Early Evidence of the “Mississippianization” of Late Woodland Communities from the Upper Tombigbee River Drainage, Mississippi

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ceramic Petrographers in the Americas: Recent Research and Methodological Advances" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the southeastern United States, the genesis of Mississippian societies circa AD 1000 is often referred as Mississippianization, or the process whereby regions were incorporating general Mississippian traits. This process involved the spread of a broad cultural horizon that influenced many aspects of life, including how people built their homes, ate their meals, buried their dead, and performed acts of worship. While the cause of this phenomenon has been debated over the years, the spread of practices has been suggested to be the result of the introduction of ideas and ways of doing, an influx of migrants, and/or the arrival of traded goods. To date, the spread of Mississippian practices has not been thoroughly examined in the communities of the Upper Tombigbee River drainage in Mississippi and Alabama. To understand the transition in this region, this study aims to investigate the ceramic practices of the preceding Late Woodland (AD 650–1000) period using ceramic compositional analyses, including petrographic and LA-ICP-MS approaches. I use these data to understand ceramic craft production during this period, as well as to analyze any regional craft traditions that hint at the early incorporation of Mississippian practices.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Ceramic Petrographers in the Americas: Recent Research and Methodological Advances   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39655.0