Moundville Archaeological Site

Last updated

Moundville Archaeological Site
Moundville aerial HRoe 2020.jpg
Artist's conception of the Moundville Archaeological Site
USA Alabama location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Usa edcp location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location634 Mound State Parkway
Moundville, Alabama, US
Nearest city Tuscaloosa
Coordinates 33°00′17″N87°37′52″W / 33.00467°N 87.63107°W / 33.00467; -87.63107
NRHP reference No. 66000149
Significant dates
Added to NRHPOctober 15, 1966 [1]
Designated NHLJuly 19, 1964 [2]

Moundville Archaeological Site, also known as the Moundville Archaeological Park, is a Mississippian culture archaeological site on the Black Warrior River in Hale County, near the modern city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. [3] Extensive archaeological investigation has shown that the site was the political and ceremonial center of a regionally organized Mississippian culture chiefdom polity between the 11th and 16th centuries. The archaeological park portion of the site is administered by the University of Alabama Museums and encompasses 185 acres (75 ha), consisting of 29 platform mounds around a rectangular plaza. [3]

Contents

The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. [2]

Moundville is the second-largest site in the United States of the classic Middle Mississippian era, after Cahokia in Illinois. The culture was expressed in villages and chiefdoms throughout the central Mississippi River Valley, the lower Ohio River Valley, and most of the Mid-South area, including Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi as the core of the classic Mississippian culture area. [4] The park contains a museum and an archaeological laboratory.

History

Moundville was mentioned by E. G. Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis in their work, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (c1848), a survey conducted for the Smithsonian Institution. Later in the century, Nathaniel Thomas Lupton created a fairly accurate map of the site.

Little excavation work was conducted at Moundville by the Bureau of Ethnology's Division of Mound Exploration, partly because the landowner imposed a fee. The first significant archaeological investigations were not conducted until the early 20th century, by Clarence Bloomfield Moore, a lawyer from Philadelphia. He dug extensively at Moundville in 1906, and his detailed records of his work and finds have been of use to modern archaeologists. But looters dug into the mounds over the next two decades and took many artifacts, in addition to destroying stratigraphy of some structures.

In the mid-1920s concerned citizens, including Walter B. Jones (geologist) (after whom the site's museum is named) had begun a concerted effort to save the site. With the help of the Alabama Museum of Natural History, they purchased the land containing the mounds. By 1933 the site had officially become known as Mound State Park, but the park was not developed for visitors until 1938. During this period of the Great Depression, workers of the Civilian Conservation Corps were brought in to stabilize the mounds against erosion. They also constructed roads and buildings to allow public uses at the site. The name of the park was changed to Mound State Monument and was opened to the public in 1939.

During a 1980 break-in at the Erskine Ramsay Archaeological Repository at Moundville, 264 pottery vessels, one-fifth of the vessel collection curated by the Alabama Museum of Natural History, were stolen. The highest-quality specimens were taken. Despite an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, none of the artifacts was seen again until 2018 when three ceremonial bowls were anonymously returned. [5]

In 1991, the park's name was officially changed to Moundville Archaeological Park. In November 2021, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Review Committee found the site to be culturally linked to the seven Muskogean-speaking tribes who have petitioned for the return of 5,982 human remains and funerary objects. [6]

Site

A view of the site from the top of Mound B looking toward Mound A and the plaza Moundville Archaeological Site Alabama.jpg
A view of the site from the top of Mound B looking toward Mound A and the plaza
A view across the plaza from mound J to mound B, with mound A in the center Moundville mounds J, A, B HRoe 2005.jpg
A view across the plaza from mound J to mound B, with mound A in the center

The site was occupied by Native Americans of the Mississippian culture from around 1000 AD to 1450 AD. [3] Around 1150 AD the settlement's leaders began their rise from a local to a regional center, known as a chiefdom. At its height, the community took the form of a roughly 300-acre (121 ha) residential and political area, protected on three sides by a bastioned wooden palisade wall. The remaining side was protected by the river bluff. [3]

