This research investigates the late Mississippian and protohistoric ceramic chronology and cultural changes in the Lower Tallapoosa and Alabama River Valleys. The study highlights the distinct ceramic traditions present in central Alabama during this period, particularly focusing on the Moundville variant and its influence on local cultural groups. It outlines a transition from earlier Woodland pottery to complex Mississippian ceramic styles and discusses the interaction between various cultural complexes, indicating a significant reorganization of settlement patterns and social structures in response to ecological and political changes.

2014

This article summarizes the results of excavations at Chestnut Lake, a late Mississippian Tinsley Hill phase (cal A.D. 1300– 1450) household located in the lower Ohio River valley. The small portion of the site investigated resulted in the documentation of a rebuilt wall trench structure which appears to have been burned. Analyses of the recovered materials and their spatial relationships allowed the identification of hearth related activity areas inside the structure. No features were identified outside the building, indicating that all related activities were likely conducted inside. The presence of cannel coal celts, galena, non-local cherts, and ceramic ear plugs suggest a higher status family occupied the residence. The relationship of Chestnut Lake to other Tinsley Hill phase occupations in the region is considered.

Southeastern Archaeology, 2002

Explanations of Mississippian origins are sometimes presented as a choice between in situ cultural developments versus population movement. We examine these contrasting perspectives in the context of interaction among three regional populations with disparate material culture traditions and differing degrees of organizational complexity. We argue that population movement was the mechanism that established the initial Mississippian communities in the lower Chattahoochee-Apalachicola region, and subsequent cultural developments among neighboring indigenous populations were influenced by the presence of immigrant settlers. We propose that the different ways in which regional populations responded to interaction across a geographical, cultural, and sociopolitical frontier placed them on divergent paths to Mississippianization. logists thought population movement a capricious historical event rather than a cultural process structured by recurrent principles. Lathrap argued against this perspective, however, and maintained that understanding population movement as a process is as fundamental to cultural evolution as understanding the processes of radiation and drift is to biological evolution. Yet the ecodemographic functionalism of processual archaeology, as practiced over the decades since Lathrap's essay, merely reinforced the barrier between culture history and cultural process. In this article, we examine how these issues have shaped archaeological debates about Mississippian origins in the lower Chattahoochee-Apalachicola River region (Figure 1). The lower Chattahoochee River extends from the Fall Line to the Flint River confluence, south which the river is known as the Apalachicola. In this region, in situ or local cultural development versus One problem currently challenging North American archaeologists is to understand the emergence and spread of the Mississippian cultural phenomenon: the adoption of intensive maize agriculture, hierarchical decisionmaking institutions, and ascriptive ranking. Although regionally diverse in population size and material culture content, Mississippian societies shared many technological, economic, and organizational patterns, and specific ceramic vessel styles, architectural forms, and iconographie imagery had wide geographical distributions. These pan-regional commonalities cannot be explained by reference to local adaptive conditions considered in isolation. Instead, complex historical connections between populations are implicated. In the 1950s, the iconoclastic archaeologist Donald Lathrap, among others, proposed that radiation, drift, and other concepts from biological evolution had useful cultural analogs. Lathrap outlined a process by which populations with successful economic patterns behaved like radiating species in biology (cf. Sahlins and Service 1960). As competing populations with different economic patterns expand their range, "this competition forms the major part of the environment to which a society must adapt" (Lathrap 1976:528). Lathrap posited

Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville., 2005

""The DeArmond mound (40RE12) was initially excavated by WPA investigator John Alden and crew between February 1940 and March 1941 before being inundated by the Watts Bar dam in January of 1942. The site included a pyramidal earthen mound with an adjacent village. The mound was excavated in stratigraphic levels, with cultural material separated by building stages. The ceramic collection from this excavation is used in a study of Mississippian temporal and spatial variation within the eastern Tennessee Valley.The collection is comprised of 22,826 pottery sherds and an additional 22 partial, reconstructed, or whole vessels. Morphological and stylistic analyses of these sherds are combined with mound substructure architecture, and grave associations to delimit the cultural sequence of the mound. Morphological attributes were used in an intra-regional comparison of coeval Mississippian sites from the Chickamauga Basin to elucidate possible spatial variations in ceramic morphology. Early Mississippian Hiwassee Island Phase traits characterize the lower mound levels (H through E), while Dallas Phase cultural traits are found in the upper levels (C through A). Based on these characteristics, the DeArmond mound is a multi-component Mississippian site. Intra-regional comparisons with the Hiwassee Island (40MG31), Hixon (40HA3), and Dallas (40HA1) sites in the Chickamauga Basin display similarities between the ceramic assemblages. Differences between the Chickamauga Basin sites and DeArmond are found in ceramic surface decoration, mound architecture, and grave associations.""

