Tracking Population Movement and Interaction in Southern Appalachia: Elemental Analysis of Early Mississippian Pottery from Etowah

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Twenty Years of Archaeological Science at the Field Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Migration, pilgrimage, and other forms of movement and culture contact have long been recognized as important forces of social change. Social interaction among culturally diverse groups has been demonstrated archaeologically as an important causal factor in Mississippian origins throughout the US Southeast and Midwest. Archaeologists have argued that interregional interactions during the eleventh and twelfth centuries CE established important relationships among Native American groups from Southern Appalachia. These far-flung connections are poorly understood but were instrumental in the spread of Mississippian practices and beliefs, eventually leading to the development of hierarchical regional polities such as Etowah in northwestern Georgia. Recent analyses support a scenario in which both local and nonlocal groups were synchronically present at Etowah, with profound changes on sociopolitical relationships across Southern Appalachia. However, it remains unclear if disparate populations permanently or periodically occupied the site. New elemental compositional analysis of Etowah pottery indicates that pottery was made both locally and nonlocally, suggesting that a portion of the population involved in the establishment of Etowah were periodically visiting the site to engaged in ceremonial activities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Twenty Years of Archaeological Science at the Field Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38437.0