Doctoral Dissertation Research: Location and Patterning of Mississippian Mounds in the Central Arkansas River Valley

University Of Arkansas, Fayetteville AR

Investigators

Abstract

Under the direction of Dr. Marin Kay, Gregory A. Vogel will use geographic information systems (GIS) to evaluate environmental relations among late prehistoric civic-ceremonial centers. These were public ritual areas having one or more earthen constructions usually including a flat-topped pyramidal mound. They dot stream terraces of the Arkansas and White river basins in present-day Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri. Most famous is Spiro, a World Heritage site in eastern Oklahoma that produced the greatest concentration anywhere of Southeastern Ceremonial Complex artifacts. Although described as northern Caddoan, ethnic identity and linguistic affiliation of these mound complexes are yet to be determined. These sites represent agrarian communities which had interregional ties to other Mississippi period complex societies of the North American Southeast, Great Plains and Southwest. They provide a natural laboratory to evaluate competing models about social complexity and the nature of agrarian society in pre-Columbian North America. Applicable models may form a continuum that ranges from hierarchical chiefdoms to largely autonomous farming communities. These polarities or somewhere in between must encompass the reality of late prehistoric settlement and community structure observable in the central Arkansas River Valley region. This study is important because it provides an empirical test of hypotheses about the structure of agrarian communities in relation to their natural, social, and ritual environments. GIS is the most practical way to organize and integrate regional scale data about landscapes, stream capacity and seasonal flow, arable lands suitable for the prehistoric farming of flood plains, drought and weather extremes that limit the size and capability of farmers to stay on their land or cause them to move. Adding to these parameter are ones of demography, perception, and competition that further affect settlement choices and their long-term stability. By using GIS, this study will simulate minimum conditions that limit settlement, define community territories and borders, or apply to the placement and ritual viewshed of civic-ceremonial centers; and then will test the simulations against the environmental and archaeological evidence. Beyond research questions of interest to the natural and social sciences, this project's broader impact will advance public knowledge of the inextricable connection between people, environment, and climate. It will also showcase technologies appropriate to understanding the social realm of past society and that provide a baseline to assess land use today. Publication and the preparation of a website about the project will be designed to make the project's finding available to the public in a non-technical way, and to link the study of the past to understand the present and future.