Mississippian Warfare and Social Houses

Summary

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.

Within a hundred years of Cahokia’s Big Bang around AD 1050, warfare becomes evident in the construction of defensive structures, especially massive, bastioned palisades. The first of these palisades at Cahokia dates to ca. AD 1135 and stands as the earliest Mississippian fortified community. This signaling of intensive and organized warfare, as opposed to prior episodes of feuding and raiding, marks a dramatic shift in interpolity conflict, social competition, and violence. By AD 1250, multiple towns throughout the Mississippian world increasingly engaged in building defensive berms, moats, and palisades. Escalated violence is also evident in iconography, ritual practice, and skeletal trauma. In this paper I argue that the ascendancy or transformation in Mississippian warfare was due to competition among powerful and wealthy families that constituted noble or social houses. The social house model paves the way for envisioning Mississippian warfare as an outgrowth of dynastic challenges among interconnected families that competed for power, prestige, resources, and wealth.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Warfare and the Origins of Political Control   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35781.0