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2 Pre–a.d. 1400 Mississippian Regional Centers, Angel’s Collapse, and Caborn-Welborn Developments in the Lower Ohio River Valley Like other Mississippian societies in the lower Ohio River valley, and in fact throughout the Midwest and Southeast in general, the Angel chiefdom can be characterized as a cluster of settlements inhabited by a population that was linked socially, politically, and economically and that shared a common ideology (Smith 1978). The Angel site was the center of the Angel chiefdom. It is distinguished from other Angel settlements by virtue of its size and the presence of monumental architecture in the form of numerous platform mounds and stockades, extensive residential areas, a plaza, and large cemeteries (Black 1967; Green and Munson 1978; Hilgeman 2000; Muller 1986). While similar types of locally made objects were used throughout the Angel chiefdom, items made from nonlocal materials, such as Dover and Mill Creek chert and copper or marine shell objects, were used somewhat more frequently at Angel than at nearby farmsteads, hamlets, and small villages (Munson 1983). Sites like Angel are usually referred to as regional administrative centers or towns. They were home to an elite class, who usually lived on or near a platform mound. The Angel elite would have had some measure of control and in®uence over households living at the Angel site, as well as those residing in the surrounding countryside. They also would have interacted with elites of neighboring chiefdoms. The widespread collapse of lower Ohio valley Mississippian polities in the late fourteenth/early ¤fteenth century included the Angel chiefdom. Along with the Angel site, its associated farmsteads, hamlets, and small villages were abandoned. This was followed by a reorganization of people on the cultural and natural landscape, as social, political, and economic boundaries were rede ¤ned during the Caborn-Welborn phase. Researchers have suggested (Munson 2000; Pollack 1998; Pollack and Munson 2003) that the former Angel population relocated slightly downstream in the vicinity of the mouth of the Wabash River after Angel’s collapse (Figure 1.2). In order to begin to understand how the Caborn-Welborn population reconstructed social, political, and economic relationships in the aftermath of the collapse of the Angel chiefdom, it is important to understand how Angel’s social, political, and economic institutions were organized and what factors may have contributed to its collapse. These institutions would have provided the foundation, as well as the point of departure, for the Caborn-Welborn population’s response to the collapse of the Angel chiefdom. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to provide a context within which to consider the nature of the continuities and changes that de¤ne Caborn-Welborn vis-à-vis Angel. Pre–a.d. 1400 Mississippian developments in the lower Ohio valley are described ¤rst. The sociopolitical organization of the Angel chiefdom is outlined , and the factors that may have contributed to its collapse and the abandonment of the Angel site and its associated farmsteads, hamlets, and small villages are discussed. This is followed by an overview of the Caborn-Welborn phase: its temporal and spatial boundaries, Angel to Caborn-Welborn continuities and differences, and research carried out in the region to date. ANGEL AND OTHER LOWER OHIO VALLEY MISSISSIPPIAN REGIONAL CENTERS BEFORE a.d. 1400 In the lower Ohio River valley, pre–a.d. 1400 Mississippian sites are found from the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville, Kentucky, to the con®uence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Among the regional centers documented in the lower Ohio valley, Kincaid in southern Illinois (Cole et al. 1951; Muller 1986) and Angel in southwestern Indiana (Black 1967) (Figure 2.1) are distinguished by their size (both are large sites) from several smaller regional centers, such as Tolu, Jonathan Creek, and Tinsley Hill, and by the number of mounds (both contained numerous platform mounds). The Kincaid site consisted of 19 mounds and several small residential areas encompassing 6 ha, all of which were enclosed by a palisade. Farmsteads and hamlets associated with the Kincaid polity were located primarily on ®oodplain levees throughout the Black Bottom of southern Illinois and in the vicinity of the Kincaid site. Nearby clusters of hamlets and associated stone box cemeteries have been interpreted as representing dispersed villages (Muller 1978, 1986). Angel covered more than 40 ha and consisted of 13 mounds, extensive residential areas, associated cemeteries, and stockades (Black 1967). Most of the Angel population appears to have lived at or in close proximity to the Angel site. The...

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