The Return of the Large Enigmatic Pit: Investigating Off-Mound Areas at Pumpkin Lake

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Pumpkin Lake (22JE517) mound in the Natchez Bluffs region of southwestern Mississippi was excavated as part of the Mississippi Mound Trail project in 2013. The single mound was determined to have been constructed during the Middle Woodland and early Late Woodland periods (AD 200–750). During the summer of 2022, we returned to assess the extent of non-mound deposits at the site. Systematic surface collections and shovel testing determined artifact densities across the site, and magnetic gradiometry identified a variety of interesting anomalies. Excavation of one of these anomalies revealed an extremely large, pre-contact pit feature similar to those identified at the nearby Feltus site (22JE500), which was heavily utilized between AD 700–1200. Structural comparisons of these enigmatic features suggest tantalizing possibilities regarding connections across both space and time in the Natchez Bluffs and add important data to the ongoing debate about the function and meaning of these large pits to pre-contact people.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37111.0