Location | Macon, Georgia, Bibb County, Georgia, USA |
---|---|
Region | Bibb County, Georgia |
Coordinates | 32°48′43.92″N83°35′31.85″W / 32.8122000°N 83.5921806°W |
History | |
Founded | 1350 CE |
Abandoned | 1600 CE |
Periods | Lamar phase |
Cultures | South Appalachian Mississippian culture |
Site notes | |
Excavation dates | 1934, 1936, 1938, 1939-1940, 1996 |
Archaeologists | James A. Ford, Arthur R. Kelly, Gordon Willey, Jesse D. Jennings, Charles Fairbanks, Mark Williams WPA, Lamar Institute |
Architecture | |
Architectural styles | platform mound |
Architectural details | Number of temples: 2 |
Ocmulgee National Monument | |
Location | 1207 Emory Hwy., E of Macon, Macon, Georgia |
Area | 702.1 acres (284.1 ha) |
NRHP reference No. | 66000099 [1] |
Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
The Lamar mounds and village site (9BI2) is an important archaeological site on the banks of the Ocmulgee River in Bibb County, Georgia (U.S. state), several miles to the southeast of the Ocmulgee mound site. Both mound sites are part of the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park, a national park and historic district created in 1936 and run by the U.S. National Park Service. [2] Historians and archaeologists have theorized that the site is the location of the main village of the Ichisi encountered by the Hernando de Soto expedition in 1539. [3]
The site has two large platform mounds and an associated village area surrounded by a palisade. The original settlement may have been started on a natural levee of the Ocmulgee River; this is where Mound A was developed. The main village area spreads out to the southeast from this location. [2] This location may have been island-like at the time of its settlement, the only high ground located in a low swampy area, with the Ocmulgee River on one side and an oxbow lake on the other. [3] [4]
Houses in the village were rectangular wattle and daub structures, with some situated on low house mounds. The 3,500-foot-long (1,070 m) palisade was made of upright logs covered in clay. [5] The palisade encircled an area of about 25 acres (0.1 km2) and followed the island shape of the raised levee. Outside the palisade was an encircling ditch, probably water filled at the time of the site's occupation. [4] Mound A is a large mound, around 10 metres (33 ft) in diameter. A 10–15-centimetre (3.9–5.9 in) deep depression is located in the northwestern quadrant of its summit. This feature is thought to be the remnants of a collapsed earth lodge with a dugout floor and embanked walls. Unlike other Middle Mississippian culture platform mounds to the northwest, Lamar-style mounds are more rounded in shape, as compared to squared-off rectangles.
Mound B, completely round in shape, has a feature almost unique in southeastern archaeology: a spiral ramp leading to its summit. This and other evidence has led archaeologists to speculate that the mound was in the process of being enlarged and given a new layer of fill when work was abruptly stopped. Unlike other Mississippian sites, no evidence of a large, flat plaza has been found at the site, although the large area between mounds was once theorized to be one. [2] Two large pits were made at the site, one inside the palisade and the other outside its perimeter. These were probably borrow pits left over from mound construction. It is possible the inhabitants later used the pits as clean water reservoirs and fish ponds, a use described by the De Soto chroniclers when passing through the area. [4]
The Lamar site was inhabited from about 1350 to 1600 CE, during the late prehistoric and early historic period of the area. The style of Mississippian culture pottery found at the site has been used to define this period in the regional chronology, making it the type site for the Lamar culture (also known variously as the Lamar phase and Lamar period). [2]
In 1936 the site was acquired by the United States government and incorporated into the new Ocmulgee National Monument, based on the multiple mounds located to the north at Ocmulgee Mounds. It was extensively excavated during the late 1930s as part of the government's Depression-era Works Progress Administration archaeology program. These excavations started with one directed by James A. Ford in 1934, Arthur R. Kelly in 1936, Gordon Willey in 1938, and in 1939-1940 by Jesse Jennings and Charles Fairbanks. To protect the site from the flooding Ocmulgee River, the government constructed a large levee around the site in 1941.
In 1996 archaeologist Mark Williams from the University of Georgia and the Lamar Institute did test excavations and site mapping. These were the first archaeological explorations at the site since 1940. [2]
On March 29, 1539, the Hernando de Soto entrada, while winding northward after leaving Florida, recorded coming upon the province of Ichisi, which may have been part of the larger paramount chiefdom of Ocute. They were greeted at the first village by women dressed in white mantles, offering gifts of corn cakes and wild onions. On March 30 they were ferried across the Ocmulgee River in dugout canoes and met the paramount chief of the province, who they noted had only one good eye. The Spanish expedition spent several days at the village as guests of this chief. He gave de Soto gifts of food, and offered him porters and translators to assist him in getting to the next chiefdom to the northeast, Ocute. This people were recorded as speaking a different language than the Ichisi. Before leaving on April 1, the Spaniards erected a large wooden cross atop one of the village platform mounds and tried to explain its significance to the villagers.
