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The investigation of dynamic fully integrated cultural-environmental systems is one grand challenge facing archaeologists in this century. In the Midwest and Southeast United States, archaeologists recently increased their study of Mississippian social systems (ca. AD 1000–1600) in relationship to paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental data. Significant differences in chronological control between archaeological chronologies and paleoenvironmental records pose challenges to the study of cultural-environmental systems in this region and often result in equifinal results. Three major lines of paleoenvironmental records are reviewed: bald cypress tree-ring records, the Living Blended Drought Atlas (LBDA), and lake-bottom sediment cores. The strongest approaches include local and regional multiproxy environmental records from the same location as a well-investigated archaeological site(s) or region(s). In the rare case where the cores also encode a regional population history, it may be possible to develop stronger inferences that consider variation within and between communities and their vulnerability to climate change and environmental catastrophes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the iconography of Mississippian artifacts, highlighting their symbolic language and cultural significance. Topics include the mythology and belief systems of the Mississippian culture, the representation of supernatural beings like the Hero Twins, and the various motifs used in their art, such as petaloid and cross-in-circle designs.

The article focuses on the Ocmulgee National Monument in Georgia, detailing its historical significance and archaeological findings. Topics include the ancient cultures that inhabited the region for over 12,000 years, the similarities between Ocmulgee and the Cahokia site, and the impact of modern development on the preservation of these mounds and earthworks.

This contribution provides a topical view at and review of traditional clay‐based utilitarian cooking pots that were used for millennia to prepare, serve, display, and distribute foodstuff. Key mechanical and thermal properties of ceramic cooking vessels will be discussed and strategies of property optimization outlined. In addition, some important chemical changes food constituents undergo during cooking will be explained. Mass‐produced ancient ceramic cooking pots from Neolithic Mesopotamia have revolutionized the art of cooking by allowing foodstuff to be processed in water. As an example of successfully optimizing the properties of cooking vessels, emphasis is being given to Indigenous prehistoric North American ware of the Mississippian culture (c. 800 to 1600 CE) that show impressively how ancient potters overcame the technological challenges posed by essentially unsuitable smectite‐rich clays with extreme plasticity and high swell–shrink ratio by adding copious amounts of burnt mussel shells as temper material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the author's intriguing discovery of two broken Mississippian celts acquired at an artifact show, which prompted an investigation into their craftsmanship and possible repurposing. Topics include the remarkable condition of the celts despite their breakage, their precise size and intentional design features, and the quality of materials used, highlighting the craftsmanship of the original makers and the practice of re-utilizing tools in prehistoric cultures.

The article focuses on a remarkable discovery of a three-quarter groove axe while artifact hunting in Franklin County, Tennessee, showcasing the author's dedication to archaeology and gaining the landowner's trust. Topics include the site's multi-occupational relics spanning from Paleo to Mississippian periods, challenges faced due to disrespectful artifact hunters damaging crops, and the author's commitment to responsible artifact hunting practices.

The article offers information on engraved tablet that was found several years ago at a Middle Mississippian site located on Jones Creek near its confluence with the Harpeth River in Dickson County, Tennessee. Topics include considered that the engraved slab had been broken and bottom half was recovered, and it was found in three pieces as it acquired artifact from the finder on November 23, 2013.

The article provides an overview of Prehistoric Mississippian picture writing. It mentions about French explorer La Page Du Pratz's writings on intriguing facet of the Mississippians customs and culture which, most likely, would have been lost to the ravages of time. It also informs that Hunkpapa Lakota leader, identified himself in his drawings with the glyph of a bull sitting down with a line attaching his human figure with the glyph.

The article illustrate variances in size, material and the quality of celts found in the southeast, specifically North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia and Kentucky. It mentions about a center celt which is of the Mississippian/Dallas culture and was found on Hiwassee Island. It also mentions about a group of eight celts from sites along the Pigeon River in both Haywood County of western North Carolina and adjoining Cocke County of east Tennessee.

