Life on the Margins: Eastern Oklahoma’s Arkansas Drainage between 1300 and 1500 CE

Summary

Beginning around 1100 CE, residents of the eastern Oklahoma Arkansas River drainage built mounds, shared elaborate mortuary rituals, and on some level participated in a maize-based agricultural system. These aspects of the broader Mississippian pattern were centered at Spiro Mounds. Beginning in 1300 CE, people began abandoning the mound sites on the margins of the Southern Plains. As climate conditions worsened in the fifteenth century, the residents of the Arkansas drainage adopted Plains Village strategies, including bison hunting. The emergence of this new way of life coincided with the widespread collapse of Mississippian polities in the east.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21490