Ritual Landscapes of the Lower Mississippi Valley: The Marksville Archaeological Project

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV) has a long history of monumentality, with early examples of monumental earthworks confidently dated to the Middle Archaic (6000 – 3000 BC) and Late Archaic (3000 – 1000 BC) periods, and other mounds dating to Woodland (after 1000 BC) and Mississippi (after AD 1200) periods. The Middle Woodland-period Marksville mound site (AD 1 – 350), located in central Louisiana, is associated with the Hopewell Interaction Sphere, connecting Marksville to Hopewell ceremonial centers in the Ohio Valley and elsewhere in eastern North America. This paper will provide a comparative site layout analysis of Marksville to the earlier monumental site of Poverty Point (16WC5) and the Marksville period site of McGuffee (16CT17), along with comparisons to Hopewell "core" sites of the Hopewell Mound Group (33RO27) and High Banks Works (33RO24). This extensive comparative analysis provides an opportunity for examining the manifestation of long-distance communication and exchange from the perspective a site within a particular historical trajectory of monumental construction. This will contribute to the understanding of the degree of influence of Hopewell ceremonialism on the design and construction of the Marksville site within the context of the long history and presence of monumental constructions within the LMV.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41701.0