Ceramics, Chronology, and Community Patterns: An Archaeological Study at Moundville

by Vincas P. Steponaitis

Overview

A clearly written description of the analytical procedures employed on ceramic samples obtained at Moundville and the new chronology discovered

Moundville, located on the Black Warrior River in west-central Alabama, is one of the best known and most intensively studied archaeological sites in North America. Yet, in spite of all these investigations, many aspects of the site's internal chronology remained unknown until the original 1983 publication of this volume. The author embarked on a detailed study of Moundville ceramics housed in museums and collections, and hammered out a new chronology for Moundville.This volume is a clearly written description of the analytical procedures employed on these ceramic samples and the new chronology this study revealed. Using the refined techniques outlined in this volume, it was possible for the author to trace changes in community patterns, which in turn shed light on Moundville's internal development and its place among North America's ancient cultures.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780817382506
Publisher:	University of Alabama Press
Publication date:	05/24/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	406
File size:	26 MB
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About the Author

Vincas P. Steponaitis is Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Research Laboratories of Archaeology, and Chair of the Curriculum in Archaeology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Ceramics, Chronology, and Community Patterns

An Archaeological Study at Moundville

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By Vincas P. Steponaitis

The University of Alabama Press

Copyright © 2009 Vincas P. Steponaitis
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-8250-6

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In the tenth and eleventh centuries A.D., there developed along the interior river valleys of southeastern North America a number of societies that are now called Mississippian. It is well known that the Mississippian people were sedentary farmers who grew maize and other crops. It is also generally accepted that these people possessed a relatively complex social organization, with evidence of internal social ranking and political hierarchies that extended beyond the range of the local community. Societies of this type are often categorized in general evolutionary terms as "chiefdoms," and questions relating to the organization of such societies and how they developed continue to be matters of wide interest and considerable debate.

This study deals with the Moundville culture of west-central Alabama, a Mississippian society that existed from about A.D. 1050 to 1550. Sites of this culture are located in the valley of the Black Warrior River, south of the fall line at Tuscaloosa. By far the largest of these sites is Moundville, after which the culture was named. In its time, Moundville was a political and religious center of major proportions. Indeed, it was the second largest Mississippian community in all of eastern North America, second only to the great Cahokia site in the American Bottoms near present-day St. Louis.

During the past decade, a tremendous amount of research has been devoted to reconstructing the social, political, and economic organization of Moundville's former inhabitants. Mortuary data have been analyzed for evidence of social differentiation (Peebles 1971, 1974), settlement patterns have been examined for evidence of political organization (Peebles 1978, Steponaitis 1978), and environmental data have been brought to bear in explaining certain aspects of community size and location (Peebles 1978). Although these studies have contributed greatly to our understanding of Moundville, considerably more remains to be learned. One limitation of prior studies is that they were all essentially synchronic in outlook. A number of social, political, and economic patterns were identified, yet questions relating to how these patterns developed through time were never adequately addressed. This shortcoming was not at all due to lack of interest, but rather was imposed by the state of knowledge at the time. The Moundville phase, as it was then defined, encompassed a 500-year span within which no temporal distinctions could be perceived. As long as this block of time remained undivided, evolutionary studies could not proceed.

This, then, was the context in which the present study was conceived. Long years of excavation at Moundville had produced large collections of ceramics, including many whole vessels from grave contexts, that had never been analyzed but were still being curated at various museums. These collections were an ideal source of data with which a ceramic chronology could be constructed, a chronology which could then be used to partition the archaeological record into finer temporal units, thereby revealing the trajectory by which the sociopolitical complexity at Moundville developed, and later declined.

The chapters that follow will not answer all the questions related to the processes of development at Moundville, nor will they attempt to. The goal instead is to provide a sound diachronic framework that will allow certain previous interpretations to be refined, and that will also provide the first glimpse of how the size and configuration of the Moundville site changed through time. Achieving these goals requires a detailed understanding of the formal variation in Moundville ceramics, a subject to which the greater part of this volume is devoted.

The present study addresses itself to five major areas of concern. First, the materials and technology of pottery manufacture at Moundville are examined. This discussion not only lays the groundwork for describing the ceramic assemblage, but also demonstrates how certain pottery attributes, often thought to be purely conventional, are directly related to vessel function.

