A Re-Evaluation of Moundville's Collapse

Summary

The disruption of social traditions in ancient societies is often described as the collapse of complexity, but persisting or resilient practices are often ignored, limiting archaeological interpretations of social continuity and change. This paper addresses these historical processes during the terminal occupation of Moundville, a multiple mound Mississippian civic-ceremonial complex occupied from A.D. 1200-1550 and located in west-central Alabama. The collapse of ancient complex societies has been proposed as a process of rapid disintegration of established practices and the loss of vital resources or sociopolitical institutions that maintained social complexity. Sudden shifts in materiality and monumentality during the fifteenth century at Moundville have been proposed as evidence for the collapse of the political order. This paper reevaluates the timing of these changes through Bayesian modeling of radiocarbon dates from stratigraphic mound midden deposits and revisits changes the production and consumption of symbolic art and monumental architecture. This paper demonstrates that while some ritual practices at Moundville changed, others were emphasized, supporting a reorganization of the social and political order around highly visible symbols and ritual objects. This newly observed persistence of materiality and monumentality has implications for shifts in the social reproduction observed in other late prehistoric Southeastern societies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22604