The Mazique site (22Ad502), in Adams County, Mississippi, is believed to have been occupied during both the Coles Creek (A.D. 700-1000) and Mississippi periods (A.D. 1000-1680). However, Ian W. Brown (2007) has suggested that mound building at Mazique was primarily a result of Plaquemine activity. This thesis presents new evidence suggesting that mound construction at Mazique occurred primarily during the Coles Creek period and that the Plaquemine presence here during the Mississippi period has been overestimated. The larger implications of these conclusions are that the construction, arrangement, and use of flat top mounds and plaza complexes was an indigenous development of the Coles Creek period in the Natchez bluffs region as it was in the greater Lower Mississippi Valley, and that the characterization of the Plaquemine culture as a hybridization of Coles Creek and Mississippian cultures should not be discarded as a theory of cultural interaction in the region.

Mississippian Settlement Patterns, 1978

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the Mississippian settlement patterns in southwestern Indiana. Willey's Viru Valley study and Winters' Wabash Valley study have demonstrated the value of settlement pattern data for facilitating inferences about the character of prehistoric society and culture that are not readily observable in archaeological record. Archaeological research spanning 80 years can be brought together to describe the areal settlement patterns of two Mississippian phases in the Ohio River Valley of southwestern Indiana and the adjacent portions of Kentucky: the Angel phase and the Caborn–Welborn phase. Special problems that are discussed in the chapter include (1) the question of the ethnicity of the late prehistoric–protohistoric Caborn–Welborn phase; (2) the strength and nature of the relationship that existed among the five large village sites of the Caborn–Welborn phase; (3) the continuity or discontinuity that existed between the Caborn–Welborn and Angel phase occupations; and (5) the relationship of the Angel phase to the Yankeetown phase and the nature of the initial Mississippian emergence in the study area.

The recovery of anomalous (red-slipped, shell/grog/sandstone-tempered) pottery from three sites in the Upper Mississippi Valley (UMV) prompted a petrographic analysis of thin sections of 21 vessels from these sites. The goal was to evaluate their possible derivation from the American Bottom, the nearest locality where such pottery commonly occurs. Among the 12 UMV vessels tempered with shell (nine red slipped), ten were determined, based on comparisons to thin sections of styl istically similar pottery from the American Bottom, to have essentially identical physical compositions. Additionally, four vessels suspected of being limestone-tempered were determined to have been tempered with a type of sandstone that outcrops only farther south in Illinois and Iowa. Of the three UMV sites, only the Fisher Mounds Site Complex (FMSC) produced the presumed exotic pottery in undisturbed, dated contexts. The petrographic evidence is consistent with the C-14 age and lithic assemblage at FMSC in suggesting an actual influx of people from the American Bottom into the UMV. The time of this influx, the Edelhardt phase of the Emergent Mississippian/Terminal Late Woodland period, ca. cal A.D. 1000-1050, is earlier than previously believed, i.e., precedes the main Mississippian period in the American Bottom.