The article presents information on historical Southeastern Council pipes referred to as multistemmed pipes, which date to the Mississippian culture. It mentions various facts about known council pipes, including number of stems, provenience, current curation and dimensions. It highlights Tennessee geographical proveniences.

This research seeks to understand the economic and social interaction patterns among dispersed Piedmont Village Tradition communities in the North American Southeast, AD 1200–1600. Piedmont Village Tradition communities lived adjacent to Mississippian societies and have been categorized as a peripheral society because of this spatial relationship. We examine economic behaviors by constructing fall-off curves of local versus nonlocal lithic material proportions at settlement sites and examining the reduction behaviors and tool types at sites. The results support a possible gateway model for the acquisition and distribution of nonlocal materials that linked spatially proximate communities. To examine social interaction patterns, we conducted a Brainerd-Robinson analysis of ceramic attributes from six sites and combined our results with work by Rogers (1993). The results show sites with stylistic similarities are not the same sites that share lithic resources. We conclude that these spatially non-overlapping artifact patterns result from a heterarchical social organization with a high degree of independence between economic and social interactions. Finally, we contextualize our results within the current knowledge of Mississippian and Piedmont Village Tradition societies in the region to broaden the discussion of gateways in reciprocity-based economies, societies traditionally thought of as peripheral to complex societies, and coalescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My goal with this research is to contribute to our current understanding of how contact with and incorporation into the modern world-system may affect the trajectory of change among indigenous peoples. I do this by examining (1) the nature of social organization among the various peoples known collectively as Mississippians; (2) the processes involved in the supplanting of their political, cultural, and economic structures during the sixteenth-century conquest; (3) the changes that occurred within the precolonial Mississippian cultures following their initial contact with European agents in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries; and (4) the impact of such changes on the Mississippian people’s subsequent integration into the world-system. By expanding our understanding of the process of incorporation and the concurrent structural transformations, I seek to extend Chase-Dunn and Hall’s hypothesis that episodes of incorporation, disintegration, and reincorporation may vary in highly predictable and interrelated ways in “interchiefdom systems as well as interstate systems.”In this essay I employ the methodologies of historical sociology, which are aimed at studying the past to discover how societies operate and evolve. I start from the perspective that we can best understand social change in terms of its historical specificities rather than generalizations that dominate contemporary sociology. I incorporate historical detail gleaned from previously published works from the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and history to develop a detailed explanation of what Peter Peregrine has called the “Mississippian World-System,” the nature of its sixteenth-century contacts with European agents, and the effect of those contacts on the area’s subsequent incorporation into the European world system. When did the Mississippian culture first begin to decline and under what specific conditions? How were these changes related to contact with early European explorers? The Mississippians are a fitting case on which to focus since the North American continent was largely “external” to the modern world-system prior to contact with European explorers in the decades following 1492. By focusing on this episode of incorporation and the associated transformation of the Mississippian system’s social structures and processes, I hope to understand better the dynamics of change that occur when two “worlds” collide.

