The Mississippian Culture
With the inception of the Mississippian Period, a new way of life began which embraced new kinds of technology and a new relationship to the environment. The widespread adoption of maize provided a new food source and a shift from a focus on the Ohio to a focus on the Mississippi River basin itself. Cultures with Mississippian characteristics began to flourish in the Mid-South around A.D. 800 or 900, and peaked around A.D. 1200 to 1500.During the Mississippian period, towns increased in size. These cities were, we theorize, the centers of government and religious life. Most Mississippian period towns were built around a central plaza and included one or more large, flat-topped mounds. These mounds were used as a base, or substructure, for temples and houses for the elite members of the community.
Plazas provided a large, central, open space for ceremonial and social events. The commoners' lives were led by powerful chiefs and priests who, it is presumed, controlled trade, made alliances with neighboring towns, or waged war. Many of the large Mississippian mound centers were fortified by earthen embankments and ditches. These features are barely visible in many places today, because of plowing and development.
By A.D. 1250 a political system had come into being and was composed of sites which included the previously mentioned civic-ceremonial center with mounds, associated with palisaded villages, surrounded by dispersed farmsteads. Wattle and daub wall trench houses developed but were not widespread.
Above-ground storage probably developed during this period in order to protect surplus foods from small animals. Pottery was fairly standardized and well made. A variety of effigy and painted vessel forms were being produced but were still largely restricted to ceremonial-burial use.
The Late Mississippian Period
At major sites during the Late Mississippian period, highly distinctive
artifacts were deposited in burial mounds. These artifacts were the symbolic
of a religious cult in which the chiefly elite were apparently the leading
participants. Among these "Southern Ceremonial Complex" objects were
axes with the head and shaft carved from a single piece of stone; polished or
chipped stone batons or maces; copper pendants decorated with circles or
weeping eyes; shell gorgets depicting woodpeckers, rattlesnakes or spiders;
pottery vessels decorated with circles, crosses, hands, skulls, rattlesnakes,
flying horned serpents, and feathered serpents; copper plates and engraved
shell cups portraying male figures (perhaps warriors, or shamans, or deities)
wearing eagle or falcon costumes and sometimes carrying a baton in one hand
and a trophy head in the other.
Photo by J. G. Braecklein, 1936) |
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Some of the evidence suggests that warfare increased between Mississippian societies during this time. Some theorize that this was due to an increase in competition for scarce agricultural land among growing populations but that is a theory that assumes societies are driven by a form of economic determinism and a kind of darwinian competition.
Archaeologically an increase in warfare is evident in several ways. For example, many Mississippian sites were fortified with palisades, skeletons with imbedded arrowheads have been uncovered, and there are numerous portrayals in Mississippian artwork of scalping or beheading as well as severed trophy heads.
Decoration of the hair may have been more important in this period. Tubular beads made of bone, copper, and conch-shell are found more frequently at sites. Bone fishhooks were in existence long before this Late period but at this time became fairly common.
When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Southeast in the mid 1500's, the Mid-South region had largely been abandoned. It was formerly believed that the desertion of the Mississippian centers had been the result of a population loss due to the introduction of European diseases. However, as radiocarbon dates have since made clear, the decline in population began more than a century before Europeans set foot in the region. To date, the Mississippian decline has not yet been satisfactorily explained.
See Mississippian Art site for additional images
Cahokia in western Illinois.
One of the largest sites is Cahokia in Illinois part of a complex centered on a stretch of river known as the American Bottom.
The site is the largest and most sophisticated prehistoric Indian city north of Mexico. At its zenith, A.D. 1050-1150, population estimates range from 8000 to 40,000 inhabitants, though the most constant figure is 20,000. In its day, Cahokia was a major trading center, whose influence extended throughout much of North America. The city covered roughly six square miles, only part of which can be seen today.
The people of this area were known as Mississippians and they built as many as 120 earthen mounds in this vicinity. The part of the mounds made from dirt were dug with tools of stone, wood or shell, and transported on people's backs in baskets to the mound site...very hard work indeed! The digging left large depressions called borrow pits, which can still be seen. Experts believe most of the mounds were built in several construction stages.
Cahokia was laid out in neat rows with a ceremonial central plaza featuring "stepped" pyramid temples. At the heart of the central plaza was Monks Mound. Monks Mound, named for French Trappist monks who farmed its terraces in the early 1800s, is the largest Indian mound north of Mexico. It's also considered the largest prehistoric earthen construction in the New World. At 100 feet tall, the four-tiered platform was probably built in stages over a period of 300 years. Its base covers more than 14 acres. A large building sat atop Monks Mound, where archaeologists speculate the principal ruler may have lived, conducted ceremonies and governed the city below. However there is little evidence to sustain the speculation.
Surrounding Monks Mound were once hundreds of smaller burial, boundary and minor ceremonial mounds. Some were flat-topped, others conical and the some ridge-shaped. Of these, only about 80 remain today. The others were victims of the urban progress and farming.
One of the most interesting features of Cahokia is a reconstructed sunrise horizon calendar, known as "Woodhenge" because its astronomical function was similar to that of Stonehenge in England. The circle consists of 48 large cedar posts arranged in a 410 foot diameter circle around a central observation post. This calendar marked the seasons and important dates for the ancient Cahokians. Evidence suggests there were four other similar "calendars" at this site.
