Refining the Chronology of Earthwork Construction in the Lower Mississippi Valley Archaic Period

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The culture history of southeastern North America is characterized by several episodes of monumental mound building, particularly during the Woodland and Mississippian periods. Some of the earliest manifestations of mound construction occur in the Middle and Late Archaic periods of the Lower Mississippi River Valley. The Late Archaic site of Poverty Point stands out as an early location of intensified earthwork construction. With the exception of isolated features, however, the overall chronology of the Poverty Point deposits has not been explicitly modeled. Here, we create a series of Bayesian chronological models for mound and ridge deposits at Poverty Point and other Middle and Late Archaic sites. We produce model-based estimates to help resolve issues related to the overall tempo, ordering, and contemporaneity of earthwork construction in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32825