The Temporal Distribution and Duration of Mississippian Polities in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee

To aid our understanding of prehispanic social change in a subcontinental context, this article presents data and analysis relating to the occupational histories of 351 Mississippian platform mound sites in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Based on the premise that sites with platform mounds served as the administrative and ritual centers for Mississippian polities, our study demonstrates that polities in the study area rose and fell with some regularity, and in many cases, new polities succeeded old ones in the same locations. Our work expands on a previous analysis of 47 northern Georgia area sites. Through a theoretical framework tailored for macroregional processes and a rule-based approach in collecting and standardizing data from previous work, this study serves as an example for incorporating different processes and regions to provide a more coherent and complete picture of the Mississippian macroregion. Our results show that polity cycling was typical in our study area, and we argue that the rise and fall of polities is best described within a theoretical framework emphasizing collapse and resilience. By treating collapse as a normal feature of Mississippian polities, we can better understand the interconnectedness of Mississippian polities across regions.

The Built Environment

The most intensively studied societies within Southwest archaeology—the Ancestral “Pueblos”—have been defined by their architecture. Stark village ruins of stone and adobe, some perched high in cliff settings, dot much of the region and are today its major tourist attractions. But as this chapter demonstrates, the architecture and built landscapes of the greater Southwest were vastly more diverse, ranging from the ephemeral wikiup-like structures of early hunter-gatherers, to the various pithouse forms and configurations of the Archaic and later periods, to the monumental trincheras, ball courts, and platform mounds of the southern Southwest, to the great kivas, great houses, and road systems of the Chacoan world. This chapter surveys that diversity and considers the way the built environment has been mobilized as evidence to make claims about social and political organization, religion practice, cosmology, mobility, and scale of collective labor projects within studies of ancient Southwest communities.

Fort Walton Mississippian Beginnings in the Apalachicola–Lower Chattahoochee River Valley of Northwest Florida, Southwest Georgia, and Southeast Alabama

In the Apalachicola-lower Chattahoochee River valley, new data reaffirm a relatively seamless Fort Walton emergence from resident late Weeden Island groups circa A.D.900-1000 that was characterized by blending external Mississippian influences with local traditions. Check-stamped and other Woodland ceramics continued as Mississippian forms were adopted, but in non-shell-tempered wares. Maize was grown inland but agriculture may not have developed along the coast. Platform mounds were built and Woodland mound centers were reoccupied. Taken together, these data suggest that Fort Walton beginnings here involved negotiations between maintaining local identity and incorporating outside Mississippian practices.

Arizona Salado turquoise: source studies with proton-induced X-ray emission and X-ray diffraction

We compare the composition of turquoise source materials from Arizona to prehistoric blue-green stone artifacts recovered from Salado platform mounds (ca. AD 1275-1450) in the Tonto Basin of Central Arizona. Turquoise samples from known source areas in Arizona including Kingman, Castle Dome, in the Globe- Miami area are compare with others that may have been potential sources of turquoise artifacts recovered from the Salado platform mounds. The complementary techniques of proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) for chemical analysis and X-ray diffraction (XRD) for mineralogical signatures are used for nondestructive characterisation of both source area samples and archaeological artifacts. The results of the source area sample characterisations are compared quantitatively with the results of archaeological samples, which are evaluated in terms of their likelihood of being from each of the regional sources. The combination of mineralogical and chemical data to identify source materials provides a more thorough identification of the complex variations within turquoise related materials that may not be distinguished by visual inspection. The PIXE and XRD analysis are compared using a set of multivariate statistics including principal components analysis and discriminant analysis. Additionally, a set of Munsell colour charts specifically for the blue-green range of colours is used to objectively qualify colour in comparison to chemical and mineralogical signatures, as colour alone is not a reliable indicator of composition. The results provide objective data to assess directionality of procurement of turquoise and regional social and economic ties to better understand Salado regional connections during this dynamic period in the American Southwest.

Sociopolitical Implications of Mississippian Mound Volume

Variation in the scale of Mississippian mound building is an important measure of regional settlement hierarchies. However, factors thought to determine the size of platform mounds are subject to two contradictory interpretations. Mound volume is said to result from either the duration of mound use or the size of the labor force recruited by leaders for mound construction. To evaluate these competing propositions, a sample of excavated mounds is examined and four variables are recorded for each mound: a mound volume index, the duration of mound use, the number of construction stages, and the number of mounds at the site. The relationships among these variables are summarized, and the relative merits of the two competing interpretations are assessed. It is concluded that not all of the variation in mound volume can be explained by duration of use, that additional factors must be considered, and that the social context of mound construction probably differed at large multiple-mound sites and smaller mound sites.