The prehistoric peoples living along the Georgia coast fabricated and used shell beads for millennia. Out of a number of mollusk species inhabiting the region, only a few were selected for the fabrication of beads. The knobbed whelk (Busycon carica) was the most common species used, and it represents the most common whelk found in Atlantic coastal waters. The lightning whelk (Busycon sinistrum), the second most common whelk in the region, was occasionally used in the production of beads. Small numbers of beads were made from marginella and olive shells and, rarely, from bivalve species. Small beads were manufactured from the body whorl of whelks, while larger beads were fabricated from whelk collumella. Shell beads appear in small quantities in Late Archaic period contexts, and then almost disappear during the Woodland period. Beads reappear in quantities at about AD 800 in the Early Mississippian period. More shell beads have been recovered from Mississippian period archaeological contexts along the northern Georgia coast than along the southern coast, reflective of cultural differences between these two geographic areas in the post-Woodland period era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the US Midwest, the working of marine shell procured through vast trade networks has typically been associated with elite prestige economies and craft specialization at major Mississippian centers. Outside of these contexts, marine shell goods are often assumed to have been brought into communities as completed goods. A recent finding suggests that local, small-scale marine shell working occurred at an early seventeenth-century village in northern Illinois, Middle Grant Creek (11Wi2739). This finding represents the first probable evidence of marine shell working in the Midwest outside of large, Mississippian contexts. Consequently, this practice may be much more geographically and temporally expansive than previously thought. This evidence encourages a rethinking of marine shell finds whenever they are assumed to be imported as finished goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of what is known about the Indigenous city of Cahokia, located in and influential on the North American midcontinent during the eleventh through fourteenth centuries AD, derives from decades of salvage, research, and CRM excavations in the surrounding American Bottom region. We use this robust dataset to explore patterns of building conflagration that suggest these practices of burning were part of pre-Mississippian traditions that were bundled into new Cahokian landscapes during the early consolidation of the city. These bundled practices entangled sources of power that were at once political and religious, thus transforming the practices and meanings associated with terminating building use via fire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pilgrimage instigates relationships between phenomena that produce hierophanies, or sacred, enchanting experiences. In this paper I argue that pilgrimage scholars should focus on the relational qualities of pilgrimage in order to rethink and produce more detailed, sensuous descriptions and analyses of this practice. This can be done by employing “relational approaches,” seen here as perspectives that recognize and prioritize the interconnections among persons, places, things, and substances. I further suggest that focusing on movement, the vitality of places and materials, and the senses is useful in thinking about the relational aspects of pilgrimage. Moreover, archaeologists are well-situated to investigate these phenomena and thus can and should push pilgrimage studies in new directions. I provide a case study of the Emerald Acropolis, an 11th-century Cahokian pilgrimage center. Cahokians traveled to Emerald on certain occasions and, while there, manipulated particular substances—earth and water—in ways that gathered otherworldly powers in affective ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the history of an archaeological finding of a Weatherly monolithic axe. The topics addressed include information on founder of the axe, Raymond L. Weatherly, who was a charter member of the Volunteer State Archaeological Society of Tennessee and details on the dimensions of the axe along with use as sacred ceremonial objects in the Mississippian culture.

This essay argues that recognizing the continued importance of Mississippian societies to Native American peoples in the colonial period offers a more accurate portrait of encounter and exchange than previous interpretive models that overemphasize and misuse the "middle ground" concept put forward by Richard White in the 1980s. By ridding the Mississippian past of its outdated categorization as "prehistory," early American studies may engage in an interdisciplinary, media-based, and intersubjective methodology that will aid in reimagining the traditions of Indigenous peoples in the Americas as a set of ongoing procedures for reconstructing their ever-changing identities as nations within a nation by persistently reassembling the storied practices that have served their communities since long before the first Europeans reached their shores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeologists have long recognized an important relationship between climate change and the trajectory of the Mississippian polity at Cahokia, with twelfth- and thirteenth-century droughts playing a key role in