The largest platform mounds were built on the northern edge of the plaza; they become increasingly smaller going either clockwise or counter clockwise around the plaza to the south. Scholars theorize that the highest-ranking clans occupied the large northern mounds, with the smaller mounds' supporting buildings used for residences, mortuary, and other purposes. A total of 29 mounds remain on the site. [3]

Of the two largest mounds in the group, Mound A occupies a central position in the great plaza, and Mound B lies just to the north. It is a steep, 58 feet (18 m)-tall pyramidal mound with two access ramps. [3] Archaeologists have also found evidence at the site of borrow pits, other public buildings, and a dozen small houses constructed of pole and thatch.

Archaeologists have interpreted this community plan as a sociogram, an architectural depiction of a social order based on ranked clans. According to this model, the Moundville community was segmented into a variety of different clan precincts, the ranked positions of which were represented in the size and arrangement of paired earthen mounds around the central plaza. By 1300, the site was being used more as a religious and political center than as a residential town. [3] This signaled the beginning of a decline, and by 1500 most of the area was abandoned. [3]

Population

Engraved stone palette from Moundville, illustrating two horned rattlesnakes, perhaps referring to The Great Serpent of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex Moundville Archaeological Park 64.JPG
Engraved stone palette from Moundville, illustrating two horned rattlesnakes, perhaps referring to The Great Serpent of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex

The surrounding area appears to have been densely populated, but the people built relatively few mounds before AD 1200, after which the public architecture of the plaza and mounds was constructed. [3] At its height, the population is estimated to have been around 1,000 to 3,000 people within the walls, with 10,000 additional people in the surrounding river valley. [3]

Based on findings during excavations, the residents of the site were skilled in agriculture, especially the cultivation of maize. Production of maize surpluses gave the people time produce to trade for other goods, supported population density, and allowed craft specialization. [3] Extensive amounts of imported luxury goods, such as copper, mica, galena, and marine shell, have been excavated from the site. [3] The site is renowned by scholars for the artistic excellence of its artifacts of pottery, stonework, and embossed copper left by the former residents. [3]

Excavations and interpretation

Feline statuette excavated at the Moundville site Feline statuette Moundville Altairisfar 2010.jpg
Feline statuette excavated at the Moundville site

The first major excavations were done in 1905-06 by Clarence Bloomfield Moore, an independent archeologist, before archaeology had become a professional field of scholarship. His work first brought the site national attention and contributed to archaeologists developing the concept of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. [7] One of his many discoveries was a finely carved diorite bowl depicting a crested wood duck. He later donated this work to the Smithsonian Institution, together with more than 500 other pieces. [7]

Although the state had shown little interest in the site, after Moore removed this and many of the site's finest artifacts, the Alabama Legislature passed a law prohibiting people from taking any other artifacts from the state. Archaeological techniques in general were relatively crude when compared to modern standards, but some professionals even during his time criticized Moore for his excavation techniques. [7]

The first large-scale scientific excavations of the site began in 1929 by Walter B. Jones, director of the Alabama Museum of Natural History, and the archaeologist David L. DeJarnette. [8] During the 1930s, Jones used some workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps for excavation as well as stabilization of the mounds. This was a work program developed by the President Franklin D. Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression.

In the early 21st century, work is led by Dr. Jim Knight, Curator of Southeastern Archaeology at the University of Alabama. He is conducting field research at Moundville with an emphasis on ethnohistorical reconstruction. A ceremonial "earth lodge" was discovered in 2007, and about 15 percent of the site has been excavated. [9]

The Jones Archaeological Museum was constructed on the park property in 1939 for display of artifacts collected at the site and interpretation of the ancient peoples and culture. It served as a valuable teaching center for many decades. In the 21st century, the museum was remodeled and equipped with the latest technological improvements in 2010. The University of Alabama maintains an archaeological lab at the park and sponsors summer field seasons and public events.