Second, a new classification of Moundville ceramics is presented. This classification consists of six analytically separate dimensions of design, ware and shape, which together constitute the formal categories on which the chronology is based.

Third is a presentation of the chronology itself. This chronology was formulated using two kinds of evidence: (a) a seriation based on whole vessels excavated in the years between 1905 and 1941, and (b) stratigraphic analysis of sherds obtained from test excavations conducted at Moundville in 1978 and 1979. These lines of evidence have allowed the 500-year block of time, formerly known as a single "Moundville phase," to be broken up into three shorter phases—Moundville I, Moundville II, and Moundville III. Adding these three new units to the two previously defined phases that come before and after, the entire late prehistoric sequence now consists of five phases spanning the period from A.D. 900 to 1700.

Fourth, the spatial distribution of burials and ceramic vessels, dated according to this chronology, is examined at Moundville for each phase in turn. In so doing, the site's evolution from a small village, to a minor center, to a large regional center is traced, and certain implications of this sequence are discussed.

Fifth and finally, the Moundville data are considered from a regional perspective. The late prehistory of the Black Warrior drainage is sketched, outlining the major trends in subsistence, settlement, and organization. The study then concludes with a consideration of factors that may have helped cause some of the cultural changes observed.

As a prelude to these chapters, let us begin by describing the Moundville site and its setting in more detail, reviewing the history of investigations there, and describing the particulars of the ceramic sample on which the study depends.

THE SITE AND ITS SETTING

I do not think in the Southern States there is a group of Mounds to compare to Moundville, in the arrangement and state of preservation of the mounds [Moore, quoted in Owen 1910:44].

The Moundville site, so highly acclaimed by Moore, is located in west-central Alabama astride the Hale–Tuscaloosa county line, about 25 km south of the city of Tuscaloosa (Figure 1). It sits on a low terrace overlooking the east bank of the Black Warrior River, nestled in an alluvial valley that cuts through the gently rolling Fall Line Hills.

During the prehistoric occupation, this region was characterized by a high diversity of physiographic zones and forest biomes. As Peebles has aptly described:

The forests that were above the floodplain of the Black Warrior River were a mixture of oak–hickory and pine facies that mirrored the physiographic complexity of the area. As [Figure 1] illustrates, four major physiographic provinces lie within 20 miles of Moundville. To the north of the fall line, in the Ridge and Valley Province and the Cumberland Plateau, the oak–hickory forest is the climax biome. South of the Black Belt, the pine barrens of the Coastal Plain was the dominant forest type. Between these two forests, in the Fall Line Hills, the interfingering of these two forests plus the floodplain vegetation produced a broad ecotone forest. Both the oak–hickory and the forest edges of the ecotone forest supported high densities of deer and turkey, the faunal mainstays of the Southeastern Indians [Peebles 1978b:43, see also 1978a:388–393].

Within the valley proper, the floodplain soils constituted another resource of great importance to the prehistoric inhabitants, for these soils are known to have had a high fertility and were eminently suited to the growing of maize, the principal Mississippian crop (Peebles 1978:400–412).

The site itself contains at least 20 artificial mounds, neatly arranged around a rectangular plaza (Figure 2). The largest of these mounds, Mound B, is about 17 m high, and about 100 m2 at the base; the other mounds range from about 8 m to 1 m in height (McKenzie 1966: Table 5; Moore 1905:128). Many, if not all, of these mounds were used as platforms for structures, either for public buildings ("temples") or for the dwellings of important individuals. The plaza alone covers some 32 ha, and if one includes the various areas that were occupied around the periphery of the plaza, the total extent of the site comes to about 100 ha. At one time, the three sides of the site away from the river were surrounded by a bastioned palisade, traces of which show up in air photographs, and the existence of which has been confirmed by archaeological excavation (Peebles 1979: Figure I-1, passim). In terms of both its size and architectural complexity, Moundville is certainly one of the most impressive late prehistoric sites north of Mexico.

INVESTIGATIONS AT MOUNDVILLE PRIOR TO 1978

Near Carthage ... there are many mounds of various sizes, some of which are large [Pickett 1851/1900:168].

