Archaeology of the Moundville Chiefdom: Chronology, Content, Contest

2. Population Trends at Moundville

2. Population Trends at Moundville VINCAS P. STEPONAITIS AT MOUNDVILLE, MOST MIDDEN DEPOSITS date to the Moundville I phase, but the vast majority of burials date to the Moundville II and III phases. Relative abundances of sherds suggest that Moundville's resident population peaked between AD 1050 and 13°° and then precipitously declined. Between AD 1300 and 1550, the site was inhabited principally by elites and became a center of mortuary ritual for the region as a whole. Most of the dead buried in Moundville's cemeteries during the Moundville II and III phases were apparently brought in from outlying settlements. Moundville is not only one of the largest Mississippian centers in the Southeast but also one of the most intensively studied. Yet despite many decades of sustained research, one basic question has received surprisingly little attention: How did the size ofMoundville's resident population change through time? The few previous attempts to model population change at Moundville proceeded from the assumption that the people buried at the site also lived there (e.g., Steponaitis 1983a). Thus, the relative number of burials in each phase was taken as a rough index of population. This reasoning suggested that population was small during the West Jefferson (AD 900-1050) and Moundville I (AD 1050-1250) phases, increased during Moundville II (AD 1250-1400) and Moundville III Population Trends 27 (AD 14°°-155°) phases, then declined precipitously by the start of the Moundville IV (AD 1550-1650) phase. The most frequently cited estimate of the site's maximum population was 3,000 residents (Peebles 1983:19°, 1986:29, 1987a:27, 1987b:9-IO). Although this scenario was reasonable given the information available at the time, recent reexamination of midden evidence has called it into question (Steponaitis 1992). Specifically, the problem is this: The great majority ofsherds deposited at the site appear to date to the Moundville I phase, significantly earlier than most of the burials. If one assumes that these sherds represent habitation debris, then Moundville's resident population must have peaked early in the site's history, and its later burial population must have consisted largely ofindividuals who lived elsewhere. My goal here is to review what is known about midden deposits at Moundville and to discuss more fully the implications of this evidence. I begin by presenting the available data on the chronological distribution ofmiddens. Next, I consider the chronological distribution ofburialso Finally, I draw these lines of evidence together in formulating a new interpretation ofMoundville's population history. CHRONOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION OF MIDDEN DEPOSITS In view of Moundville's long history of investigation, surprisingly little information exists on the chronology ofits middens. This lack is attributable to two factors: First, many of the early excavators sought only burials and large artifacts and did not care much for sherds. Second, even though many of the later excavators did recover sherds, these collections have never been fully analyzed and reported. Hence, I can rely only on the older excavations for which sherd counts have been published and the more recent ones from which I have personally examined at least a sample ofthe ceramics. Among these are the Roadway and Riverbank excavations conducted by the Alabama Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the suite of test excavations conducted by the University ofMichigan Museum ofAnthropology (UMMA). I focus here on middens that seem to be associated with off-mound residential areas, rather than middens associated directly with mounds (such as those found on summits or flanks). I exclude the latter from consideration because many mounds were nonresidential and also because the summits of residential mounds did not comprise a large 28 STEPONAITIS proportion of the site's inhabited area when the population was at its peak (cf. chap. 3). Let us now discuss each of the relevant excavations, presented in the order in which they were originally carried out. AMNH Roadway Excavation (1939) One of the last, and by far the most ambitious, of the Depression-era projects at Moundville was the Roadway excavation, so named because it followed the projected path of the paved road that is now used by visitors to the site (Peebles 1979). The excavations took place within a sinuous transect 15 meters wide and 2.4 kilometers long, which cut across the central plaza as well as areas to the east, south, and west of the mounds (fig. 2.1). In all more than 10,000 square meters...