Noted historian and de Soto researcher Charles M. Hudson theorized in the 1980s and 90s, that the de Soto entrada crossed the Ocmulgee River near the future site of Macon, Georgia, and that the Lamar Mounds may have been the location of the paramount town of the Ichisi. [3] This view has been supported by archaeologists who have worked at the site. [2] [6]
But archaeological work in 2009 at a site in rural Telfair County, Georgia, near the present-day town of McRae, discovered evidence that calls this identification into question. Evidence from the Telfair site suggests that de Soto's crossing of the Ocmulgee River took place here, approximately 90 miles (140 km) further south than at Lamar Mounds. Archaeologists and historians are still debating which of the two sites was visited by de Soto and his men. [7]
The mounds are located on plantation land that was owned by John Basil Lamar in the antebellum period. After his death during the Civil War, the Lamar family retained the property. They sold that part of the former plantation that includes the mounds to the United States in 1936. [8]
Etowah Indian Mounds (9BR1) are a 54-acre (220,000 m2) archaeological site in Bartow County, Georgia, south of Cartersville. Built and occupied in three phases, from 1000–1550 CE, the prehistoric site is located on the north shore of the Etowah River.
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park in Macon, Georgia, United States preserves traces of over ten millennia of culture from the Native Americans in the Southeastern Woodlands. Its chief remains are major earthworks built before 1000 CE by the South Appalachian Mississippian culture These include the Great Temple and other ceremonial mounds, a burial mound, and defensive trenches. They represented highly skilled engineering techniques and soil knowledge, and the organization of many laborers. The site has evidence of "12,000 years of continuous human habitation." The 3,336-acre (13.50 km2) park is located on the east bank of the Ocmulgee River. Macon, Georgia developed around the site after the United States built Fort Benjamin Hawkins nearby in 1806 to support trading with Native Americans.
The Mississippian culture was a Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1600 CE, varying regionally. It was known for building large, earthen platform mounds, and often other shaped mounds as well. It was composed of a series of urban settlements and satellite villages linked together by loose trading networks. The largest city was Cahokia, believed to be a major religious center located in what is present-day southern Illinois.
Joara was a large Native American settlement, a regional chiefdom of the Mississippian culture, located in what is now Burke County, North Carolina, about 300 miles from the Atlantic coast in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Joara is notable as a significant archaeological and historic site, where Mississippian culture-era and European artifacts have been found, in addition to an earthwork platform mound and remains of a 16th-century Spanish fort.
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The Fort Walton culture is the term used by archaeologists for a late prehistoric Native American archaeological culture that flourished in southeastern North America from approximately 1200~1500 CE and is associated with the historic Apalachee people.
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The Nodena site is an archeological site east of Wilson, Arkansas, and northeast of Reverie, Tennessee, in Mississippi County, Arkansas, United States. Around 1400–1650 CE an aboriginal palisaded village existed in the Nodena area on a meander bend of the Mississippi River. The Nodena site was discovered and first documented by Dr. James K. Hampson, archaeologist and owner of the plantation on which the Nodena site is located. Artifacts from this site are on display in the Hampson Museum State Park in Wilson, Arkansas. The Nodena site is the type site for the Nodena phase, believed by many archaeologists to be the province of Pacaha visited by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1542.
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Cofitachequi was a paramount chiefdom founded about 1300 AD and encountered by the Hernando de Soto expedition in South Carolina in April 1540. Cofitachequi was later visited by Juan Pardo during his two expeditions (1566–1568) and by Henry Woodward in 1670. Cofitachequi ceased to exist as a political entity prior to 1701.
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The Jere Shine site (1MT6) is an archaeological site on the Tallapoosa River near its confluence with the Coosa River in modern Montgomery County, Alabama. Based on comparison of archaeological remains and pottery styles, scholars believe that it was most likely occupied from 1400–1550 CE by people of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture.
The Little Egypt site was an archaeological site located in Murray County, Georgia, near the junction of the Coosawattee River and Talking Rock Creek. The site originally had three platform mounds surrounding a plaza and a large village area. It was destroyed during the construction of the Dam of Carters Lake in 1972. It was situated between the Ridge and Valley and Piedmont sections of the state in a flood plain. Using Mississippian culture pottery found at the site archaeologists dated the site to the Middle and Late South Appalachian culture habitation from 1300 to 1600 CE during the Dallas, Lamar, and Mouse Creek phases.
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The King Archaeological Site (9FL5) is a protohistoric Native American archaeological site located on the Coosa River in Floyd County, Georgia. It is one of 5 large contemporaneous village sites located in a 20 kilometres (12 mi) section of the river. The site was a satellite village associated with the Coosa chiefdom centered on the Little Egypt Site located upstream.
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