transforming social relationships and the pace of monument construction. This environmental transition may have spurred emigration from Cahokia and surrounding farming communities. This raises the questions: What was the nature of environmental change and cultural transformations on the Mississippian peripheries and where did these Mississippian emigrants go? This paper provides a case study from the Middle Ohio Valley that brings together spatiotemporal patterns in moisture availability between AD 1000 and AD 1300 and new archaeological data from Fort Ancient villages located in southeast Indiana and southwest Ohio that were occupied during this same temporal interval. We suggest that droughts in the American Bottom region pushed Mississippians to less drought-stricken areas such as the Middle Ohio Valley, which experienced concurrent periods of wetness. This pattern builds on a growing body of data suggesting that the movement of individuals and communities played a large role in the process of Mississippianization throughout the midcontinental and southeastern United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over 30 years ago, Kintigh and Ammerman (1982) outlined and applied a heuristic approach to spatial archaeology that balanced quantitative analyses and culturally and historically contextualized archaeology. The theoretical and methodological messages were that we need to do more than “eyeball” spatial patterns, we need to apply the proper analyses based on the characteristics of our datasets, and we need to ensure that our models, quantitative analyses, and resulting interpretations are based in the proper cultural and historical contexts. My goal in this paper is to examine how two of the concepts in this approach, significance and context, apply to a modern spatial archaeology that heavily utilizes geospatial computing tools. Although these tools help to solve several concerns that existed in the field 30 years ago, they can also cause others, such as mistaking autocorrelation for correlation or confusion about which of the multitude of available analytical tools is appropriate for particular questions and datasets. In this paper, I present a simplified version of the methodology I have used to address these concerns. I use archaeological, historical, and GIS-modeled data to compare the regional patterning of hierarchical and egalitarian societies in southeastern North America to examine why hierarchical sociopolitical organizations may have arose where they did. I end with a critical review of this approach and a discussion of how such research can be improved moving forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The King site is a Late Mississippian (ca. 1400–1540 CE) aboriginal town located in northwestern Georgia along the Coosa River associated with the Coosa Chiefdom. The site was settled ca. 1530 but was occupied for perhaps only 50 years or so based on the lack of horizontal stratigraphy. The site was visited by members of either or both the Hernando de Soto expedition in 1540 and/or the Tristan de Luna expedition in 1560. In 1974, archaeologists discovered and removed 36 sections of subterranean charred pine posts from six house features. Our objectives were to determine if the tree rings on these posts could be dendrochronologically dated to verify the dates of site occupation and confirm the construction sequence of several houses determined originally via stratigraphic and archaeological evidence. We were able to graphically and statistically crossmatch 13 measurement series representing 10 posts from 5 of the 6 structures, yielding a 157-year floating chronology (average interseries correlation = 0.60). We were unable to absolutely crossdate this floating chronology with the only regional reference chronology long enough (back to 1378 CE) to reach the 16th century, an eastern red cedar chronology from eastern Tennessee. Archaeological evidence indicated Houses 8 and 23.4 were built later in the King site occupancy, confirmed by the tree-ring dates as both houses have the youngest tree rings of the five structures. House 14 had the oldest outermost tree rings but archaeological evidence suggests this house also was likely constructed late in the King site occupancy. We propose some posts were salvaged and reused from abandoned houses as the King site became rapidly depopulated in the last 10–20 years of site occupancy, thus explaining the age of posts used in House 14. We urge archaeologists working in the Southeastern U.S. to consider developing a more formal process for exhuming and preserving charcoalized wood remains from archaeological sites so that these samples can be evaluated using dendrochronological techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prediction of the geometry and petrophysical properties of dolomite geobodies depends on understanding both the hydrological system supplying reactive fluids and the chemistry of these fluids. However, patterns are complicated by the non-linear response of the diagenetic system to depositional texture, which controls both fluid flux via permeability architecture and reaction rate via effective surface area. This study explores interactions between extrinsic controls (spatial distribution of brine composition and temperature) and intrinsic controls (permeability and reactivity) using local and regional scale reactive transport models of sequential episodes of brine reflux that