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arguing that “ideological legitimization of leadership within a ritual format” is central to the success and expansion of elite social control. Interpreting Moundville’s Sacred Landscape Using ethnographic analogies similar to those described above, primarily the social and spatial structure of Chickasaw house groups, Knight (1993) views the arrangement of mounds at Moundville as a sociogram, with their positions organized by the relative status of kin groups. This structural arrangement is also very similar to the divisions of seating in the Creek sacred square, with each individual positioned in relation to both the sacred¤re and the chief. In his reconstruction of Moundville’s historic development , Peebles (1974, 1991:118) suggests that much of Moundville’s spatial form was present long before earthen mounds were constructed, representing social and spatial divisions stretching to earlier in the Moundville I phase (ca. a.d. 1100). If the distribution of gravelots from the Moundville I phase represents discrete kin groups, then much of the site’s eventual form was derived from long-standing systems of social organization. Once mounds began to be constructed, these structures not only acted as a rei¤cation of existing cosmological and social divisions but also represented potent seats of power for both competing social groups and the Moundville site as well. Knight and Steponaitis (1996:12) contend that “a¤xed rank ordering had been imposed on these kin groups by incorporating that order into a sacred landscape, an act which implies considerable power at the center. Such power, vested in the of¤ce of a paramount chief, would also have been necessary to enforce this undoubtedly contested view of social reality once it had been imposed.” They explore the political implications of these developments, noting that during this period we see the ¤rst evidence for the intensi¤cation of acquisition of nonlocal goods, elite craft production , increases in the number and diversity of high-status burial goods, and the construction of secondary centers elsewhere in the Black Warrior Valley (Knight and Steponaitis 1996:11–12). These factors are believed to represent the consolidation of the region into a single polity centered at Moundville. By the late Moundville II or early Moundville III phases (a.d. 1300– 1450), with the enlargement of plaza-periphery mounds, the introduction of materials bearing Southeastern Ceremonial Complex symbolism, and a 118 Wesson marked reduction in the local population, the consolidation of sociopolitical power at Moundville appears to have been complete (Knight and Steponaitis 1996:12). By co-opting the symbolism of mound groups, elites demonstrated their centrality in the social and political worlds and their connection to the supernatural, materializing an ideology of elite domination and privilege . As Bruce Smith (1992) has argued, architecture, and particularly in this case earthen mounds, became powerful levers of social inequality, expanding the divisions between supernaturally sanctioned elites and commoners. Not only was Moundville’s sacred landscape controlled by elites at this time, but also by a.d. 1300 a process of population dispersal had begun as well, “leaving only the elite and their retainers as permanent residents” (Knight and Steponaitis 1996:13). Knight and Steponaitis (1996:13) suggest that this outmigration was possibly a result of “a conscious decision by the elite to enhance the sanctity of the center by emptying it, by which action they could further distance themselves from the affairs of commoners.” These actions represent an even tighter control of ritual space and the local sacred landscape, with Moundville’s elite becoming masters of not only individual nodes in the system but also the system in its entirety. If, in the founding of spatial hierophanies, cultures create existential centers that ground human experience and give direction to social action, the complete domination of these centers by elites would have given them tremendous power in the control of space, time, and ritual. It is just such a pattern that we see at Moundville, with the gradual co-optation by elites of a powerful sacred landscape. Another interpretation of this pattern is that as elite control of sacred space increased, an increasing number of individuals opted out of the system and either established individual farmsteads or moved to other communities. With the imposition of greater elite control at Moundville, perhaps people grew dissatis¤ed with their increasing physical and existential distance from the hierophanous center and went out to create new sacred landscapes. As Eliade (1959:43) states, “the religious man sought to live as near as possible to the Center of the World,” and...

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