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INTRODUCTION Mound B is the second tallest and second largest earthwork at the Bottle Creek site (Figure 1.3). Several general observations have led to the hypothesis that Mound B served a special role in the religious and social lives of people in Pensacola society. First, the builders of the mound positioned it strategically to form the western border of a large plaza (Brown 1994:1–4; Waselkov 1993:32, Fig. 1). Second, Mound B is markedly larger than the accretionary mounds that form an arc around the northern half of the plaza. Third, surface collections indicate that the abundant utilitarian pottery sherds found elsewhere at the site are scarce at Mound B (Brown and Fuller 1993b:166; Fuller and Brown 1998:66–72, Tables 23–28). Mound B also is noteworthy because it is one of the most unusually shaped of all the mounds at Bottle Creek. Mound B consists of a main platform that is about 3.5 m high. This platform slopes downward to the east and southeast, and it climbs sharply on the western side to form a terrace, the apex of which stands at about 7.7 m. Because of the decline to the east and southeast, the north and northeast sections of the platform have the appearance of an embankment or ramp. Because of the mound’s distinctive attributes and potential importance for understanding Bottle Creek, it was targeted for investigations during 1991, 1993, and 1994. In 1991 and in 1994, Ian W. Brown and Richard S. Fuller collected pottery from the surface of the mound (Brown and Fuller 1993b:151; Fuller and Brown 1998:62–67). Mississippian pottery types dominated their collection. Based on the 1991 collection, Brown and Fuller assumed that the earthwork was used, if not built, during the Bottle Creek phase (a.d. 1250–1550). In 1993, we systematically retrieved soil cores an inch in diameter across the surface of the mound in order to ascertain a basic idea of upper mound stratigraphy. The northern portion of the mound seemed to have been disturbed the least, but it was uncertain how 3 / A Proposed Construction Sequence of the Mound B Terrace at Bottle Creek David W. Morgan much and which portions of the mound were constructed prehistorically, since the platform’s distinctive northeastern embankment and southeastern declination were suspected to have been the result of modi¤cations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Waselkov 1993:31). Excavations at the mound in 1994 were intended to resolve some of these questions by assessing the age of the mound and its method of construction. METHODS In June and July of 1994, we excavated a 1 × 12 m trench into the northern slope of Mound B (Figure 3.1). The trench was oriented with its long axis toward magnetic north, and it was situated in an area where the soil cores suggested the presence of relatively undisturbed strata. We divided the trench into six analytical units. Each was 1 × 2 m in size, and, from north to south, they were designated D200 through D205. We excavated each of these units by natural levels and screened all soil through 6.4 mm (.25 in) hardware cloth. Excavations began ¤rst in the four southernmost units, D202–D205, as these lay on top of the mound platform. We encountered wall trenches, postholes, and postmolds as soon as we began excavations in D205. These features lay just below the humus layer, and they extended into units D202 through D204. These post features and wall trenches likely represent two Mississippian structures, as I will discuss further below. Given the rarity of such structures along the central Gulf Coast and their potential importance for future research, we halted excavation in these units with the intention of returning to them at some future date. Research for the remainder of the ¤eld season focused on units D200 and D201, located on the slope of the mound platform. We excavated D200 and D201 to the depth of the water table, about 2.45 m below the platform’s surface. THE DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY OF MOUND B Mound B is composed of a clay base and a clay cap, with intervening strata of silt and sand. The base stratum of clay served to de¤ne the ultimate shape of the mound, since the layers of silt and sand later deposited on top of the clay conformed to its general shape. Furthermore, it appears that the inhabitants of the site built a series of retaining...

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