resulted in partial dolomitisation of the Mississippian Madison ramp. Inter-well scale models show preferential early dolomitisation of fine grained, more reactive beds. Pervasive dolomitisation can occur most readily beneath the brine pool where flow is perpendicular to bedding, and is most rapid at high brine fluxes. Down-dip of the brine pool, bedding-parallel flow is focused in relatively permeable coarse grained beds, providing reactants for strongly preferential alteration of intervening more reactive fine grained beds. In contrast, thicker sequences of fine grained beds dolomitise more slowly, limited by the rate of supply of magnesium. Regional-scale models, with injection of brines of increasing salinity towards the ramp interior, reproduce the observed pattern of dolomitisation. However, more realistic simulations in which reflux is driven by lateral density contrasts, generate flow rates orders of magnitude too low for significant dolomitisation. Simulations suggest pervasive dolomitisation of epeiric-scale ramps by a platform-wide reflux circulation, as often invoked, is not feasible. Rather, dolomitisation of such extensive systems critically requires local-scale flow systems, such as may result from topographically-controlled variations in restriction of platform-top seawater circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Objectives Archaeological dental calculus is a rich source of host-associated biomolecules. Importantly, however, dental calculus is more accurately described as a calcified microbial biofilm than a host tissue. As such, concerns regarding destructive analysis of human remains may not apply as strongly to dental calculus, opening the possibility of obtaining human health and ancestry information from dental calculus in cases where destructive analysis of conventional skeletal remains is not permitted. Here we investigate the preservation of human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in archaeological dental calculus and its potential for full mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) reconstruction in maternal lineage ancestry analysis. Materials and Methods Extracted DNA from six individuals at the 700-year-old Norris Farms #36 cemetery in Illinois was enriched for mtDNA using in-solution capture techniques, followed by Illumina high-throughput sequencing. Results Full mitogenomes (7-34×) were successfully reconstructed from dental calculus for all six individuals, including three individuals who had previously tested negative for DNA preservation in bone using conventional PCR techniques. Mitochondrial haplogroup assignments were consistent with previously published findings, and additional comparative analysis of paired dental calculus and dentine from two individuals yielded equivalent haplotype results. All dental calculus samples exhibited damage patterns consistent with ancient DNA, and mitochondrial sequences were estimated to be 92-100% endogenous. DNA polymerase choice was found to impact error rates in downstream sequence analysis, but these effects can be mitigated by greater sequencing depth. Discussion Dental calculus is a viable alternative source of human DNA that can be used to reconstruct full mitogenomes from archaeological remains. Am J Phys Anthropol 160:220-228, 2016. © 2016 The Authors American Journal of Physical Anthropology Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From AD 1000-1600, the western North Carolina Piedmont was home to both hierarchically organized Mississippian societies and egalitarian Piedmont Village Tradition (PVT) societies. Given the spatial proximity of these groups and evidence of interaction between them, this is a prime area for studying the comparative geography and ecology of middle-range societies (traditionally labeled tribes and chiefdoms). In this work, I analyze regional settlement patterns of and natural landscapes around Mississippian and PVT sites in the Yadkin-Pee Dee and Catawba River valleys using a combination of geographic information systems (GIS) to measure characteristics and discriminant function analysis to compare sites. The goal is to describe and explain the environmental factors that influenced the geographic distribution of sociopolitical complexity in the western North Carolina Piedmont. The site-specific results show clear differences in settlement location choice between Mississippian and PVT settlements. The landscape results show that Mississippian and PVT communities inhabited areas with different resource concentrations, suggesting that ecology played a role in the distribution of complex societies. This work is the first stage of a larger project aimed at understanding why complexity arose and persisted in particular locations throughout the Piedmont Southeast after AD 1000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In later pre-Columbian prehistory (post AD 1000), the adaptation and intensification of maize agriculture and its correlate of aggregate village settlement (i.e. Mississippianization) is temporally and geographically variable. In the Midwest, consequential to the florescence of the major ceremonial centre of Cahokia (AD 1050-1300), the Mississippi River Valley alluvial plain in Illinois, known as the American Bottom, became a core area of this subsistence-settlement change. Much archaeological research has traced aspects of this transition in the Lower and Middle Illinois River Valley, but little