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Results for Mississippian:

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Mississippian

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mississippi tradition
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: A group of cultures which arose in southeastern North America -- especially the central and lower Mississippi Valley -- after 700 AD into the historic period. It spread over a great area of the Southeast and the mid-continent, in the river valleys of what are now the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, with scattered extensions northward into Wisconsin and Minnesota and westward into the Great Plains. It stands in contrast to the Woodland Tradition with three new traits -- building of rectangular, flat-topped mounds as bases for temples; burial mounds becoming less prominent; and radical pottery changes (pulverized shell rather than grit used for temper). New pottery shapes and forms, such as olla, and new types of decoration (burnishing, painting) appeared. Maize became the predominant crop, accompanied by beans and squash, which supplemented hunting and gathering. The largest of the earthworks is Monks Mound, in the Cahokia Mounds near Collinsville, Illinois. The Mississippian is divided into the periods Temple Mound I (700-1200 AD) and Temple Mound II (1200-1700 AD). It was the last major cultural tradition in prehistoric North America. By the late 17th century, all the major centers had been abandoned.

Temple Mound Period

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mississippian
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: Time period from c 800 AD to European colonization when Native Americans of the Mississippian tradition built large flat-topped earthen structures (platform mounds) designed to function as artificial mountains elevating their temples above the landscape. This period followed the Burial Mound period and is the most recent period of a chronological construction relating to the whole of eastern North American prehistory (formulated by J.A. Ford and Godon Willey). The periods are: Paleo-Indian, Archaic, Burial Mound, and Temple Mound. The Temple Mound period is divided into two sub-periods: Temple Mound I (800-1200 AD), the establishment and rise of the Mississippian Tradition; and Temple Mound II (1200-1700 AD), the peak and then demise of the Mississippian.

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Cahokia point

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: This side notched , triangular arrow point has straight sides to slightly concave basal edges. A few may have slightly convex basal edges. In a addition to the side notches on the blade, usually just above the primary side notches, or it may be serrated. Points with two or three notches are the most common. The Cahokia point was named by Edward G. Scully {1951 :15 } for examples found at the Cahokia site in St. Clair and Madison counties in Illinois. An early Mississippian point dating in the A.D. 900 to A.D. 1300 range.

effigy

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: effigy vessel
CATEGORY: artifact; ceramics
DEFINITION: An image or representation, usually depicting people or animals, often made of pottery or stone -- such as a ceramic vessel. Such vessels were typical artifacts of the Mississippian period in North America, c 75-1540 AD.

Etowah

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large temple mound site in northern Georgia, of the Mississippian tradition and dating from the Temple Mound II period, c 1200-1700 AD. There was a fortified farming village with three temple mounds, which appears to have functioned mainly as a ceremonial center. In North America only Monk's Mound at Cahokia contains a greater volume than Etowah's 20-meter high mound. The artifacts include Lamar pottery (an elaborately stamped or incised utilitarian ware), under life-size stone statues of humans usually in a sitting or kneeling position, and Southern Cult paraphernalia.

Fort Ancient

CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A series of cultures along the Ohio River and its tributaries, dating to 900-1600 AD. There was developed agriculture, platform and burial mounds, and palisaded houses with a Mississippian influence.

karst

CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: An irregular limestone region with sinkholes, underground streams, and caverns. Karsts owe their existence to the removal of bedrock in solution and to the development of underground drainage without the development of surface stream valleys. Karst is characterized by the formation and growth of cavities resulting from chemical weathering and erosion in regions of carbonate and evaporite rocks. Karsts show much variation and are usually described in terms of a dominant landform. Most important are fluviokarst, doline karst, cone and tower karst, and pavement karst. Approximately 15 percent of the Earth's land surface is karst. The most extensive karst area of the United States occurs in the limestones of Mississippian age (about 325,000,000-345,000,000 years old) of the Interior Low Plateaus. Karst also occurs in the limestones of Ordovician age (about 430,000,000-500,000,000 years old) in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Kolomoki

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large multi-mound site in southern Georgia, US, that includes burial mounds and a platform mound from the latter half of the 1st century AD. It seems to have thrived in the period between the decline of the Woodland Tradition and the emergence of the Mississippian. Elaborately worked funerary vessels and grave goods such as copper ornaments and shell beads attest to ceremonial burial practice. There are indications of a chiefdom organization.

Koster

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site of long occupation in west-central Illinois, known as one of the first multidisciplinary endeavors of new archaeology; the findings serve as a benchmark for defining the Archaic period in the Midwest. The site is unusual for its long stratigraphic sequence of Archaic and Woodland settlements, dating from c 8700 bp to 1000 AD. Hunter-gathers and, later, farmers, settled at this location on the Illinois River to exploit the fertile river bottom. The site served variously as a workshop for stone tools, a deer-butchering camp, and possibly as the site for one of the earliest villages in North America. Stoneground adzes, manos and metates are dated c 6400 BC. In later levels, there is evidence of increased hunting efficiency (the replacement of the atlatl by the bow and arrow) and of agriculture (squash and pumpkin), and possibly Mississippian association. The site also contributed to the methodology of excavation, including approaches to deeply buried sites, and the use of flotation as a technique.

