No one knows exactly when maize spread across the southern plains into the eastern woodlands of North America¸ but at least sporadic corn cultivation may have diffused to the Mississippi River and beyond in the early first millennium C.E. Like all ancient native Americans, eastern groups had developed a great expertise with native plants of every kind soon after first settlement before 9500 B.C.E. The densest population gathered by lakes and estuaries, and in the first fertile river valley of the Midwest and Southeast. By 2000 B.C.E.¸ local river valley populations in some areas had increased to the point that group mobility was restricted, and there were periodic food shortages. Under these circumstances¸ it was almost inevitable that some groups turned to the deliberate cultivation of native food plants like goose foot and marsh elder to supplement wild cereal grass yields. At the same time¸ the first signs of social ranking appear in local burials. We find¸ also¸ an increasing pre-occupation with burial and life after death. For the first time¸ individual communities and groups maintained cemeteries on the edges of their territories¸ which may have served to validate territorial boundaries. As the centuries passed¸ the funeral rites associated with death and the passage from the world of the living to that of the ancestors became ever more elaborate and important. This elaboration was associated not only with increasing social complexity and an explosion in long–distance exchange¸ but with the building of ceremonial earthworks as well.
Adena and Hopewell
Thousands of years of long-distance exchange between neighboring communities had given certain raw materials and exotic artifacts high prestige value in eastern North America society. Scare and hard to come by¸ such imports were important gifts exchanged between kin leaders and chiefs. They assumed great social value and significance in societies that placed a high premium on prestige. Hammered copper artifacts¸ conch shells from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts¸ certain types of stone axes—these became status symbols¸ buried with their powerful owners at death. By 500 B.C.E.¸ the individuals who controlled these exchanged networks were influential not only in life but in death¸ for they were buried under large burial mounds.
The Adena culture¸ which flourished in the Ohio Valley between 500 B.C.E. and about A.C.E. 400¸ was one of the first to build extensive earthworks. Adena earthworks follow the contours of flat-topped hills and form circles¸ squares¸ and other shapes¸ enclosures rather areas as much as 350 feet (107 meters) across. These were ceremonial enclosures rather than defensive works, sometimes built to surround burial mounds¸ other times standing alone. The most important people were buried in log-lined tombs under burial mounds¸ their corpses smeared with red ocher or graphite. Nearby lie soapstone pipes and tables engraved with curving designs or birds of prey. Some prestigious kin leaders were buried inside enclosures or death huts that were burned down as part of the funeral ceremony. Occasionally the burial chamber was left open so that other bodies could be added later.
The building of these mounds was invariably a communal effort¸ probably involving fellow kin from several settlements who piled up basketfuls of earth. The earthworks grew slowly as generations of new bodies were added. Apparently¸ only the most important people were interred in the mounds. Most Adean folk were cremated and their ashes placed in the communal burial places.
Between 200 B.C.E. and A.C.E. 400 the Hopewell tradition¸ an elaboration of Adean with a distinctive religious ideology¸ appeared in Ohio. Hopewell burial practices were such a success that they spread rapidly from their heartland as far afield as upper Wisconsin and Louisiana and deep into Illinois and New York State. The Midwest experienced a dramatic flowering of artistic traditions and of long—distance trade that brought cooper from the Great Lakes region¸ obsidian from Yellowstone¸ and mica from southern Appalachia. The Hopewell people themselves dwelt in relatively small settlements and used only the simplest of artifacts in daily life. They wore leather and woven clothes of pliable fabrics. All the wealth and creative skill of society was lavished on relatively few individuals and their life after death.
At first glance¸ Hopewell exotic artifacts and ritual traditions seem completely alien to the simple indigenous culture of the area¸ but they are deeply rooted in local life. The cult objects buried with the dead tell us something of the social interactions of communities and kin groups. Some of the exotic grave goods¸ such as pipe bowls or ceremonial axes¸ were buried as gifts from living clan members to a dead leader. Others were personal possessions, cherished weapons¸ or sometimes symbols of status or wealth. Hopewell graves contain soapstone pipe bowls in the form of beavers¸ frogs¸ birds¸ bears¸ and even humans. Skilled artisans fashioned thin copper and mica sheets into head and breast ornaments that bear elaborate animal and human motifs There were copper axes and arrowheads, and trinkets and beads fashioned from native copper nuggets¸ not smelted.