No doubt because of its tremendous size, Moundville has attracted the attention of antiquarians for quite some time. The site was mentioned in print as early as 1851 (in the passage just quoted), and additional references continued to crop up in the literature throughout the second half of the nineteenth century (e.g., Brewer 1872:271; Thomas 1891:13; Thruston 1890: Figure 84). Variously called the "Carthage group" (after a nearby town) or the "Prince mounds" (after the landowner), these earthworks owed at least some of their recognition to the work of the fledgling Smithsonian Institution, which twice sent its agents to investigate. The first of these recorded visits was made in 1869 by N. T. Lupton, a local scholar of some repute, who mapped the site, briefly described it, and placed an excavation in Mound O (Lupton 1869). Some years later, in 1882, a second visit was made by James D. Middleton, who brought back a modest surface collection and another description (Middleton 1882). Although neither investigator's observations were ever published in full, many of the unusual artifacts they found were illustrated in works by Rau (1879: Figures 49, 150, 151) and Holmes (1883: Plate 56 [Figures 1–4], Plate 66 [Figure 6], 1903:Plate 58f).

It was not until the early years of the twentieth century that Moundville saw its first large-scale excavations, undertaken by the indefatigable Clarence Bloomfield Moore. Moore and his crew came to Moundville on two occasions: once in 1905 and again in 1906, staying about a month each time. During these two forays, they managed to put "trial holes" into practically every one of the mounds, and into many off-mound areas as well. All in all, they turned up over 800 graves, many accompanied by pottery vessels and other artifacts of shell, copper, and stone. Moore's excavation techniques were crude by today's standards, but, fortunately for us, he was much more competent than a good many of his contemporaries. He consistently maintained an accurate set of field notes, in which he recorded individual gravelots and their contents, and kept track of the general localities in which his various finds were made. Even more importantly, much of this information soon found its way into two profusely illustrated volumes (Moore, 1905, 1907). These volumes contained the first accurate map and extensive description of the site to appear in print, and, to this day, they remain virtually the only source of information on what was inside the mounds.

The second major episode of excavation at Moundville began in 1929, and lasted until 1941. This work was begun by the Alabama Museum of Natural History, but, with the onset of the Great Depression, it soon came under the sponsorship of various federally funded relief agencies—the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). At first, the excavation techniques were no better than those of Moore: graves were the only class of feature recognized, and the field records kept were rather spotty. As time went on, however, the techniques greatly improved, so that by the mid-1930s, the excavators had learned to record with consistency postholes, wall trenches, hearths, and other structural features that had previously been ignored. Paralleling these improvements in feature recognition was a greater effectiveness in artifact recovery; sherds and other small artifacts began to be retained, and their proveniences were recorded with greater horizontal and vertical control. Most of the improvements were brought about by David L. DeJarnette, who had been trained at the University of Chicago field school in Fulton County, Illinois, and who effectively directed most of the work at Moundville from 1932 on. By the time the depression-era excavations ended, some 4.5 ha of the site's surface had been opened, yielding over 2000 burials, about 75 structure patterns, and innumerable other finds (Peebles 1979; 1978b: 10–13).

The mass of data produced by the 1905–1941 excavations obviously required synthesis and interpretation, and these concerns were not lost on the investigators at the time. Archaeologists in the 1930s had developed an overriding concern with space–time systematics—the process of defining cultural units and their relationships to other units in space and time—and this was the issue that dominated interpretive statements on Moundville until well into the 1960s. Reference to the existence of a "Moundville culture," characterized by a distinctive set of material traits, appeared in print as early as 1932 (Jones 1932). This concept then underwent a gradual process of elaboration and descriptive refinement (Jones and DeJarnette n.d.; DeJarnette and Wimberly 1941; DeJarnette 1952; Wimberly 1956), a process which eventually culminated in McKenzie's (1966) synthesis of what he called the "Moundville phase." The principal hallmarks of this phase included pyramidal platform mounds, square or rectangular wall-trench dwellings, extended burials with grave goods, corn agriculture, and a number of distinctive shell-tempered pottery types, many of which had a "black filmed" surface and were sometimes engraved with elaborate zoomorphic motifs. Geographically, the phase included sites in the Warrior drainage, and some as far north as the Pickwick Basin on the middle Tennessee River. Based on stylistic crossties with other regions, McKenzie estimated that the phase lasted from A.D. 1200 to 1500—a range which, as we now know, did not begin sufficiently early, but was otherwise nearly correct.