Late Woodland period

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A period of time, c 400-1000 AD, in the American Midwest, when populations spread west to the eastern slopes of the Rockies and were in contact with eastward-moving Puebloan people. A favorable agricultural period was indicated by the marked increase in village size and in population density. Areas along major streams were occupied by various interrelated cultural groups collectively known as the Plains Mississippian cultures. Part of this complex was connected to the developing Mississippi complexes to the east by diffusion and, to some degree, by a migration of such groups as the Omaha and Ponca from the St. Louis area by about 1000 AD. It follows the Middle Woodland era but lacks the elaborate Hopewellian artifacts and structures.

Middle Missouri Tradition

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Plains Village Indian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: One of three broad cultural traditions (along with Central Plains and Coalescent) which constitute the Plains Village Indian or Plains Village Pattern of c 1000-1500 AD. There were many permanent farming village sites along the central Missouri River trench in North and South Dakota. The culture is characterized by a specially developed strain of cold-resistant, quick-maturing maize, by the bison scapula hoe, and by permanent dwellings in the form of the semisubterranean timber-and-earth lodge. Often palisaded and constructed on high promontories overlooking a river, villages of over 100 dwellings are quite common. Ceramics, though Woodland derived, bear evidence of some Mississippian influence, such as shell tempering. The tradition disappeared, due to drought and/or alien incursions, by 1500. Historic tribes such as the Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa are thought to be the cultural heirs to the tradition.

Moundville

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Mississippian site in Alabama comprised of 20, mostly platform, mounds, with over 3000 burials. The site reached its peak c 1250 and it was probably part of a chiefdom. There is much evidence for the Southern Cult.

Plains Village tradition

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Plains Village Indian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Name given to group of cultures of the central and eastern plains of North America between 900-1850 AD, particularly in Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Contemporaneous with Mississippian tradition of Eastern Woodlands, it represents a fusion of that tradition with the Plains variant of the Woodland tradition. The Plains Village tradition was characterized by large habitation structures in settlements that were often fortified. Subsistence dependent on hunting, farming along rivers, beans/squash/maize, and the pottery was related to Mississippian and had incised decoration and rim adornment. When drought forced abandonment of the central plains, the inhabitants moved to the Middle Missouri area (North, South Dakota) and formed the Coalescent Tradition.

Southeastern ceremonial complex / Southern Cult

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Southeastern tradition
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A complex consisting of a range of specialized artifacts and motifs found in mortuaries and rich burials at some of the principal sites of the Middle Mississippi Culture (Mississippian) in southeastern North America. Beginning c 1200 AD, cult objects include ear-spools, ceremonial axes, and disks made of copper or shell -- all engraved with symbols of military and supernatural power, such as the cross, the sun circle, the swastika, and the eye-and-hand. Characteristic artifacts such as monolithic ceremonial axes, effigy jars, and worked shell objects have been found in abundance at the major ceremonial centers at Etowah, Georgia; Spiro, Oklahoma; and Moundville, Alabama. The cult's climax occurred between 1200-1400, but had virtually disappeared by the time of the first European explorers.

Spiro

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in eastern Oklahoma of the Mississippian Tradition (Middle Mississippi) Caddo culture beginning in the 8th century AD as a village of one-room houses, and by 950 had reached its maximum extent with the addition of eight burial mounds. The eight mounds are of various sizes and one served as a temple mound and burial mound (Craig Mound). In about 1200, Spiro was abandoned as a settlement and became a specialized mortuary and temple complex. To this final period, 1350-1400, belongs the enormous Craig Mound, covering an intact wooden mortuary house. Commoners and servants received only simple burial, but the ruling elite were placed in funerary litters filled with weapons, fabrics, smoking pipes, imported minerals, and copper, and shell ornaments decorated with designs of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (Southern Cult). Because of its abundance of paraphernalia of the Southern Cult, it is often linked to the centers at Etoway and Moundville, even though it is culturally distinct from them. Many of designs on carved shell gorgets and embossed sheet copper ornaments probably came from Mesoamerica, perhaps from Huastec culture of Veracruz. The site's archaeological value has been considerably diminished, as it was heavily vandalized during a period of commercial exploitation in the 1930s.

Weeden Island phase

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture following Middle Woodland and preceding Mississippian that occupied much of north Florida, southwest Georgia, and southeast Alabama c 200-1000 AD. The pottery is among the finest of the eastern US.

Woodland period

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Woodland tradition
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Stage in eastern North America c 1000 BC-800 AD that is a period in Native American history and culture. It is characterized by hunter-gatherers, elaborate burial mounds, beginning of substantial agriculture (corn, beans, squash), and pottery decorated with cord or fabric impressions. It is a term restricted to the cultures of the Eastern Woodlands (south and east of Maritime Provinces of Canada to Minnesota and south to Louisiana and Texas) and important sites are Adena, Hopewell, and Effigy Mound. From c 700 AD, the southern part of the Woodland territory shows strong influence from the Mississippian culture, but elsewhere the Woodland tradition continued until the historic period.

Woodland pottery

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A general term for cultural groups living in the wooded eastern parts of North America during the Formative. Woodland subsumes many local adaptations, but in general these were hunter-gatherer communities whose subsistence base was augmented with some cultivation. Woodland communities used pottery and had elaborate toolmaking and artistic traditions. Burials were usually made in established cemeteries, often within large earthen mounds. Trade networks were extensive. Starting about 1000 BC, Woodland comprises a series of distinctive cultures including Adena, Hopewell, Mississippian, and Iroquoian. In some areas Woodland societies continued down to modern times.