Mississippians are what archaeologists call the people of the vast precolumbian culture who lived in the United States midwest and southeast between about 1100-1500 AD.
- Read more about the Mississippian Culture
Mississippian Settlements
Mississippian settlements were of a variety of sizes, from small seasonal farming hamlets to small villages to mound centers, which were homes to up to 500 individuals, including a chief and his family. The one exception is Cahokia, which had an estimated population of 20,000 at its heyday. The other mound center capitals had similar structures and layouts to Cahokia, but on a much smaller scale.
The typical Mississippian community was situated within the floodplains of fairly large-sized rivers, or adjacent to lakes, where open water was bordered by forest land. Such places offered a wide variety of natural resources: forestland deer, rabbits, and a wide variety of plants; and fish, shellfish, waterfowl and turtles. In addition, the floodplain gave the horticulturalists flat, arable land on which to plant and cultivate a wide range of crops.
Dining ala Mississippian
Crops planted by Mississippian farmers were dominated by maize. Maize was a relatively new crop to the midwest and southeast, and although it had a high food content and could be easily stored, it required a lot of tending. Other plants had a longer history with the early Americans, including marshelder, sunflower, chenopodium, smartweed and squash. Domestic animals are limited to dogs and turkeys.
- Read more about the Eastern North American Neolithic
Cooking methods included boiling, frying fritters and greens in animal fat, baking corn meal bread, parching corn, peahulls and nuts, preparing soups and stews, and processing hominy into corn soup and breads. Oil was made from heating animal flesh and boiling nuts and sunflower seeds. Bread was made from corn, sunflower, bean and chestnut meal, cooked as dumplings or thin cakes and as loaves baked in ash-filled ovens. Acorns were processed to remove the tannic acid.
Drinks consumed by Mississippian peoples of the time include those made from honey locust pods, sassafras roots, grapes, and peppermint leaves. Black drink, made from the leaves of Ilex vomitoria, was made for ritual use.
Meals were served at various times of the day, and generally served from communal pots and eaten with the fingers. Serving vessels were made from pottery, wood, gourd and shell; wooden platters in particular were used at feasts.
Drums were made by stretching animal skins over pottery jar mouths; native dyes were manufactured from various plants. Fire was sometimes transported in pots, and tobacco was burned in earthen incense burners.
Architecture
Regular houses were typically rectangular (some were circular or ovoid) and built of posts placed in wall trenches along the edges of shallow basins. Most had a prepared floor, and the walls were plastered with daub cladding. Most houses had centrally located hearths, and they likely represented homes for nuclear families.
Settlements were protected from attack by excavating a ditch and placing a stockade or palisade line--a tall solid fence of posts--in the bottom. Typically, the river or lake protected one side, while the palisaded ditch curved in a oval or D-shape, protecting the platform mounds and plaza and at least some of the burials and houses. Some of the palisade walls included regularly-placed bastions, angular projections in the wall which allowed bow-wielding archers the ability to shoot in two directions.
Mounds and Plazas
Platform mounds are the defining feature at Mississippian mound centers. Typically, they were low earthen constructions that were when first built approximately three meters (10 feet) high, but have since been eroded to no more than 1 m (3 ft). These are generally 10-20 m (30-60 ft) across, and often were capped by large wooden structures. Many mounds were started by stacking turf blocks: investigations at Cahokia suggest they were constructed in ritually-significant ways (see Sherwood and Kidder).
- Read more about mound construction
Other mounds which occasionally are found at Mississippian sites are ridge-shaped or effigy mounds, circular to round topped burial mounds and multi-level long rectangle and conical mound. The function of these mounds varied from region to region: in some areas, these were used as communal or elite burials, in others they held ritual functions, and in still others they held residential structures for the paramount chiefs.
Most Mississippian mound centers also had a central plaza, a large open space bounded by the largest platform mounds. Some of these contained storage pits, some held burials, some held one or two ceremonial function structures. Often a large post was placed in the center of the plaza. Plazas were used for some type of public function: feasts, staged ceremonies, keeping captured enemies: the central post or posts may have had a solar alignment function as well.
Craft Specialization
Mississippian crafts including manufacturing copper elements from raw nuggets procured from southeastern or Great Lakes sources. Copper working including hammering and annealing to form the nuggets into flat sheets or foil, which was then molded, embossed, perforated, riveted or subjected to other mechanical techniques to produce decorative copper plating.
Ceramic pottery was hand-thrown, built up from coils, and tempered with sand or crushed and burnt clamshell. Decorative techniques common on Mississippian sites include rows of punctates, lines or dimples, and painted swastikas and scroll designs. Common forms of pottery are bottles or gourd shapes (often painted to look like gourds), hooded bottles, jars or "kettles" with handles, bowl shapes and bowl effigies, pottery made in the shape of animals or people. Beveled and stepped rims are found, as are rims with peaks.
Projectile points are small, triangular or ovoid arrow tips, made of stone. Thumbnail scrapers are rare; exotic materials include basalt, conch shells, and marine shell often formed into beads. Chert hoes were of particular use to Mississippian farmers, and they come in oval, flared and notched forms. Mill Creek chert was widely prized for these hoes, a type of chert that outcrops in southwestern Illinois. Mill Creek hoes were traded throughout the midwest, and some even reached into the southeast of Georgia and Tennessee.
Burials
Burials are in cemeteries, or within house foundations, or within the plaza at the mound centers. They are predominantly extended, although flexed and bundled burials are occasionally discovered. Some charnel houses--above ground storage facilities for dead bodies--are known from Mississippian sites as well.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com guide to Mississippian Culture, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Blitz J. 2010. New Perspectives in Mississippian Archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Research 18(1):1-39.
Butler BM, Clay RB, Hargrave ML, Peterson SD, Schwegman JE, Schwegman JA, and Welch PD. 2011. A new look at Kincaid: Magnetic survey of a large Mississippian town. Southeastern Archaeology 30(1):20-37.
Chastain ML, Deymier-Black AC, Kelly JE, Brown JA, and Dunand DC. 2011. Metallurgical analysis of copper artifacts from Cahokia. Journal of Archaeological Science 38(7):1727-1736.
Childs HT. 2008. The Little River sites, Poinsett and Mississippi counties, Arkansas. North American Archaeologist 29(2):145-156.
Harle MS. 2010. Biological Affinities and the Construction of Cultural Identity for the Proposed Coosa Chiefdom. Knoxville: University of Tennessee.
Hudson C. 1997. Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South's Ancient Chiefdoms. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.
King A, Walker CP, Sharp RV, Kent RF, and McKinnon DP. 2011. Remote sensing from Etowah's Mound A: Architecture and the re-creation of Mississippian tradition. American Antiquity 76(2):335-371.
Milner GR, Hammerstedt SW, and French KD. 2010. Chert hoes as digging tools. Antiquity 84(323):103-113.
Monaghan GW, and Peebles CS. 2010. The Construction, Use, and Abandonment of Angel Site Mound A: Tracing the History of a Middle Mississippian Town Through Its Earthworks. American Antiquity 75(4):935-953.
Pauketat TR, and Emerson TE. 1997. Cahokia: Domination and Ideology in the Mississippian World. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Sherwood SC, and Kidder TR. 2011. The DaVincis of dirt: Geoarchaeological perspectives on Native American mound building in the Mississippi River basin. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 30(1):69-87.
Wilson GD. 2010. Community, Identity, and Social Memory at Moundville. American Antiquity 75(1):3-18.