Geoarchaeology-an International Journal, 2006

The Nolan site (16MA201), 14 C dated 5200-4800 cal yr B.P. and located in the Tensas Basin of northeastern Louisiana, is the only recorded Middle Archaic mound site in the alluvial valley of the Mississippi River. Alluvial deposition has buried the Nolan site under 3-4 m of Holocene sediment, prohibiting traditional excavation of the site. Because data are unattainable by other means, soil coring and subsequent stratigraphic and sedimentological analyses permit reconstruction of the natural and cultural depositional history of the Nolan site. The sedimentary characteristics of basal deposits within cores suggest the presence of an Arkansas River paleochannel immediately adjacent to the site. Chronostratigraphic data show this channel was no longer active by ca. 5200 cal yr B.P. Contrary to existing models, the Arkansas River Meander Belt 4 and the Mississippi River Meander Belt 4 are not the same age. Microartifact and losson-ignition analyses of sediment identify natural versus cultural strata and permit the identification of artificial constructions-including four earthen mounds and one earthen ridge-at the Nolan site. Overbank sediments attributed to a mapped Mississippi River Stage 4 meander belt are dated ca. 4800-3800 cal yr B.P. This age is considerably younger than previous estimates and demonstrates the existing chronological models for Mississippi River meander belts must be carefully assessed. Core analyses also reveal flood-related crevasse splays deposited throughout the Tensas Basin after the occupation of the Nolan site. These deposits serve as relative chronological indicators and aid in stratigraphic assessments of the Nolan site. Reconstruction of the earthworks and their stratigraphic context reveals one of the largest and earliest Middle Archaic mound sites in North America.

Center for Archaeological Studies, Archaeological Monograph 14, 2018

The most important outcome this Phase III archaeological mitigation project was the discovery and documentation of extensive and elaborate water management features at 1MB510. Geoarchaeological, botanical, and microbotanical studies of the evidence from the very large Feature 3 ditch and associated ditches and berms revealed the presence of late colonial fields for maize and rice. The importance of wet rice cultivation to colonial Mobile, and indeed to the entire colonial South, has not yet received the attention it deserves from historians and archaeologists. This discovery at 1MB510 is an important step in raising awareness of the connections between colonial-era farming and the important role played by enslaved West Africans in eighteenth-century American Gulf Coast history.

Journal of Alabama Archaeology, 2014

Handbook of Alabama's Prehistoric Indians and Artifacts, Second Edition, 2019

Second Edition This book is an introduction and guidebook to stone and pottery artifacts found in Alabama that were made by pre-contact American Indians. There is a focus on temporally diagnostic projectile points and pottery. The intended audience is the archaeological novice, though information presented is data-based, and fully cited. In addition to text by Johnson, sections are written by archaeologists (Ian Brown, Ashley Dumas, Steven Meredith, and Teresa Paglione) with expertise on pertinent topics. ISBN-13: 9780999383063

Tennessee Archaeology 6(1-2):149-163, 2012

Although the Beasley Mounds site (40SM43) has been known since the early nineteenth century, only brief antiquarian notes and limited collections have been available to evaluate its relationship to the Middle Cumberland culture sites of the Central Basin. As part of the on-going efforts of the Middle Cumberland Mississippian Survey to refine the boundaries and chronology of the region, we directed a small-scale mapping and excavation project at Beasley Mounds in early 2008. Resulting ceramic samples suggest that the site residents were more closely affiliated culturally to those of the upper Cumberland and East Tennessee than to their nearer neighbors to the west. A single radiocarbon date from platform mound construction at the site suggests that it served as a socio-political center contemporaneous with those at the nearby Castalian Springs and Sellars sites to the west and south -- but was occupied by people whose material culture was (ethnically?) distinct from those to the west and south and more closely related to those from the east and north.

Southeastern Archaeology, 2017

Investigations at the Carson site (22CO505), located in Coahoma County, Mississippi, have uncovered data on the development of a large Mississippian mound center dating to the period from A.D. 1200 through European contact. Recent sediment coring, excavation, artifact analyses, and radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating shed light on earthworks and household structures at Carson, and on Mississippian culture in the Yazoo Basin more generally. Sediment coring demonstrates a laterally transgressing Mississippi River system deposited coarse sandy ridges and clay-filled swales underneath a surface horizon comprised of variously coarse to medium-fine sediment originating from generalized overbank flooding. In some instances, flood-borne sediments were found on mound flanks, indicating that at times river-based flooding may have interrupted mound construction. Sediment coring and trench excavation also demonstrate that Carson’s Mound D was built in four stages, with Stages II and III comprising the major stages of earth moving. Excavations on the mound summit reveal evidence of several superimposed structures that were burned in place and likely used for the production of stone, shell, and wooden craft items, perhaps related to Mississippi Ideational Interaction Sphere (MIIS) paraphernalia. Here we describe recent investigations at Carson and present preliminary findings; forthcoming publications will emphasize strategies of power, monumentality, craft production, and Mississippian exchange systems.

