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INTRODUCTION Since being severed from Fort Walton, Pensacola culture has gained some independence as a coastal Mississippian variant. From the beginning, geographical continuities and general similarities in ceramic styles suggested a relationship to Moundville culture. But just how “Moundvillian” is Pensacola ? Recent research at the Bottle Creek site indicates a rather sudden Mississippian appearance in southwestern Alabama in the twelfth or thirteenth century a.d. A northerly origin is suggested by pottery reminiscent of late Moundville I or early Moundville II phase types. Later components show a steady evolution away from this Moundvillian base, resulting in a distinctive regional ceramic complex and settlement pattern by the sixteenth century. The nativity of Pensacola as an archaeological construct took place in the 1940s, when it began life as a pottery series de¤ned by Gordon Willey (Willey 1949; Willey and Woodbury 1942). Its youth was spent largely in familial bondage to other, better known cultures, either as a hyphenated twin to Fort Walton or as a coastal stepchild of Moundville. During the 1950s and 1960s, Bruce Trickey (1958), Steve Wimberly (1960), and others attempted to forge a separate identity for Pensacola as a coastal variant of Mississippian culture. These surgeries failed to take, however, and most people continued to regard Pensacola as a hyphen-dependent poor relative of Fort Walton and Moundville. The principal problem was the lack of reliable genealogical documentation in the form of published data from archaeological excavations. Pensacola underwent a small degree of adolescent maturation in the 1970s and 1980s, as research in southwestern Alabama by David L. DeJarnette , Vernon J. Knight, Ned Jenkins, David Brose, and others helped to establish a few lines of its cultural pedigree (Brose et al. 1983; DeJarnette 1976; Knight 1984; Sears 1977). Since then, I have updated the 2 / Out of the Moundville Shadow The Origin and Evolution of Pensacola Culture Richard S. Fuller Pensacola pottery typology originated by Willey (1949:353–495) and Wimberly (1960:57–190) (Fuller 1996; 1998; Fuller and Brown 1993a; Fuller and Stowe 1982). Although this recent effort has been based partly on surface collections, it is helping to delineate a more accurate Pensacola genealogy . Still, if we want to learn the true story of Pensacola culture, we must look to its heart—Bottle Creek. From 1991 to 1994, the Gulf Coast Survey of the Alabama Museum of Natural History conducted several seasons of ¤eldwork at Bottle Creek. We surface collected every mound, as well as the areas between the mounds. In addition to yielding intrasite surface pattern information, this initial collecting project suggested which parts of the site might be productive for excavation. In 1991 we tested Mound L, a small platform in the southern part of the site. In 1993 and 1994 we conducted more extensive excavations on this mound (Chapter 4). My discussion focuses on mounds A, C, and D. MOUNDS C AND D In 1993 we excavated two 2 m square test units in mounds C and D, a closely spaced pair of small mounds located in the western part of the site (Figure 1.3). A series of soil probe tests encountered dense shell midden deposits on the mounds’ western slopes. Because we wanted to recover subsistence remains as well as artifacts, we placed our excavations in these locations (Figure 2.1). Both excavations revealed deep, nearly continuous middens over two meters in depth (Figures 2.2–2.3). In addition to the rich middens in mounds C and D, our excavations revealed evidence of a palisade wall bordering this part of the site. We also encountered the remains of probable house structures. All of these architectural features appeared to date early in the site’s history (Appendix B). For Mound C, they were covered by later midden containing large quantities of well-preserved bone and shell plus a variety of plant remains, including maize. The nearly continuous midden deposits extended from the base of a super¤cial plow zone to the top of the early wall trench, making it dif¤cult to sort out discrete strata for analysis. We did encounter one very dark and exceptionally rich layer of sheet midden, Feature 3, about halfway between the surface and the wall trench. This feature is a large, compact midden stain, about 10 cm thick. It was ¤rst detected at the base of Level G at 8.66 m. Feature 3 allowed us to subdivide the thick accretion deposit into smaller zones for analysis. In the ¤eld, our initial impression of the...

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