Ceramics

Mississippian culture pottery found at the Moundville site Moundville pottery HRoe 2003.jpg
Mississippian culture pottery found at the Moundville site

Two major varieties of pottery are associated with the Moundville site. The Hemphill style pottery is a locally produced ware with a distinctive engraving tradition, and is mostly associated with burial practices. [10] The other variety consists of painted vessels, many of which were not produced locally, which is evidence of trade taking place among other societies outside of the one that lived in Moundville. Unlike the engraved pottery, the negative-painted pottery seems to have been used only by the elites at the Moundville site, as it has not been found outside the site. [11]

Moundville Archaeological Site Human Remains Controversy

In accordance with the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), institutions such as universities and museums are required to document any discovered human remains and return them to the appropriate indigenous tribes. However, there is debate surrounding if modern tribes have a substantial claim to the human remains found at American excavation sites. [12]

In the case of Moundville, currently 7 tribes are laying claim to the 5,892 human remains [13] that have been excavated there. Those tribes being: [14]

• The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma

• The Chickasaw Nation

• The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana

• The Muscogee (also known as the Creek) Nation

• The Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town

• The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma

• The Seminole Tribe of Florida

All of the tribes claim that they are culturally and/or linguistically descended from the culture that lived in Moundville, since that society predates their own. Therefore, the tribes want to have autonomy of the artifacts and human remains that were excavated in Moundville returned to them, as well where they will then decide what to do with them. Often times, the remains are ceremonially reburied according to the respective tribe's traditions, as many believe that the exhumation of the graves to be unethical and disrespectful. Many institutions fear that returning the human remains to the tribes entails no longer being able to study, but this is not necessarily the case. Rather, the tribes would be in control of what artifacts are studied, as well as be included in those same studies. However, many institutions hold onto the artifacts, claiming that the aforementioned tribes are not culturally and linguistically similar enough to the culture that inhabited Moundville. [12]

Geography

The Moundville Archaeological Site is located on a bluff overlooking the Black Warrior River. The site and other affiliated settlements are located within a portion of the Black Warrior River Valley starting below the fall line, just south of present-day Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and extending 25 miles (40 km) downriver. Below the fall line, the valley widens and the uplands consist of rolling hills dissected by intermittent streams. This region corresponds with the transition between the Piedmont and Coastal Plain and encompasses considerable physiographic and ecological diversity. Environmentally this portion of the Black Warrior Valley was an ecotone that had floral and faunal characteristics from temperate oak-hickory, maritime magnolia, and pine forests.[ citation needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Etowah Indian Mounds</span> Archaeological site in Georgia, U.S.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angel Mounds</span> United States historic place

Angel Mounds State Historic Site, an expression of the Mississippian culture, is an archaeological site managed by the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites that includes more than 600 acres of land about 8 miles (13 km) southeast of present-day Evansville, in Vanderburgh and Warrick counties in Indiana. The large residential and agricultural community was constructed and inhabited from AD 1100 to AD 1450, and served as the political, cultural, and economic center of the Angel chiefdom. It extended within 120 miles (190 km) of the Ohio River valley to the Green River in present-day Kentucky. The town had as many as 1,000 inhabitants inside the walls at its peak, and included a complex of thirteen earthen mounds, hundreds of home sites, a palisade (stockade), and other structures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mississippian culture</span> Native American culture in the United States (800 - 1600)

The Mississippian culture was a Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 to 1600, 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wickliffe Mounds</span> Archaeological site in Kentucky, US

Wickliffe Mounds is a prehistoric, Mississippian culture archaeological site located in Ballard County, Kentucky, just outside the town of Wickliffe, about 3 miles (4.8 km) from the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Archaeological investigations have linked the site with others along the Ohio River in Illinois and Kentucky as part of the Angel phase of Mississippian culture. Wickliffe Mounds is controlled by the State Parks Service, which operates a museum at the site for interpretation of the ancient community. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it is also a Kentucky Archeological Landmark and State Historic Site.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park</span> Park in Tallahassee, Florida

Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park (8LE1) is one of the most important archaeological sites in Florida, the capital of chiefdom and ceremonial center of the Fort Walton Culture inhabited from 1050–1500. The complex originally included seven earthwork mounds, a public plaza and numerous individual village residences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weeden Island culture</span> Cultures that existed during the Late Woodland period of the North American Southeast

The Weeden Island cultures are a group of related archaeological cultures that existed during the Late Woodland period of the North American Southeast. The name for this group of cultures was derived from the Weedon Island site in Old Tampa Bay in Pinellas County.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spiro Mounds</span> Precontact Indigenous ceremonial site in Oklahoma

Spiro Mounds is an Indigenous archaeological site located in present-day eastern Oklahoma. The site was built by people from the Arkansas Valley Caddoan culture. that remains from an American Indian culture that was part of the major northern Caddoan Mississippian culture. The 80-acre site is located within a floodplain on the southern side of the Arkansas River. The modern town of Spiro developed approximately seven miles to the south.

The Angel phase describes a 300–400-year cultural manifestation of the Mississippian culture of the central portions of the United States of America, as defined in the discipline of archaeology. Angel phase archaeological sites date from c. 1050 - 1350 CE and are located on the northern and southern sides of the Ohio River in southern Indiana, such as National Historic Landmark Angel Mounds near present-day Evansville; northwestern Kentucky, with Wickliffe Mounds and the Tolu Site; and Kincaid Mounds State Historic Site in Illinois. Additional sites range from the mouth of Anderson River in Perry County, Indiana, west to the mouth of the Wabash in Posey County, Indiana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kincaid Mounds State Historic Site</span> Archaeological site in Illinois, US

The Kincaid Mounds Historic Site c. 1050–1400 CE, is a Mississippian culture archaeological site located at the southern tip of present-day U.S. state of Illinois, along the Ohio River. Kincaid Mounds has been notable for both its significant role in native North American prehistory and for the central role the site has played in the development of modern archaeological techniques. The site had at least 11 substructure platform mounds, and 8 other monuments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winterville site</span> Archaeological site in Washington County, Mississippi, United States

The Winterville site is a major archaeological site in unincorporated Washington County, Mississippi, north of Greenville and along the river. It consists of major earthwork monuments, including more than twelve large platform mounds and cleared and filled plazas. It is the type site for the Winterville Phase of the Lower Yazoo Basin region of the Plaquemine Mississippian culture. Protected as a state park, it has been designated as a National Historic Landmark.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plaquemine culture</span> Archaeological culture in the lower Mississippi River Valley, United States

The Plaquemine culture was an archaeological culture centered on the Lower Mississippi River valley. It had a deep history in the area stretching back through the earlier Coles Creek and Troyville cultures to the Marksville culture. The Natchez and related Taensa peoples were their historic period descendants. The type site for the culture is the Medora site in Louisiana; while other examples include the Anna, Emerald, Holly Bluff, and Winterville sites in Mississippi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caddoan Mississippian culture</span> Indigenous civilization in present-day Southern Plains

The Caddoan Mississippian culture was a prehistoric Native American culture considered by archaeologists as a variant of the Mississippian culture. The Caddoan Mississippians covered a large territory, including what is now Eastern Oklahoma, Western Arkansas, Northeast Texas, Southwest Missouri and Northwest Louisiana of the United States.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mississippian culture pottery</span> Ceramics of the Mississippian culture (800 to 1600 CE)

Mississippian culture pottery is the ceramic tradition of the Mississippian culture found as artifacts in archaeological sites in the American Midwest and Southeast. It is often characterized by the adoption and use of riverine shell-tempering agents in the clay paste. Shell tempering is one of the hallmarks of Mississippian cultural practices. Analysis of local differences in materials, techniques, forms, and designs is a primary means for archaeologists to learn about the lifeways, religious practices, trade, and interaction among Mississippian peoples. The value of this pottery on the illegal antiquities market has led to extensive looting of sites.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pensacola culture</span> Archaeological culture in the southeastern US

The Pensacola culture was a regional variation of the Mississippian culture along the Gulf Coast of the United States that lasted from 1100 to 1700 CE. The archaeological culture covers an area stretching from a transitional Pensacola/Fort Walton culture zone at Choctawhatchee Bay in Florida to the eastern side of the Mississippi River Delta near Biloxi, Mississippi, with the majority of its sites located along Mobile Bay in the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta. Sites for the culture stretched inland, north into the southern Tombigee and Alabama River valleys, as far as the vicinity of Selma, Alabama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mississippian copper plates</span>

Mississippian copper plates, or plaques, are plain and repousséd plates of beaten copper crafted by peoples of the various regional expressions of the Mississippian culture between 800 and 1600 CE. They have been found as artifacts in archaeological sites in the American Midwest and Southeast. The plates, found as far afield as Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, were instrumental in the development of the archaeological concept known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Some of the more notable examples are representations of raptorial birds and avian-themed dancing warriors.

Mound 34 is a small platform mound located roughly 400 metres (1,300 ft) to the east of Monks Mound at Cahokia Mounds near Collinsville, Illinois. Excavations near Mound 34 from 2002 to 2010 revealed the remains of a copper workshop, although the one of a kind discovery had been previously found in the late 1950s by archaeologist Gregory Perino, but lost for 60 years. It is so far the only remains of a copper workshop found at a Mississippian culture archaeological site.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taskigi Mound</span> Historic site in Alabama, United States

The Taskigi Mound or Mound at Fort Toulouse – Fort Jackson Park (1EE1) is an archaeological site from the South Appalachian Mississippian Big Eddy phase. It is located on a 40 feet (12 m) bluff at the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers where they meet to form the Alabama River, near the town of Wetumpka in Elmore County, Alabama.

References

  1. ↑ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. January 23, 2007.
  2. 1 2 "Moundville Site". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on January 11, 2008. Retrieved October 28, 2007.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 "An Archaeological Sketch of Moundville". Moundville Archaeological Museum. Archived from the original on November 18, 2007. Retrieved December 4, 2007.
  4. ↑ "Southeastern Prehistory: Mississippian and Late Prehistoric Period". National Park Service. Retrieved December 4, 2007.
  5. ↑ Yurkanin, Amy (October 11, 2021). "Tribes ask University of Alabama to return artifacts from Moundville". al.com. Retrieved November 24, 2021.
  6. ↑ Chandler, Kim (November 23, 2021). "Group finds site linked to tribes seeking return of remains". MSN. Associated Press. Retrieved November 24, 2021.
  7. 1 2 3 "Moundville: A Breathtaking Archaeological Find in Alabama". Laura Lee News. 2007. Archived from the original on February 7, 2012. Retrieved December 13, 2007.
  8. ↑ "HistoricalStatement". University of Alabama: Office of Archaeological Research. Archived from the original on August 15, 2007. Retrieved December 4, 2007.
  9. ↑ "Vernon J. Knight". Department of Anthropology, University of Alabama. Archived from the original on February 8, 2007. Retrieved December 13, 2007.
  10. ↑ "Acknowledgments". Visualizing the Sacred: Cosmic Visions, Regionalism, and the Art of the Mississippian World, edited by George E. Lankford, F. Kent Reilly and James F. Garber, New York, US: University of Texas Press, 2021, pp. 120-121. doi : 10.7560/723085-001
  11. ↑ Steponaitis, Vincas P.; Knight, Vernon J. Jr. (August 8, 2003). "Moundville Art in Historical and Social Context" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on June 14, 2010. Retrieved August 22, 2010.
  12. 1 2 "Skeletons In The Closet : Code Switch". NPR.org. Retrieved March 12, 2022.
  13. ↑ "Tribes ask University of Alabama to return artifacts from Moundville". al. October 11, 2021. Retrieved March 12, 2022.
  14. ↑ Kunze, Jenna (December 2, 2021). "University of Alabama Keeps Indigenous Remains in Paper Bags; Federal NAGPRA Committee Says Remains are Ancestors of Tribes & Can Be Returned". Native News Online. Retrieved March 12, 2022.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.