Little Egypt, known more prosaically in Smithsonian nomenclature as 9MU102, is a late Mississippian platform mound and village site located on the Coosawattee River at the mouth of Talking Rock Creek in Murray County, Georgia. It is believed by most scholars to have been Coosa, the capital of the Mississippian chiefdom of Coosa, and visited by the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto in 1539.
Little Egypt lies within a small basin formed by the Great Smoky Fault which separates the Piedmont and Ridge-and-Valley provinces. The basin measures 2.5 x 1.8 kilometers (1.5 x 1.1 miles) and contains two other Mississippian platform mound sites, the Sixtoe Field site (9Mu100) with an Etowah culture mound site built between the 12th and 13th centuries, and the Bell Field site, a Savannah culture site built between the 13th and 14th centuries. The major occupation within the basin and at Little Egypt is Barnett Phase of the Lamar culture, dated to ~AD 1450-1600.
Chronology
- Late Woodland
- Little Egypt phase (AD 1400-1500)
- Barnett Phase (AD 1500-1625)
Excavations at Little Egypt in 1969 revealed two platform mounds--a third was reported by Warren K. Moorehead when he visited in 1925, although it has eroded away since that time. Mound A measured at least 40 square meters (430 square feet) at the base, with an original elevation at least 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) high, although farming and flood erosion have impacted the mound. Mound A was constructed in six building stages, the first of which occurred during the little Egypt Phase. The mound consists of a central rectangular platform with flanking terraces. Large square buildings stood on the central platform and on the terraces.
Mound B, 75 m (246 ft) northwest of Mound A, measured at least 33 m (108 ft) at the base and stood over 2.5 m (8.2 ft) high. Mound B was constructed in two phases, the first of which appears to have been during the Barnett phase, although that is somewhat uncertain. The mounds were likely situated on the north and east sides of a large plaza, measuring 60x105 m (200x345 ft). The mounds and plaza complex were surrounded by a residential zone. Fifty-nine burials were identified within the residential area.
Artifacts
Nearly 4,500 pottery sherds were recovered from the residential structures at Little Egypt, including pieces from bottles, pinched rim jars, Mississippian jars, carinated bowls, rounded bowls, "gravy boat" bowls, and flaring rim bowls. Pottery assemblages include the Lamar culture grit-tempered vessels, accounting for about 75% of the pottery, and shell-tempered Mississippian Dallas and Mouse Creek phases (~25% of the pottery). A Clarksdale hawk bell is evidence of contact with the 16th century Spanish.
Little Egypt and Hernando De Soto
Most scholars today (starting with Hudson et al. 1985) believe Little Egypt is the archaeological remains of Coosa, the capital of the paramount king of the Coosas, which was visited by Hernando de Soto and other explorers of the 16th century. Further, scholars associate sites exhibiting Barnett phase ceramic industry with Coosa's polity, including Etowah, Coosa Country Club, the Johnstone Farm Site, and the Davis Farm Site. Others (e.g. Boyd and Schroedl) remain unconvinced of the attribution, situating the Coosa base at Childersberg, Alabama.
Garcilaso de la Vega, one of the chroniclers of the de Soto expeditions, described the town of Coosa as having three houses elevated on mounds, one of which was taken over by de Soto. European artifacts found at Little Egypt include a distinctive sixteenth-century Nueva Cadiz Plain bead and hawks bells.
Little Egypt was occupied continuously between AD 1400-1600, and intermittently through the 18th and early 19th centuries. The site achieved its greatest size during the Barnett phase (AD 1500-1600), when it was located along hte south bank of Coosawattee River and Talking Rock Creek for some 300 m (~985 ft), covering an area of at least 4 hectares (~10 acres).Archaeology
The Little Egypt site was excavated first by Warren K. Moorehead in 1925, and then by David Hally between 1969 and 1972.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com guide to the Mississippian Culture, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Boyd CC, Jr., and Schroedl GF. 1987. In Search of Coosa. American Antiquity 52(4):840-844.
Hally DJ. 1986. The identification of vessel function: A case study from Northwest Georgia. American Antiquity 51(2):267-295.
Harle MS. 2010. Biological Affinities and the Construction of Cultural Identity for the Proposed Coosa Chiefdom. Knoxville: University of Tennessee.
Hudson C, Smith MT, Hally DJ, Polhemus RR, and DePratter CB. 1985. Coosa: A chiefdom in the sixteenth century southeastern United States. American Antiquity 50(4):723-737.
Hudson C, Smith M, Hally D, Polhemus R, and DePratter C. 1987. Reply to Boyd and Schroedl. American Antiquity 52(4):845-856.
