Mound building and summit architecture at the Carson site, a Mississippian mound center in the southeastern United States

Abstract

Significant scholarly attention has been paid to monument construction, craft production, and leadership strategies in the Mississippian world (A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1540) of the Southeastern and Midcontinental United States. As new sites are discovered and new data brought into consideration, greater consideration can be made linking the building of large earthen mounds to social and political relationships. This article presents an archaeological and ethnohistoric consideration of mound building and mound summit use at Mound D at the Carson site, located in northwest Mississippi. Data from earthen mound excavation, mound summit architecture, material culture, and optically stimulated luminescence and radiocarbon (accelerator mass spectrometry) dating are used to discuss the formation of the monumental landscape beginning in the early 13th century. Several postulates are offered for the interpretation of mound construction and mound summit use.

Multi‐method geophysical investigation at Snow's Bend, a Mississippian platform mound

“…Traditionally, archaeologists have viewed these monumental constructions as the materialization of social differentiation, to separate the elite from the non-elite. In this view, platform mounds provide elevated surfaces for elite residences, with successive summits added over time and across generations (e.g., Knight, 2007Knight, , 2016Mehta, 2019). Archaeologists now recognize, however, that the role of platform mounds was complex and variable beyond any presupposed rigid uniformity.…”

Broken Worlds: Towards an Archaeology of the Shatter Zone

“…Studies of diet and subsistence have revealed stark differences in the access to resources accorded to higher-and lower-status groups (see, e.g. Ambrose et al, 2003;Thompson et al, 2015), with repeated phases of mound construction noted at some sites further attesting to the reaffirmation of dynastic power over multiple generations (Mehta, 2019). Elites also maintained access to and participated in long distance trading and exchange networks of varying scale.…”