technologia: Mississippian period (archaeology)

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

The Mississippian period is an archaeological cultural era in the history of the Southern United States and adjacent areas of the Eastern Woodlands spanning the end of the 10th century to the 16th century. It was preceded by the Late Woodland period and succeeded by the colonial-era Mississippian shatter zone. The Mississippians were characterized by theocratic governance, population centers, and the predominance of maize agriculture. This stood in contrast to the peoples of the preceding Woodland period, who primarily used Eastern Agricultural Complex crops, and whose mound-building activities were more limited to burial mounds. The Mississippian period is itself subdivided into the Early,…

Evidence: 56 • authority: 72

Many pre-Columbian cultures in North America were collectively termed "Mound Builders", but the term has no formal meaning. It does not refer to specific people or archaeological culture but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks that indigenous peoples erected for an extended period of more than 5,000 years. The "Mound Builder" cultures span the period of roughly 3500 BCE (the construction of Watson Brake) to the 16th century CE, including the Archaic period (Horr's Island), Woodland period (Caloosahatchee, Adena and Hopewell cultures), and Mississippian period. Geographically, the cultures were present in the region of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, Florida, and the Missis…

Evidence: 29 • authority: 72

This is a list of Mississippian sites. The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, inland-Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally. Its core area, along the Mississippi River and its major tributaries, stretched from sites such as Cahokia in modern Illinois, the largest of all the Mississippian sites, to Mound Bottom in Tennessee, to the Winterville site in the state of Mississippi. The typical form were earthwork platform mounds, with flat tops, often the sites for temples or elite residences. Other mounds were built in conical or ridge-top forms. The culture re…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BCE to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some archaeologists distinguishing the Mississippian period, from 1000 CE to European contact, as a separate period. The term "Woodland Period" was introduced in the 1930s as a generic term for prehistoric sites falling between the Archaic hunter-gatherers and the agriculturalist Mississippian cultures. The Eastern Woodlands cultural region covers what is now eastern Canada south of the Subarctic region, the Eastern United States, and along the Gulf of Mexico. This…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Mississippian may refer to: Mississippian (geology), a subperiod of the Carboniferous period in the geologic timescale, roughly 360 to 325 million years ago Mississippian period (archaeology), an archaeological culture or period across the Midwest and the Southeastern United States that flourished between 1000 and 1600 Mississippian Railway, a short-line railroad relating to the state of Mississippi

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Moundville Archaeological Site, also known as the Moundville Archaeological Park, is a Mississippian culture archaeological site on the Black Warrior River in Hale County, near the modern city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Extensive archaeological investigation has shown that the site was the political and ceremonial center of a regionally organized Mississippian culture chiefdom polity known as the Province of Pafalaya between the 11th and 16th centuries. The archaeological park portion of the site is administered by the University of Alabama Museums and encompasses 185 acres (75 ha), consisting of 29 platform mounds around a rectangular plaza. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The categorization of the past into discrete, quantified named blocks of time is called periodization. This is a list of such named time periods as defined in various fields of study. These can be divided broadly into prehistoric periods or archaeological periods for the time before the development of writing, and historical periods, starting when written records began to be kept. The existence of written sources, however, doesn't at all exclude differences in periodization between archaeology and history. In archaeology and anthropology, prehistory is subdivided into the three-age system. This list includes the use of the three-age system as well as a number of various designations used in…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The Caddoan Mississippian culture was a prehistoric Native American culture considered by archaeologists as a variant of the Mississippian culture. The Caddoan Mississippians covered a large territory, including what is now Eastern Oklahoma, Western Arkansas, Northeast Texas, Southwest Missouri and Northwest Louisiana of the United States. Archaeological evidence has established that the cultural continuity is unbroken from prehistory to the present. The speakers of Caddo and related Caddoan languages in prehistoric times and at first European contact have been proved to be the direct ancestors of the modern Caddo Nation of Oklahoma.