A few specialists¸ perhaps produced in workshops within large earthwork complexes¸ manufactured most of these artifacts¸ themselves close to major sources of raw materials. Ceremonial objects of all kinds were traded from hand to hand throughout Hopewell territory along the same trade routes that carried foodstuffs and everyday objects from hamlet to hamlet. However¸ the prized manufactures may have passed from one person to another in a vast network of gift–giving transactions that linked different kin leaders with lasting¸ important obligations to one another. The closest¸ but very farfetched¸ modern analogy to such an arrangement is the famous Kula ring exchange system of the Trobriand Islands of the southwestern Pacific. There distinctive types of shell ornaments pass in partnerships¸ in ties of reciprocal obligation. This kind of environment encourages individual and competition, as kin leaders and their followers vie with one another for prestige and social status that is as transitory as life itself. Perhaps somewhat similar practices were commonplaces in Hopewell times. Once dead and buried with their prized possessions¸ the deceased were no longer political players¸ for their mantles did not necessarily pass to their children or relatives.
Hopewell burial mounds are much more elaborate than those of the Adean forebears. Some Hopewell mounds rise 40 feet (12 meters) high and are more than 100 feet (30 meters) across. Often the builders would deposit a large number of bodies on an earthen platform, burying then over a period of years before erecting a large mound over the dead. Hopewell burial complexes reached imposing sizes. The 24 burial mounds at Mound City¸ Ohio¸ lie inside an earthen enclosure covering 13 acres (5.26 hectares).
The Mississippian Tradition
The center of religious and political power shifted southward after 400 A.C.E.¸ as the Hopewell tradition declined. It was then that the people of the densely populated and lush Mississippi flood plain might have realized the great potential of maize as a high-yielding food staple. Much of the local diet always came from game¸ fish¸ nuts¸ and wild or cultivated native plants, but maize added a new and valuable, supplement to the diet; it was demanding to grow¸ but eventually maize became a vital staple, especially when combined with beans in the late first millennium A.C.E. Beans had the advantage of a high protein value but also the asset of compensating for the nutritional deficiencies of corn. The new crops assumed greater importance as rising populations¸and perhaps¸ the insatiable demands of a small but powerful elite¸ were causing considerable economic and social stress.
Maize and beans may have been planted initially as supplementary foods¸ but they differ from native plants such as goosefoot in that the demand more start-up labor to clear land. Within a short time¸ the river valley landscape was transformed in such a way that hunting and fishing provided less food for energy expended than farming. Major social and political changes and an entirely new economic pattern followed¸ changing eastern North American society beyond recognition. Thus was born the Mississippian tradition¸ the most elaborate prehistoric cultural tradition to flourish in North America.
Regional Mississippian societies developed in river valleys over much of the Midwest and Southeast and interacted with one another for centuries. Many Mississippian populations lived fertile river valleys with lakes and swamps. They lived by hunting, fishing, and exploiting migrating waterfowl. Every family harvested nuts and grew maize¸ beans¸ squashes¸ and other crops. The cultivation of native plants like goosefoot and marsh elder¸ as well as sunflowers–to mention only a few species–was of vital importance. Theirs was a complex adaptation to highly varied local environments. Some groups flourished in small, dispersed homesteads¸ while others lived in compact villages¸ some so large they might be called small towns; thousands of people lived near locations like Cahokia¸ on the banks of the Mississippi opposite the modern city of St. Louis.
Cahokia flourished on the so–called American Bottom¸ an extremely bountiful flood plain area with great diversity of food resources and fertile soils. The greatest of all Mississippi centers¸ Cahokia presided over a population of several thousand people in its heyday after 1000 A.C.E. The great mounds and plazas of its ceremonial precincts dominated the countryside for miles. Monk´s Mound at the center of Cahokia rises 102 feet (31 meters) above the Mississippi floodplain and covers 16 acres (6.5 hectares). On the summit stood a thatched temple at the east end of an enormous plaza. Around the plaza rose other mounds¸ temples¸ warehouses¸ administrative building, and the homes of the elite. The entire ceremonial complex of mounds and plazas covered more than 200 acres (80 hectares) and depicted the ancient cosmos of the eastern Woodland¸ divided into four opposing segments and oriented toward the cardinal points.
