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10 The Creation of Ritual Space at the Jackson Landing Site in Coastal Mississippi edMond A. boudr eAux iii A defining trait of many Middle and Late Woodland societies across the Eastern Woodlands was the construction and use of various forms of monumental architecture (Anderson and Mainfort 2002a: 10–13; Carr and Case 2005c; Griffin 1967: 186; Knight 2001: 313; Mainfort and Sullivan 1998: 4; Steponaitis 1986: 379). In many locations, Woodland architects used culturallyconstructedfeaturessuchasmoundsandearthworksincombinationwith natural landforms and bodies of water to create large ceremonial centers and ritual landscapes. The scale of many of these sites with monumental architecture suggests that they were centers that integrated local populations at the regional and, perhaps, interregional levels (Mainfort 1988: 169; Mainfort and Sullivan 1998: 9, 15; Milner and O’Shea 1998: 200; Thunen 1988). Although local and regional traditions were important (Brose and Greber 1979; Carr and Case 2005c: 21; Ruby et al. 2005: 171–72; Thunen 1988), similarities in ritual activities—as indicated by shared artifact styles, the construction of similar forms of earthen monuments, and similarities in the arrangements of earthen monuments—suggest a sharing at some level of ideas about ritual among societies across the Eastern Woodlands during the Middle Woodland and early Late Woodland periods (Anderson and Mainfort 2002a: 9; Griffin 1967: 183; Kidder 2002: 79; Thunen 1988; Steponaitis 1986: 382; Toth 1988: 3–7). Important insights into ceremonialism, which include proposed functions for classes of sites with similar forms of monumental architecture (Cobb and Nassaney 2002; Knight 2001; Mainfort and Sullivan 1998), have been developed by considering these shared attributes from a regional perspective. This chapter has two purposes. The first is to present information about the Jackson Landing site, an early Late Woodland period (AD 400–700) site on the Mississippi Gulf Coast with monumental architecture. The general absence of Jackson Landing from discussions about the Woodland period is ironic because the site’s earthwork is one of the largest earthen constructions 154 Edmond A. Boudreaux III in the central Gulf Coast region (Blitz and Mann 2000: 39–40; Lewis 1988: 115) and because for some time archaeologists have known that this earthwork was built during the Woodland period (Williams 1987). Until recently (Boudreaux 2011a, 2011b), archaeological fieldwork at Jackson Landing has been relatively limited and little was known about the activities that occurred there during the early Late Woodland period. Consequently, the site has not been discussed in the archaeological literature beyond works that have focused exclusively on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (Blitz and Mann 2000: 39–40; Lewis 1988: 115; but see Phillips 1970: 899). A second goal of this chapter is to use the limited information that does exist for Jackson Landing to develop some interpretations about how the site was used during the early Late Woodland period. Although the site’s earthen monumentsareknowntohavebeenbuiltandusedbetweenAD400and700 (Boudreaux2011a,2011b;Williams1987),archaeologicalinvestigationshave been too limited spatially to permit investigators to determine much about how Jackson Landing was used during that time. To facilitate a consideration of site function in the absence of site-wide investigations, the information that does exist from Jackson Landing—which consists mostly of basic observations about the size, shape, construction, and layout of the site’s earthen monuments—will be compared with information from Woodland period sites with similar cultural attributes. In general, similarities among some Woodland sites regarding the form, spatial arrangements, and use of earthen monuments have been recognized across the Eastern Woodlands (Dancey 2005; DeBoer 1997; Knight 1990: 170, 2001: 313; Thunen 1988). More specifically , similarities among Jackson Landing and other sites in the Southeast have been noted for some time (Williams 1987: 61). The use of analogies with other Woodland period sites generates some intriguing ideas about Jackson Landing’s construction and use. Although any interpretations regarding site-wide activities and function will have to be evaluated against actual data from Jackson Landing as they become available, current information indicates that large-scale rituals involving large groups were the predominant, if not exclusive, activity undertaken there. Elements of the natural world, such as soil and water, were used to create a ritual landscape at Jackson Landing. The people who built the site’s monuments used cultural activities to transform these natural materials into an earthwork and a platform mound; based on analogy with comparable sites in the Eastern Woodlands, these likely served, respectively, to delineate ritual space and as a stage for ritualperformances(Knight2001: 321; MainfortandSullivan1998: 11–12). Also similar to a number of Woodland period sites, the monuments...

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