Changing Perspectives on the Archaeology of the Central Mississippi Valley

8. Powers Fort: A Middle Mississippian-Period Fortified Community in the Western Lowlands of Missouri

8 Powers Fort A Middle Mississippian-Period Fortified Community in the Western Lowlands of Missouri Timothy K. Perttula POWERS FORT (23BUlO) is the civic-ceremonial center of the Middle Mississippian -period Powers phase (Price 1978; Smith 1978a), a short-lived manifestation of Mississippian society present in the Western Lowlands of the Mississippi River valley between about A.D. 1200 and A.D. 1350.1 Here I summarize what is known about Powers Fort, which is one of the less well known Mississippian fortified communities in the central Mississippi Valley (Chapman et al. 1977; Price and Fox 1990; Teltser 1992). I pay special attention to local and regional shifts in settlement patterns and the use by the Powers-phase population of sand ridges in the Little Black River valley of the Western Lowlands (Figure 8-1). Those shifts appear to be contemporaneous with the evolution of intensive maize agricultural subsistence by Mississippian peoples (e.g., Buikstra 1992; Fritz 1990; Hastorf and Johannessen 1994; Lynott et al. 1986; Scarry 1993; see also Greenlee, Chapter 13). My other principal concern is to present a comprehensive view of the major Powers-phase material-culture assemblage from Powers Fort, because the abundant remains recovered since the early 1900S provide a good accounting of the artifactual content of a Mississippian-period civic-ceremonial center occupied for only a short period. I also discuss the long history of investigations at the site, beginning with the work of Col. Philetus W. Norris of the Bureau of (American) Ethnology in 1882 (Perttula and Price 1984), continuing through unpublished work by personnel connected with the Powers Phase Project in the 1960s, and ending with more-recent examinations of the site. Environmental Setting Powers Fort is in the Western Lowlands of the Mississippi River valley, about 2 kilometers east of the Ozark Escarpment and the current channel of the Little Black River (Figures 8-1 and 8-2). Landforms in the Little Black River watershed were greatly influenced by events that occurred well before human occupation of southeastern Missouri (O'Brien and Dunnell, Chapter 1). Large :170 I Perttula Kilometers o 30 N t Figure 8-1. Location of Powers Fort relative to physiographic features in southeastern Missouri. sand ridges-remnants of Early Wisconsin-age natural levees-were formed when the braided channel of the Mississippi River ran along the edge of the Ozark Highlands. The broad and relatively flat sand ridges are separated from each other by narrow, relict braided-stream channels. This area of ridges and channels extends from the Ozark Escarpment to Cane Creek, which occupies a relict channel of the St. Francis River, and south into northeastern Arkansas (Price 1978:figure 8-3). Powers Fort is situated at the northeastern edge of one of the largest of the sand ridges in the southeasternMissouri portion of the Little Black River watershed (Figure 8-2), opposite the point at which the Little Black River exits the Ozark Highlands and enters the Western Lowlands. Barfield Ridge is about 5 kilometers long and 1.2 to 2 kilometers wide, and its crest is 4.5 to 6 meters above the relict stream channels. Powers Fort Site in Missouri I 1]1 ,--------------------------------~-------------------------, I Taft.,. Hunt Malcolm N t Kilometers V--- o ,".11 Swamp , ",' ;. Sand Ridge I • Archaeological Site Figure 8-2. Map of the sand-ridge system in the Little Black River watershed in the vicinity of Powers Fort showing locations of Powers-phase sites. Dotting the surface of the ridge are large and small aeolian sand dunes formed during the Late Pleistocene (Saucier 1978). The Little Black River watershed below the Ozark Escarpment has minimal vertical relief. Other than the sand ridges, sand dunes, natural levees, and terraces of the Little Black River itself, the rest of the area was a seasonally inundated floodplain and swamp before it was drained in the early 1900s. Powers Fort is located at an elevation of 91.5 to 94.5 meters above mean sea level; areas 172 I Perttula below about 88 meters would likely have been seasonally if not permanently flooded (Price 1978:206). Soils of the sand ridges are members of the Beulah-Brosely associationwell to excessively drained but easily worked-and support oaks, hickory, and sweet gum on the level and sloping ridges. Backswamp areas such as the relict channels originally contained cypress and tupelo, while the natural levees and terraces along the Little Black probably had a cottonwood...