is known outside of these areas. A skeletal sample from the remote hinterland area of the Upper Mississippi River in west-central Illinois was examined for arguable paleopathological correlates of sedentism (treponemal disease) and Mississippianization (tuberculosis). The Schroeder Mounds (AD 900-1100) adult skeletal sample ( N = 53) exhibited a high frequency of treponemal disease (13.2-15.1%). This result is consistent with paleopathological literature linking a 9+ % pre-Columbian North American prevalence with sedentism, challenging archaeologically based inferences that the hinterland was occupied by mobile forager-horticulturalists. A hallmark of Mississippianization is the presence of diagnostic cases of tuberculosis. No cases were observed in the Schroeder sample, suggesting a pre-Mississippian subsistence-settlement pattern. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chauga (38OC47) is a mound site now under Lake Hartwell at the head of the Savannah River in Oconee County, South Carolina. Excavations in 1958-1959 by the University of Georgia recovered a Mississippian copper plate. Upon comparison to others of its kind, it is clear that this lesser-known plate encompasses some interesting design features, most notably the presence of the only known depiction of a chunkey stone on copper. We have recently created a more accurate representation of its design. The plate appears to portray many similarities to depictions of Birdman dancers: kilted dancers and dancing elders within the 'Stack' style. Birdman themes are common in Mississippian iconography. Given the importance that copper plates have for interpreting Mississippian art and belief systems, this updated examination provides useful new information for researchers studying Mississippian iconography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Intervention research in rural, health disparate communities presents unique challenges for study design, implementation, and evaluation. Challenges include 1) culturally appropriate intervention components, 2) participant recruitment and retention, 3) treatment cross-contamination, 4) intervention delivery and data collection, and 5) potential measurement reactivity. Purpose The purposes of this paper are to 1) detail the methods of the MCHL study and 2) report baseline demographic characteristics of study participants. The secondary aim is to determine if study participants were engaging in behavior changes after enrollment and prior to intervention initiation. Methods MCHL was developed using the RE-AIM planning and evaluation framework (reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, maintenance). Intervention components were based on Roger's diffusion of innovation attributes that promote adoption of a new innovation as well as on the psychosocial constructs of social support, self-efficacy and decisional balance. Rolling enrollment data collection was used to acquire sufficient sample size and a second data collection just prior to intervention implementation assessed measurement reactivity effects. Participant outcomes included diet quality, blood pressure, weight status, and quality of life. Cluster stratified assignment to one of two treatment arms was utilized to minimize cross contamination. Generalized linear models were used to compare enrollment measures between the two treatment arms while mixed model linear regression was used to test for changes in diet quality outcomes from enrollment to pre-intervention baseline. Results There were no significant differences in participant demographic, anthropometric or clinical measures between the two treatment arms at enrollment. With the exception of total vegetables, none of the diet quality indicators were significantly different between enrollment and baseline timepoints. Conclusions Conducting nutrition intervention research in a rural health disparate region requires flexibility in adapting the recruitment, retention, and data collection procedures while maintaining a high level of scientific rigor. Negligible research participation effects, such as measurement reactivity, were noted in this population. However, further research is needed to identify methods to successfully recruit and retain Caucasian females to participate in community-based nutrition interventions in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ceramic materials from the Lamb site (11SC24) consist of a combination of Bauer Branch Late Woodland and early Mississippian wares. The co-occurrence of Mississippian and Late Woodland ceramic types at the site reveals considerable interaction between these groups. Clearly, Bauer Branch groups persisted longer in the central Illnois River valley than previously anticipated and were strongly influenced by their Mississippian neighbors to the south. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of materials recovered from salvage excavations at the Lamb site (11SC24) in the central Illinois River valley (CIRV) has generated new insight into the Mississippianization of west-central Illinois. The evidence reveals a context of converging but still very much entangled Woodland and Mississippian traditions. The Lamb site residents appear to have been selectively adopting or emulating aspects of Mississippian lifeways, while maintaining certain Bauer Branch traditions during the period of contact with Cahokia Mississippians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]