Why did Cahokia achieve such political and religious importance? The great center lay at a strategic point close to the Mississippi River and near its confluence with the Missouri¸ in a region where northern and southern trade routes met. The ruling families of Cahokia achieved enormous political and spiritual power within a few generations¸ perhaps by virtue of their supernatural abilities as mediators between the spiritual and living worlds, between those on earth and the ancestors. At the same time¸ they must have been adept traders¸ with economic and political connections over a wide area. Their political power was sufficient to command the loyalty and labor of satellite settlements and religious centers throughout the American Bottoms¸ to the point that elite families may have lived in subordinate centers¸ where they presided over critical rituals such as the annual Green Corn festival¸ which celebrates the new harvest. Sacred figurines and distinctive clay vessels bear motifs that are familiar in later Native American religious belief and have deep roots in more ancient cultures.
Although Cahokia was the most elaborate of all Mississippian chiefdoms, its core territory was minuscule by say, ancient Egyptian standards. Politically volatile¸ based on ancient religious beliefs¸ its power and prosperity depended heavily on the authority, charisma, and ability of a handful of rulers. The great center was destined, inevitably¸ for collapse¸ which came in about 1250 A.C.E., when other polities to the south and east rose to a prominence that, however, never rivaled that of the Mississippian´s greatest chiefdom.
Cahokia was in the north of Mississippian lands. A major center now developed to the south¸ at Moundville in Alabama. Dozens of small centers and towns sprang up between the two. More than just scared places for annual planting and harvest ceremonies, all Mississippian centers were markets and focal points of powerful chiefdoms. For example Cahokia owed some of its importance to the manufacture and trading of local salt¸ and chert¸ a fine–grained rock used to make hoes and other tools.
We know little about how Mississippian society functioned¸ but each major population center was probably ruled as a series of powerful chiefdoms by an elite group of priests and rulers who lived somewhat separated from the rest of the population. Unlike their recent predecessors, these individuals may have inherited political and economic power¸ also social position, as the offices of the elite were passed from one generation to the next. The chieftains controlled long–distance trade and were the intermediaries between the living¸ the ancestors¸ and the gods.
As in the Hopewell culture¸ high–ranking individuals went to the next world in richly decorated graves¸ with clusters of ritual objects of different styles that symbolized various clans and tribes. Excavations at burial mound 72 revealed at least six different burial events that involved 261 people, including four mutilated men and 118 women¸ who were probably retainers sacrificed to accompany a chief in the afterlife. One such chief lay on a layer of thousands of shell beds¸ accompanied by grave offerings from as far a field as Wisconsin and Tennessee. Cahokia and most other larger Mississippian communities had more or less standardized layouts. The inhibitions built plantformlike mounds and capped them with temples and the houses of important individuals. These mounds were grouped around an open plaza, while most people lived in thatched clustered nearby. As wee shall see in Chapter 12¸ somewhat similar architectural groupings are typical of Mesoamerica ceremonial centers and cities, tempting many earlier scholars to claim that Mississippian chiefs were under strong cultural influence from Mexico, claims now discounted.
Mississippian graves and mound centers contain finely made pottery and other artifacts that bear elaborate designs and distinctive artistic motifs. These artifacts include stone axes with handle and head carved from a single piece of stone, copper, pendants adorned with circles and weeping eyes, shell disks carved with woodpeckers and rattlesnakes¸ elaborately decorated clay pots¸ and engraved shell cups adorned with male figures in ceremonial dress. The themes and motifs on these objects have many common features throughout the South and Southeast and as a field as the borders of the Ohio valley. At first¸ experts thought that these ceremonial artifacts represented a Southern Cult, which its ideology and motifs like a weeping eye had arrived in North America in the hands of Mexican artisans and priests. However, a closer look at indigenous art traditions show that many North American groups commonly used such motifs. Many Mississippian ceremonial artifacts served as badges of rank and status, and as clan symbols. They were traded from hand to hand over long distances as symbolic gifts between widely separated chieftains who shared many common religious beliefs.