Thus, by the late 1960s the broad outlines of a culture–historical unit called the Moundville phase had been delineated. And with this accomplished, the focus of research on Moundville began to change. Issues of unit definition were emphasized less, as archaeologists became more and more interested in understanding the sociological meaning of variability within the unit itself. It was with such concerns that Christopher Peebles began working with the Moundville material, and the studies he eventually carried out underlie most of our present notions of how the prehistoric society at Moundville was organized.

Using the data on burials recovered in the 1905–1941 excavations, Peebles performed a set of numerical analyses, by means of which he isolated several distinct segments within the burial population (Peebles 1974, see also 1971; Peebles and Kus 1977). He argued that one segment, representing the "superordinate dimension," consisted of individuals who belonged to the social and political elite. These individuals were always buried in or near mounds, with an elaborate mortuary ritual, and were consistently accompanied by certain distinctive artifacts that probably served as symbols of their political office or social rank. The remaining segments of the burial population, constituting the "subordinate dimension," apparently contained individuals of lower standing, as evidenced by both mortuary ritual and the poorer nature of their grave offerings. A consideration of the age–sex composition within each segment further suggested that access to elite statuses was principally determined by birth, rather than by life history or achievement. Thus, Peebles's evidence indicated the existence of a marked social hierarchy, in which nobility was largely based on descent.

Not only could ranking be seen in the burials, but a hierarchy could also be discerned among the Moundville phase sites themselves (Peebles 1978). Moundville, with its 20 mounds and its vast extent, was by far the largest and most complex site in the Warrior Valley. Nearby were 10 smaller centers, each with only one mound, as well as numerous villages and hamlets with no mounds at all. Comparision between the sizes of these sites and the agricultural potential of the surrounding soils suggested that the outlying settlements were self-sufficient in their food supply, but that the inhabitants of Moundville were at least partly provisioned by tribute brought in from other sites (Peebles 1978:400–410). Thus, the settlement data indicated a political hierarchy of three levels—major center, smaller center, and village–hamlet—with Moundville clearly at the apex. Further analysis showed that the spatial distribution of Moundville phase settlements corresponded closely to an ideal configuration, which tended to minimize the costs of moving tribute and administrative information between centers and the populations they controlled (Steponaitis 1978:417–444). In comparing the relative sizes of mounds at minor centers, evidence was also found to suggest that Moundville exacted more tribute labor from the centers in its immediate vicinity than it did from those slightly farther away (1978:444–448).

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Contents

Illustrations

Tables

Preface

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction

The Site and Its Setting

Investigations at Moundville prior to 1978

Aspects of the Ceramic Sample

2 Ceramic Technology

Clays

Tempering Materials

Vessel Forming, Finishing, Decoration

Ceramic Mineralogy and Finising, and Decoration

The Effect of Paste Composition on Physical Properties

Discussion

Introduction

Types and Varieties

Representational Motifs

Painted Decoration

Basic Shapes

Secondary Shape Features

Effigy Features

Introduction to Chronology

Gravelot Geriation

Stratigraphy

Moundville I Phase

Moundville II Phase

Moundville III Phase

Summary and Discussion

Relative Dating of Vessels and Burials

Spatial Context of Vessels and Burials

Changes in Community Patterns through Time

The Late Prehistory of the Black Warrior Drainage

Some Speculations on the Causes of Change

Vessels and Shred Illustrations

Appendix A Individual Vessel Descriptions

Appendix B Vessels Indexed by Burial Number

Appendix C Stratigraphic Level Descriptions

Appedix D Shred Frequencies by Level

Tensile Strength

Thermal Dffusivity

Elasticiy

Appendix F Type- Variety Descriptions

Local Types

Nonlocal Types

Local Types

Nonlocal Types

Respresentational Motifs

Painted Decoration

Basic Shapes

Secondary Shape Features

Effigy Features

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

“This study is stimulating, authoritative, and illustrates the research potential of museum collections. It will undoubtedly prove to be a lasting contribution to the archaeology of the American Southeast.”

—Man— -

“This book should stand for many years not only as a chronological benchmark for the last half millennium of prehistory in the Southeast, but also as a methodological classic that will be of enduring interest to archaeologists grappling with problems of chronological control and cultural process.”

—Science— -

"An important contribution to the later prehistory of Alabama."

—American Antiquity— -

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