2018

The Mississippian time period is marked by cultural changes that occurred at the end of the Late Woodland period and generally concludes with European contact (A.D. 900-1600). Below is a summary of trends and characteristics from historical accounts and archaeological data of the Savannah River valley and beyond. Stratified Societies Evidence of stratification is seen in mortuary practices, specifically through grave goods, architecture, artifact types and materials, and skeletal remains. Anderson provides summary data for sites in the Savannah River valley showing burials in the mounds, while in the habitation areas they are usually under the domestic structure (Haven Home, Irene, Chauga, Beaverdam Creek, Hollywood, Rucker's Bottom, I.C. Few) (1994: 315). At Beaverdam Creek, Chauga, and I.C. Few, burial trends include a higher number of females buried in the habitation areas when compared to mound burials (Anderson 1994: 314). In addition, mound burials contained a higher number of grave goods with a higher proportion of these burials being male when compared to burials in the habitation areas (Anderson 1994: 314). Skeletal remains typically show that healthier individuals were interred in mounds when compared with the individuals interred in habitation areas (Anderson 1994: 314-316). These trends likely indicate a two-tier socio-political system with males as figureheads who had access to grave goods and culturally significant architecture (e.g. mounds). Platform mounds typically contain summit structures thought to be elite residences (Wood 2009: 1-5). These rectangular earthen mounds rise high above the ground surface physically and metaphorically separating the ruling party or chief from the remaining population. Usually accompanied by a habitation area and a large cleared and cleaned public gathering area, also known as a plaza, mound construction requires high energy costs and social organization (Hally 2006: 26). Rituals and beliefs are intertwined with this socio-political system, binding the nucleated mound sites with the smaller dispersed sites, subsequently confirming and supporting the elite. For example, Emerson discusses the dualistic nature of beliefs displayed in symbolic architecture and artifacts of power, such as mounds, vessels, and figurines at 20 Cahokia and the surrounding areas (1997). These symbols of power and stratification can also be seen at the smaller, dispersed sites, but at a smaller scale when compared to the larger nucleated mound sites. Emerson discusses how symbols of power created a "functional political unit whose internal cohesiveness may have been encouraged by kin ties as well as by the presence of elite control of supernatural and natural resources (1997: 249-250)." Domestic architecture reflects status through size and location comparable to other structures at the same site. For example, larger structures closer to or on the mound, partitioned by a wall or palisade, or isolated from other structures indicate differential status. Structures inhabited by the non-elite were usually similar in size and construction (Steere 2017). These structures were usually located in a particular area of the site, segregated from the larger buildings. Steere states that domestic structures are "usually constructed by social groups larger than households," indicating that evidence for socio-political organization (e.g. social stratification) is also seen at the household level (2017: 179). Domestic-related rituals and ceremonialism are also seen in house characteristics such as orientation, size, and shape as well as the presence of a certain number of posts, hearth, and types of artifacts (Steere 2017: 111). These kinds of patterns "may symbolically represent sacred locations or be models of cosmography" (Gougeon 2002: 78). Artifacts are often classified as domestic or ritualistic/ceremonial. Typical domestic artifacts include projectile points/knives (PP/Ks) and other functional tools (e.g. axes, scrapers, drills, needles), pottery, and debitage from stone tool and pottery production. These artifacts can illustrate gendered activity areas, such as male flint knapping and female pottery-making areas (Gougeon 2002: 79-80, Steere 2017: 112). Ritualistic and/or ceremonial items more elite in nature are typically made with ornate designs/carving from materials such as bone, clay, copper, or shell. These items can include effigy pipes, figures, and bowls, gorgets, beads, and elaborate pottery (King 2007). Some are religious in nature and are associated with the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC), where these items were traded and Horticulture and domesticated crop varieties became more intensive and culturally important through time beginning in the Late Woodland period and culminated in use and importance during the Middle to Late Mississippian period (Anderson 1994: 317-322). The three main crops or the "three sisters" include corn, beans, and squash most likely grown by techniques like slash and burn in the floodplains. Other important crops include pumpkin, marsh elder, gourd, and sunflower (Smith 1978, Bowne 2013). Sites in the Savannah River valley (Rucker's Bottom, Clyde Gulley, and Beaverdam Creek) display evidence of corn and gourd (Anderson 1994: 228-230, 317-322). Another site in Coastal Plain South Carolina, 38BK235, also shows evidence of corn (Brooks et al. 1984). These sites display similar hunting and gathering practices and contain a wide variety of exploited resources, with less reliance on cultigen crops as evident in the flora specimens. Subsistence data not only shows what people ate and how they lived but sometimes exhibits evidence of social stratification and tribute activities. Rucker's Bottom, discussed previously, displays the intensive use of corn between A.D. 1200 and 1300, with a decline around A.D. 1400 likely due to a poor growing season (Anderson 1994: 319). A highly diversified subsistence strategy remained important from A.D. 1200 through A.D. 1400. But based on skeletal analysis, this evidence of a rich and diversified diet was not evident in the skeletal remains dating between A.D. 1200 and 1300 (Anderson 1994: 318-322). Anderson suggests that most of the corn was grown as a tribute to the political center during A.D. 1200-1300, contributing to the skeletal stress of the inhabitants (1994: 319). However, skeletal remains dating from around A.D. 1400 did not show any evidence of skeletal stress, suggesting that resources no longer left the site as tribute (Anderson 1994: 318-322). Social stratification and tribute activities can also be seen from A.D. 1200 to 1300 through the absence of hindquarter cuts of meats, with the presence of these prime cuts of meats reappearing around A.D. 1400 (Anderson 1994: 318-322). Anderson concludes that tribute practices likely occurred early on in the founding of the subservient Rucker's Bottom site (A.D. 1200-1300), with the site increasing in socio-political significance later on (around A.D. 1400), no longer required to contribute their resources to the political center (1994: 318-322).

