Middle Mississippian

Schurr, M. R. (1992). Isotopic and mortuary variability in a Middle Mississippian population. American Antiquity 57 300-320. 

Although both sites are in the same geographic area (Figure 1), they differ greatly in age and cultural expression. The Tunacunnhee site, dated A.D. 150 95 years, represents the Hopewell tradition (I), whereas Etowah, in use between A.D. 900 and A.D. 1400, is considered to be of the Middle Mississippian period (7). Taken together, the two sites and their fabrics provide evidence of the kinds of materials produced and used by certain prehistoric people of the region. Both sites are expressions of major cultural traditions in southeastern North America, and both contain direct fabric evidence. These facts underscore the importance of... 

The Fort Ancient culture (12) represents the remains of a group of prehistoric tribal societies that inhabited the central Ohio River Valley of eastern North America after A.D. 1000. At the same time, Middle Mississippian chiefdoms were present in the lower Ohio Valley. Both types of societies were maize agriculturalists, and archaeologists have long been interested in knowing what role maize played in the subsistence systems of these two different types of prehistoric societies. 

In order to evaluate the effects of carbonization temperature on the relative abundance of archaeobotanical maize at prehistoric sites, ESR spectra were obtained from 70 prehistoric maize kernels and kernel fragments from six different prehistoric sites representing variants of the Fort Ancient and Middle Mississippian cultures in the Ohio Valley of North America between AD 1000 and 1600 fiO . 

The Middle Mississippian preference for above ground storage (corn cribs) contrasts strongly with the Fort Ancient preference for storage in subsurface storage pits (13). Thus, at Middle Mississippian sites, maize remains will be almost exclusively or heavily biased towards midden samples. This was the case for the archaeobotanical data originally cited for Middle Mississippian sites (75),... 

While some of the Mississippian textiles are of similar structure to the Middle Woodland textiles, others are very complex materials and are lace-like in appearance. Many of the materials from Etowah are preserved by mineralization, and display green-colored deposits on their surfaces. Bast fiber, rabbit hair, and feathers have been identified (2, 11). The textiles from these two sites selected for analysis are representative of the complexity of structure and fineness of yarns seen in the materials they provide evidence of the sophisticated technology of prehistoric people in all phases of fiber collection, processing, yarn spinning, fabric manufacture and, when present, coloration. 

The black shales were deposited during Late Devonian and Early Mississippian time in a large epeiric (inland) sea that covered much of middle and eastern United States east of the Mississippi River. The area includes the broad, shallow Interior Platform on the west that grades eastward into the Appalachian Basin. The depth to the base of the Devonian-Mississippian black shales ranges from surface exposures on the Interior Platform to more than 2700 m along the depositional axis of the Appalachian Basin (De Witt et al., 1993). The Late Devonian sea was relatively shallow with minimal current and wave action, much like the environment in which the Alum Shale... 

Neogene Middle Triassic Late Permian Mississippian Middle Devonian Ordovician Cambrian... 

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