The Mississippian was an entirely indigenous culture tradition¸ the climax of millennia of steady cultural evolution in eastern North America with some significant Mesoamerican influences. Cahokia¸ Moundville¸ and other great Mississippian centers were past the height of their powers by the time Europeans explores reached the Mississippi valley in the sixteenth century. However¸ numerous chiefdoms still flourished in the mid–south and southeast right up to the time of European contact and beyond.
The Mississippian was an entirely indigenous cultural tradition, the climax of millennia of steady cultural evolution in eastern North America with some significant Mesoamerica influences. Cahokia¸ Moundville¸ and other great Mississippian centers were past the height of their powers by the time Europeans explorers reached thee Mississippian valley in the sixteenth century. However, numerous chiefdoms still flourished in the mid–South and Southeast right up to the time of European contact and beyond. It is interesting to speculate what trajectory the successors of Mississippian society would have taken if Europeans had not arrived. Would they have evolved into a full–fledged¸ state–organized society¸ to rival that of the Maya and Aztec to the South? Experts believe they would not have¸ simply because the growing seasons for maize and beans in North America are too short and the climate too harsh to support either intensive agriculture or high urban population densities under pre–industrial conditions. It would have been difficult for any chieftain to accumulate the food surpluses necessary to maintain authority over more than a relatively limited area. In sum¸ the most important cultural consequences of food production were a long-term trend toward greater political elaboration¸ a degree of social ranking¸ and great interdependency in a wide range of village farming societies.
The trends toward complexity that developed in eastern North America and the Pacific also unfolded in temperate Europe and in sub–Saharan Africa. In Europe¸ the most able of village kin leaders eventually became warrior chieftains and even hereditary leaders ruling from small towns. One catalyst for such development was an explosion in long-distance exchange that coincided with the widespread use of bronze¸ and later iron–metallurgy that linked even isolated communities together in larger economic¸ and later political¸ units. Roman general Julius Caesar´s legions found the Iron Age people of Western Europe a tough enemy to conquer. Centuries later¸ the descendants of these people were to shatter Rome´s reputation as an invincible power. However¸ the most momentous consequences of food production were those that led to the emergence of the state–organized society¸ the urban civilizations that developed in many parts of the world after 3000 B.C.E.
Site
Moundville¸ Alabama
Moundville lies by the Black Warrior River in west–central Alabama and flourished between A.C.E.1250 and 1500. The site with its 29 or more earthen mounds covers more than 185 acres (75 hectares). The larger mounds delineate a quadrilateral plaza of about 79 acres (32 hectares)¸ some supporting public buildings or residences for important individuals. A few are associated with skull caches¸ while a sweat house and charnel structure for exposing the dead lie just outside the southern side of the plaza¸ which is oriented on the cardinal directions. The three sides of the site away from the river were protected by a bastioned and much rebuilt palisade during some of Moundville´s history. Over 3¸000 burials have been excavated at Moundville¸ with the highest status interments lying in the mounds.
In 900 A.C.E.¸ a relatively small number of Woodland people lived in the Moundville area at a time of considerable political and economic unrest and increasingly circumscribed territory. The local people relied on nut harvests and other wild foods¸ until maize production intensified between 950 A.C.E. to 1000. They dwelt in relatively small settlements¸ which seem to have grown in size as a response to higher agricultural production¸ increased production of freshwater shell beads¸ and warfare.
Between 150 and 1250 A.C.E.¸ the first platform mounds appear at Moundville. This was a time when maize and bean agriculture assumed increasing importance¸ providing as much as 40 percent of the diet. The Black Warrior valley became an important maize farming area as the population dispersed into smaller agricultural communities—some little more than farmsteads¸ some probably much larger. The Moundville site became an important ceremonial center¸ the only one in the valley.
In about 1250¸ the site changed completely in character from a dispersed settlement to a compact¸ highly formalized and fortified town. The inhabitants laid out a quadrilateral plaza with accompanying earthworks arranged in their proper order. They imposed a symbolic landscape on the natural one. Moundville now had an east—west symmetry¸ a pairing of residential mounds with mortuary temple mounds¸ and a well—defined ranking of social spaces within the site. By now¸ Moundville resembled a compact¸ fortified town inhabited by about 1¸000 people living in compact groupings of square pole–and–mud houses. Moundville had expanded from an important ceremonial center to the capital of a single kingdom ruled by a paramount chief¸ supported by tribute¸ and engaged in long–distance exchange. The format layout of public architecture in the heart of the site probably reflected the status relationships of different kin groups set in the context of a scared landscape. The paramount chief derived his power both from his supernatural authority and the power conferred on him by the scared landscape.
For a century and a half after 1300¸ Moundville was ruled by a firmly entrenched chiefly dynasty¸ reflected in a series of lavishly adorned burials in its mounds. The dynasty´s increasing power isolated them both symbolically and practically from their subjects¸ as the population moved out of the hitherto compact town into the surrounding countryside. Only the elite and their retainers seem to have remained at the now unprotected site. No one knows why the people dispersed. It may have been as a result of administrative decision¸ an adjustment to soil exhaustion¸ or simply lessened danger of attack. Whatever the cause¸ Moundville now became a sparsely inhabited ceremonial center and a necropolis¸ with cemeteries occupying former residential areas. Many of the burials within them came from outlying communities. At the same time, the wide distribution of distinctive cult motifs on clay vessels seems to suggest that more people had access to the religious symbolism of chieftainship than ever before.
Moundville went into decline after 1450¸ a century before Spanish contact. Elite burial ceased, although a nominal chief may presided over the site. Perhaps chronic factionalism and resistance to authority among lesser leaders led to the collapse of the once rigid Mississippian hierarchical system¸ resulting in a patchwork of local chiefdoms¸ who may have shown allegiance to a hereditary chief still living among the mounds of his ancestors. Some people still lived at Moundville when Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto passed through the area in 1540¸ but we do not know whether a still shadowy chiefdom still existed.
Summary
Chiefdoms are hard to define¸ but were based on ties of kin and reciprocal obligations. The relationships between people and their land were closely linked to kin groups and kin ancestors. In time the egalitarian form of village life gave way to new, more complex agricultural societies headed by powerful kin leaders with charisma or extraordinary supernatural powers. Some of these “Big Men” were able to acquire such power that their chiefdoms became hereditary. Others were based on individual ability and personal loyalties, which perished with their owner´s death. Chiefdoms of varying complexity developed in many parts of the ancient world.
Both simple and complex chiefdoms developed on the Pacific islands. Simple root horticulture had been established in highland New Guinea by 6¸000 B.C.E. The people of the Lapita cultural complex traded widely through the southwestern Pacific after 1¸600 B.C.E.¸ but it was not until the past 2¸000 years that offshore outrigger canoes settled Micronesia and Polynesia¸ and New Zealand was colonized between 1000 A.C.E. and 1200. Thereafter¸ increasingly complex chiefdoms developed in island groups like Hawaii and the Society Islands of Polynesia.
More complex societies also developed in the North America Southwest and the eastern Woodlands. Maize agriculture reached the Southwest by about 1500 to 2000 B.C.E. By 300 B.C.E.¸ sedentary villages and a much greater dependence on farming were characteristic of the Southwest, leading to the emergence of the Hohokam¸Mogollon¸ and Anasazi cultural traditions¸ among which the ultimate ancestry of modern pueblo people lie.
Many groups in eastern North America turned to the deliberate planting of native plants as food supplements after 2000 B.C.E.¸ but maize and bean agriculture did not arrive from the Southwest until the first millennium B.C.E. After 1000 B.C.E.¸ a series of powerful chiefdoms arose in the Southeast and the Midwest, people among who elaborate burial customs and the building of burial mounds and earthworks were commonplace. The Adena tradition appeared in about 700 B.C.E. and was overlapped by the Hopewell in approximately 100 A.C.E. About 800 A.C.E.¸ the focus of economic¸ religious¸and political power shifted to the Mississippi Valley and the Southwest with the rise of the Mississippian tradition. This tradition, with its powerful religious and secular leaders¸ survived in a modified form until European contact in the sixteenth century A.C.E.
The Mississippian Tradition
The center of religious and political power shifted southward after 400 A.C.E.¸ as the Hopewell tradition declined. It was then that the people of the densely populated and lush Mississippi flood plain might have realized the great potential of maize as a high-yielding food staple. Much of the local diet always came from game¸ fish¸ nuts¸ and wild or cultivated native plants, but maize added a new and valuable, supplement to the diet; it was demanding to grow¸ but eventually maize became a vital staple, especially when combined with beans in the late first millennium A.C.E. Beans had the advantage of a high protein value but also the asset of compensating for the nutritional deficiencies of corn. The new crops assumed greater importance as rising populations¸and perhaps¸ the insatiable demands of a small but powerful elite¸ were causing considerable economic and social stress.
Maize and beans may have been planted initially as supplementary foods¸ but they differ from native plants such as goosefoot in that the demand more start-up labor to clear land. Within a short time¸ the river valley landscape was transformed in such a way that hunting and fishing provided less food for energy expended than farming. Major social and political changes and an entirely new economic pattern followed¸ changing eastern North American society beyond recognition. Thus was born the Mississippian tradition¸ the most elaborate prehistoric cultural tradition to flourish in North America.
Regional Mississippian societies developed in river valleys over much of the Midwest and Southeast and interacted with one another for centuries. Many Mississippian populations lived fertile river valleys with lakes and swamps. They lived by hunting, fishing, and exploiting migrating waterfowl. Every family harvested nuts and grew maize¸ beans¸ squashes¸ and other crops. The cultivation of native plants like goosefoot and marsh elder¸ as well as sunflowers–to mention only a few species–was of vital importance. Theirs was a complex adaptation to highly varied local environments. Some groups flourished in small, dispersed homesteads¸ while others lived in compact villages¸ some so large they might be called small towns; thousands of people lived near locations like Cahokia¸ on the banks of the Mississippi opposite the modern city of St. Louis.
Cahokia flourished on the so–called American Bottom¸ an extremely bountiful flood plain area with great diversity of food resources and fertile soils. The greatest of all Mississippi centers¸ Cahokia presided over a population of several thousand people in its heyday after 1000 A.C.E. The great mounds and plazas of its ceremonial precincts dominated the countryside for miles. Monk´s Mound at the center of Cahokia rises 102 feet (31 meters) above the Mississippi floodplain and covers 16 acres (6.5 hectares). On the summit stood a thatched temple at the east end of an enormous plaza. Around the plaza rose other mounds¸ temples¸ warehouses¸ administrative building, and the homes of the elite. The entire ceremonial complex of mounds and plazas covered more than 200 acres (80 hectares) and depicted the ancient cosmos of the eastern Woodland¸ divided into four opposing segments and oriented toward the cardinal points.
Why did Cahokia achieve such political and religious importance? The great center lay at a strategic point close to the Mississippi River and near its confluence with the Missouri¸ in a region where northern and southern trade routes met. The ruling families of Cahokia achieved enormous political and spiritual power within a few generations¸ perhaps by virtue of their supernatural abilities as mediators between the spiritual and living worlds, between those on earth and the ancestors. At the same time¸ they must have been adept traders¸ with economic and political connections over a wide area. Their political power was sufficient to command the loyalty and labor of satellite settlements and religious centers throughout the American Bottoms¸ to the point that elite families may have lived in subordinate centers¸ where they presided over critical rituals such as the annual Green Corn festival¸ which celebrates the new harvest. Sacred figurines and distinctive clay vessels bear motifs that are familiar in later Native American religious belief and have deep roots in more ancient cultures.
Although Cahokia was the most elaborate of all Mississippian chiefdoms, its core territory was minuscule by say, ancient Egyptian standards. Politically volatile¸ based on ancient religious beliefs¸ its power and prosperity depended heavily on the authority, charisma, and ability of a handful of rulers. The great center was destined, inevitably¸ for collapse¸ which came in about 1250 A.C.E., when other polities to the south and east rose to a prominence that, however, never rivaled that of the Mississippian´s greatest chiefdom.
Cahokia was in the north of Mississippian lands. A major center now developed to the south¸ at Moundville in Alabama. Dozens of small centers and towns sprang up between the two. More than just scared places for annual planting and harvest ceremonies, all Mississippian centers were markets and focal points of powerful chiefdoms. For example Cahokia owed some of its importance to the manufacture and trading of local salt¸ and chert¸ a fine–grained rock used to make hoes and other tools.