Geophysical investigations at the Cox site (1JA176) provided new insight into feature patterning, site structure, and community organization of the Mississippian component. Results indicate previous WPA excavations of the mound, two plazas, multiple domestic structures, possible public buildings, and a large ditch system. Prior to the geophysics survey, only the mound was known in detail. These results were compared to similar sites in eastern Tennessee and northern Georgia. We argue that the Mississippian component at the Cox site was a well organized community that dated to the late Crow Creek phase and is contemporaneous with the Dallas, Mouse Creek, and Lamar cultures in the region.

1983

: Data recovery to mitigate construction impacts was accomplished by the University of West Florida's Office of Cultural and Archaeological Research at four sites in the canal section of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. Large scale excavations conducted at the Beech and Oak sites, 22It622 and 22It624, producted a wealth of information on the preceramic Late Archaic occupations of these two sites, as well as their other prehistoric components. With some engineering to permit similar large scale excavations below the water table, investigations at the Hickory site, 22It621, yielded evidence of Early Archaic habitation in the buried paleosol, as well as later components above it. At a site with predominantly late prehistoric cultural deposits, 22It606, the many features excavated provided unusual evidence of Late Woodland/Mississippian ceramic and subsistence systems, as well as similar activities of earlier and later peoples. All four sites inves...

Mississippian Beginnings, edited by Gregory Wilson. University of Florida Press, Gainesville, 2017

2012

Tennessee Archaeology 2(1) pp. 19–31, 2006

The Nashville office of TRC, Inc. conducted archaeological excavations and geoarchaeological deep testing at prehistoric site 40DR226 during the summer of 2004. This site, located along the Tennessee River in Decatur County, yielded intact and deeply stratified midden deposits along the top bank of the Tennessee River. Radiocarbon dates and recovered artifacts indicate the site was occupied between the Middle Archaic and Mississippian periods (ca. 8000–400 BP). A sequence of ceramic sherds associated with the Late Gulf Formational, Copena, and Miller III ceramic traditions (spanning the period ca. 2250–950 BP) are of particular interest.

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