Sociopolitical Implications of Mississippian Mound Volume

Variation in the scale of Mississippian mound building is an important measure of regional settlement hierarchies. However, factors thought to determine the size of platform mounds are subject to two contradictory interpretations. Mound volume is said to result from either the duration of mound use...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American antiquity 2004-04, Vol.69 (2), p.291-301
Main Authors: Blitz, John H., Livingood, Patrick
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Archaeological excavation
Archaeological sites
Archaeological surveys
Archaeology
Chiefdoms
Economy and society
Ethnology and art
Excavations
Methodology and general studies
Mound sites
Paleoanthropology
Platform mounds
Politics
Prehistory and protohistory
Sociology
Workforce
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Summary:Variation in the scale of Mississippian mound building is an important measure of regional settlement hierarchies. However, factors thought to determine the size of platform mounds are subject to two contradictory interpretations. Mound volume is said to result from either the duration of mound use or the size of the labor force recruited by leaders for mound construction. To evaluate these competing propositions, a sample of excavated mounds is examined and four variables are recorded for each mound: a mound volume index, the duration of mound use, the number of construction stages, and the number of mounds at the site. The relationships among these variables are summarized, and the relative merits of the two competing interpretations are assessed. It is concluded that not all of the variation in mound volume can be explained by duration of use, that additional factors must be considered, and that the social context of mound construction probably differed at large multiple-mound sites and smaller mound sites.
ISSN:0002-7316
2325-5064
DOI:10.2307/4128421