We know little about how Mississippian society functioned¸ but each major population center was probably ruled as a series of powerful chiefdoms by an elite group of priests and rulers who lived somewhat separated from the rest of the population. Unlike their recent predecessors, these individuals may have inherited political and economic power¸ also social position, as the offices of the elite were passed from one generation to the next. The chieftains controlled long–distance trade and were the intermediaries between the living¸ the ancestors¸ and the gods.
As in the Hopewell culture¸ high–ranking individuals went to the next world in richly decorated graves¸ with clusters of ritual objects of different styles that symbolized various clans and tribes. Excavations at burial mound 72 revealed at least six different burial events that involved 261 people, including four mutilated men and 118 women¸ who were probably retainers sacrificed to accompany a chief in the afterlife. One such chief lay on a layer of thousands of shell beds¸ accompanied by grave offerings from as far a field as Wisconsin and Tennessee. Cahokia and most other larger Mississippian communities had more or less standardized layouts. The inhibitions built plantformlike mounds and capped them with temples and the houses of important individuals. These mounds were grouped around an open plaza, while most people lived in thatched clustered nearby. As wee shall see in Chapter 12¸ somewhat similar architectural groupings are typical of Mesoamerica ceremonial centers and cities, tempting many earlier scholars to claim that Mississippian chiefs were under strong cultural influence from Mexico, claims now discounted.
Mississippian graves and mound centers contain finely made pottery and other artifacts that bear elaborate designs and distinctive artistic motifs. These artifacts include stone axes with handle and head carved from a single piece of stone, copper, pendants adorned with circles and weeping eyes, shell disks carved with woodpeckers and rattlesnakes¸ elaborately decorated clay pots¸ and engraved shell cups adorned with male figures in ceremonial dress. The themes and motifs on these objects have many common features throughout the South and Southeast and as a field as the borders of the Ohio valley. At first¸ experts thought that these ceremonial artifacts represented a Southern Cult, which its ideology and motifs like a weeping eye had arrived in North America in the hands of Mexican artisans and priests. However, a closer look at indigenous art traditions show that many North American groups commonly used such motifs. Many Mississippian ceremonial artifacts served as badges of rank and status, and as clan symbols. They were traded from hand to hand over long distances as symbolic gifts between widely separated chieftains who shared many common religious beliefs.
The Mississippian was an entirely indigenous culture tradition¸ the climax of millennia of steady cultural evolution in eastern North America with some significant Mesoamerican influences. Cahokia¸ Moundville¸ and other great Mississippian centers were past the height of their powers by the time Europeans explores reached the Mississippi valley in the sixteenth century. However¸ numerous chiefdoms still flourished in the mid–south and southeast right up to the time of European contact and beyond. The Mississippian was an entirely indigenous cultural tradition, the climax of millennia of steady cultural evolution in eastern North America with some significant Mesoamerica influences. Cahokia¸ Moundville¸ and other great Mississippian centers were past the height of their powers by the time Europeans explorers reached thee Mississippian valley in the sixteenth century. However, numerous chiefdoms still flourished in the mid–South and Southeast right up to the time of European contact and beyond. It is interesting to speculate what trajectory the successors of Mississippian society would have taken if Europeans had not arrived. Would they have evolved into a full–fledged¸ state–organized society¸ to rival that of the Maya and Aztec to the South? Experts believe they would not have¸ simply because the growing seasons for maize and beans in North America are too short and the climate too harsh to support either intensive agriculture or high urban population densities under pre–industrial conditions. It would have been difficult for any chieftain to accumulate the food surpluses necessary to maintain authority over more than a relatively limited area. In sum¸ the most important cultural consequences of food production were a long-term trend toward greater political elaboration¸ a degree of social ranking¸ and great interdependency in a wide range of village farming societies.
