite Arrangement of Piedmont Village Tradition Settlements, AD 1200–1600

Summary

Excavations at the Redtail site (31Yd173) have begun to reveal the internal arrangement of a Piedmont Village Tradition (PVT) settlement occupied during AD 1200–1600 in the upper Yadkin River Valley of the western North Carolina Piedmont. Research projects over the last 40 years have established similar information for a small number of settlements in the eastern and central Piedmont of North Carolina and Virginia. This research examines the morphology and spatial patterning of postmolds and pit features at the Redtail site and compares the results to those from sites in the Eno, Haw, and Dan River valleys. The results of this community-level analysis complement my recent regional and sub-regional analyses of settlement ecology by displaying the variability across PVT settlement patterns on multiple scales. This has implications for a number of PVT cultural characteristics and phenomena, including social organization, economic exchange, and political relationships. These results further suggest a need to create a new and more complex model for studying the non-Mississippian, non-hierarchically organized societies and communities of the Late Precontact Southeast.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage