The Mississippian Tradition

The Mississippian tradition was marked by rectangular, flat-topped platform mounds, which served as bases for temples, chief’s houses, and other important buildings. Frequently these platform mounds were arranged around rectangular open plazas.

Although burial mounds did not disappeared entirely in Mississippian cultures, they were dwarfed by the platform mounds and were relatively minor features at the major sites. Generally, in both earthwork construction and extend of settlement, Mississippian sites were larger than Woodland sites.

Although large Adena and Hopewell mound and embankment groups have been found and the Poverty Point site in Louisiana is unusually large, it is nevertheless true that the largest of the Mississippian centers, such as Cahokia (Illinois) or Moundville (Alabama), are even larger than these.

Then the density of living refuse and house remains in their large Mississippian villages give evidence of more stable occupation than do the Woodland sites. These facts, together with the now frequent finds of charred maize, beans, and squash, and the Mississippian appearance of new and improved strains of maize, point to an intensification of agriculture and its increased economic importance.

Associated with these changes in site patterns and subsistence were a host of other Mississippian traits, of which the most prominent were ceramic manufactures. New vessel forms, modes and manners of decoration, and aplastics appeared. Composite silhouette ollas, jars, and casuelas replaced the relatively simple pot forms of the Woodland. Handles and various appendages were added to the vessels. Incision, punctation, engraving and painting tended to replace cord-marked, malleated, or stamped surfaces. In many Mississippian cultures, pulverized shell was the universal pottery temper. These ceramic innovations effected a near-complete break with the past, although in some regions they blended with and continued the older Woodland ways so that cord-marking or vessel-stamping, for instance, existed alongside the newer modes of surface treatment or decorating.

The Mississippian tradition was earliest and strongest in the central and lower Mississippi Valley subareas. The Mississippian tradition was also firmly established in the Southeast subarea, as represented by sites in the Tennessee River drainage and along other major river courses in Alabama and Georgia.

The Mississippian tradition began in the Temple Mound I Period, but the initial date of A.D 700 for this period is most tentative and approximate. At about this time the earliest Mississippian cultures were in formation in the central Mississippi Valley subarea of northeastern Arkansas, southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois and western Tennessee. More or less contemporaneously, the Coles Creek and related cultures of the lower Mississippi valley were making their appearance.