The trends toward complexity that developed in eastern North America and the Pacific also unfolded in temperate Europe and in sub–Saharan Africa. In Europe¸ the most able of village kin leaders eventually became warrior chieftains and even hereditary leaders ruling from small towns. One catalyst for such development was an explosion in long-distance exchange that coincided with the widespread use of bronze¸ and later iron–metallurgy that linked even isolated communities together in larger economic¸ and later political¸ units. Roman general Julius Caesar´s legions found the Iron Age people of Western Europe a tough enemy to conquer. Centuries later¸ the descendants of these people were to shatter Rome´s reputation as an invincible power. However¸ the most momentous consequences of food production were those that led to the emergence of the state–organized society¸ the urban civilizations that developed in many parts of the world after 3000 B.C.E.
Site |
| Moundville¸ Alabama |
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Moundville lies by the Black Warrior River in west–central Alabama and flourished between A.C.E.1250 and 1500. The site with its 29 or more earthen mounds covers more than 185 acres (75 hectares). The larger mounds delineate a quadrilateral plaza of about 79 acres (32 hectares)¸ some supporting public buildings or residences for important individuals. A few are associated with skull caches¸ while a sweat house and charnel structure for exposing the dead lie just outside the southern side of the plaza¸ which is oriented on the cardinal directions. The three sides of the site away from the river were protected by a bastioned and much rebuilt palisade during some of Moundville´s history. Over 3¸000 burials have been excavated at Moundville¸ with the highest status interments lying in the mounds.
In 900 A.C.E.¸ a relatively small number of Woodland people lived in the Moundville area at a time of considerable political and economic unrest and increasingly circumscribed territory. The local people relied on nut harvests and other wild foods¸ until maize production intensified between 950 A.C.E. to 1000. They dwelt in relatively small settlements¸ which seem to have grown in size as a response to higher agricultural production¸ increased production of freshwater shell beads¸ and warfare. Between 150 and 1250 A.C.E.¸ the first platform mounds appear at Moundville. This was a time when maize and bean agriculture assumed increasing importance¸ providing as much as 40 percent of the diet. The Black Warrior valley became an important maize farming area as the population dispersed into smaller agricultural communities—some little more than farmsteads¸ some probably much larger. The Moundville site became an important ceremonial center¸ the only one in the valley. In about 1250¸ the site changed completely in character from a dispersed settlement to a compact¸ highly formalized and fortified town. The inhabitants laid out a quadrilateral plaza with accompanying earthworks arranged in their proper order. They imposed a symbolic landscape on the natural one. Moundville now had an east—west symmetry¸ a pairing of residential mounds with mortuary temple mounds¸ and a well—defined ranking of social spaces within the site. By now¸ Moundville resembled a compact¸ fortified town inhabited by about 1¸000 people living in compact groupings of square pole–and–mud houses. Moundville had expanded from an important ceremonial center to the capital of a single kingdom ruled by a paramount chief¸ supported by tribute¸ and engaged in long–distance exchange. The format layout of public architecture in the heart of the site probably reflected the status relationships of different kin groups set in the context of a scared landscape. The paramount chief derived his power both from his supernatural authority and the power conferred on him by the scared landscape. For a century and a half after 1300¸ Moundville was ruled by a firmly entrenched chiefly dynasty¸ reflected in a series of lavishly adorned burials in its mounds. The dynasty´s increasing power isolated them both symbolically and practically from their subjects¸ as the population moved out of the hitherto compact town into the surrounding countryside. Only the elite and their retainers seem to have remained at the now unprotected site. No one knows why the people dispersed. It may have been as a result of administrative decision¸ an adjustment to soil exhaustion¸ or simply lessened danger of attack. Whatever the cause¸ Moundville now became a sparsely inhabited ceremonial center and a necropolis¸ with cemeteries occupying former residential areas. Many of the burials within them came from outlying communities. At the same time, the wide distribution of distinctive cult motifs on clay vessels seems to suggest that more people had access to the religious symbolism of chieftainship than ever before. Moundville went into decline after 1450¸ a century before Spanish contact. Elite burial ceased, although a nominal chief may presided over the site. Perhaps chronic factionalism and resistance to authority among lesser leaders led to the collapse of the once rigid Mississippian hierarchical system¸ resulting in a patchwork of local chiefdoms¸ who may have shown allegiance to a hereditary chief still living among the mounds of his ancestors. Some people still lived at Moundville when Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto passed through the area in 1540¸ but we do not know whether a still shadowy chiefdom still existed. |