Ceramics, Chronology, and Community Patterns: An Archaeological Study at Moundville

Preface

Preface Moundville, located on the Black Warrior River in west-central Alabama, is one of the best known and most intensively studied prehistoric sites in North America. It first gained wide recognition just after the turn of the century, when it was visited, excavated, and reported on by C. B. Moore. Later, during the Great Depression, large-scale excavations at Moundville produced a wealth of information on the lifeways and material culture of the Mississippian people who lived there. Later still, in the 1960s and 1970s, the site gained further importance as the locus of investigations into the social and political structure of one of the most complex indigenous societies north of Mexico (e.g., Peebles 1971, 1978a, 1978b). Yet despite all this work, even as late as 1978, many aspects of the site's internal chronology remained obscure. Prior to this time, all artifacts and features at the site were assigned to a single "Moundville phase," which, in effect, compressed five centuries of cultural development into a single undifferentiated mass. The excessive length of this phase had many undesirable consequences , not the least of which was that it prevented anyone from clearly delineating the pathways and mechanisms by which this complex site and its regional system evolved. The research discussed in the following chapters was mainly designed to rectify this problem. It was evident from the start that the most practical way to improve the chronology was through a detailed study of Moundville ceramics , large samples of which were available in museum collections. We visited the museums, photographed the .ceramics, and with these and other data in xvii xviii Preface hand, gradually hammered out the new chronology. Using this refined sequence , it was possible to trace changes in community patterns, which in turn shed light on Moundville's development. This book should prove useful to scholars in a variety of ways, for it deals with culture-historical, methodological, and evolutionary issues. In addressing matters of culture history, the study presents a detailed and well-documented Mississippian chronology-one of the very few in existence. It systematizes and describes the late prehistoric ceramics from an important site, providing a benchmark that can be used in future studies of trade and stylistic interaction. And, perhaps even more importantly, it synthesizes the available information on Moundville's development, taking into account settlement, subsistence, and mortuary evidence. The methodological contributions of this book are twofold: First, the chapter on ceramic technology introduces a variety of approaches, borrowed from materials science, that heretofore have not been applied to archaeological materials. Second, the methods used to define the ceramic chronology are in certain ways novel and provide one of the few existing illustrations of how to seriate grave assemblages using modern numerical techniques. Finally, with regard to the subject of cultural evolution, the changes in complexity that occurred in the Moundville region during late prehistoric times are reconstructed, and some possible causes are suggested. The cultural evolutionary and methodological aspects of this book should prove interesting to archaeologists regardless of their geographical specialty. Chapter 1 provides the general background for the study, describing the Moundville site and its setting, the history of archaeological research there, and describing the nature of the ceramic sample on which the various analyses were carried out. Chapter 2 deals with the materials and techniques of pottery manufacture at Moundville and would profit any reader with a general interest in ceramic technology. Chapter 3 presents a new classification of Moundville ceramics, intended primarily for the regional specialist. Chapter 4 sets forth the refined ceramic chronology, along with the evidence that led to its formulation ; this chapter should be of use not only to the regional specialist, but also to anyone interested in the application of numerical seriation techniques. Chapter 5 examines changes in community patterns at Moundville as revealed by this chronology, and Chapter 6 discusses the significance of these and related changes in the context of the region as a whole. For anyone concerned with the evolution of chiefdom-level societies, these two concluding chapters are especially relevant. ...