Putting the Late Prehistoric Architecture of the Central Mississippi Valley in a Mid-Continental Context

Mary Evelyn Starr

Mid-South Archaeological Conference

Memphis, Tennessee

June 2000

Abstract

As the conference theme was the archaeology of ethnic distinctions, I chose to look at one aspect of material culture, architecture, and attempted to discern variation in regional architectural styles. My talk consisted largely of illustrated examples of the Mid-South’s late prehistoric (Mississippi period) archaeological features and a comparison with the styles of surrounding regions with similar or differing archaeological cultures. I also handed out a three-page table detailing several variables relevant to all of the excavated structures from the Mid-South available to me in journals and the contract literature (Tables 1 and 2). The area summarized on these tables is the southern Central Mississippi Valley, the half of the Central Valley below the traditional Ohio Confluence-Northeast Arkansas-Southeast Missouri Mississippian core area, or roughly, from the Memphis area to the mouth of the Arkansas River, where the Lower Valley begins.

I used the same hand-out for a Southeastern Archaeological Conference paper (Starr 1999). I summarize this paper as well in this chapter. The earliest version of this paper dates to David Dye’s 1992/1993 “Chiefdoms” class, where he asked me what comparisons of architecture has to do with the class topic, status. I was using material I had collected for the regional comparison to include with a report Jamie Brandon and I were writing about the large late Walls phase house we had uncovered in testing a daub concentration at the Irby site (eventually presented as a Mid-South paper, Brandon and Starr in press). I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer David’s question, other than the obvious points of size and placement in the village plan. I’m not exactly sure what architecture has to do with this Mid-South theme of ethnicity either, but I’m sure it has a great deal to do with the material expression of either of the concepts, status or ethnicity. The relationship between architecture and ethnicity may be even more tenuous than that between architecture and status.

My talk covered to one extent or another a wide-ranging series of neighboring geographic provinces and their late prehistoric cultures. Here, that data is indicated in the form of regional summaries and biographies. The regions and cultural areas compared with the Central Valley are 1) American Bottom, 2) Nashville Basin/Cumberland/Lower Ohio, 3) Tombigbee-Alabama River Valley, 4) Ozarks and Prairie-Plains, 5) Arkansas River Valley, 6) Red River Valley, and 7) Lower Mississippi Valley. Some of these, like the Oneota and Caddoan region are large culture areas with extensively documented architecture that deserve separate studies of their own. In these cases I can only point out general trends in architectural style in contrast to that of the Central Valley. In other cases, such as the Tombigbee and Arkansas River valleys, smaller geographic units were selected for the study, because it seemed that these might be considered boundary areas, where plans, materials, and details might be expected to change upon crossing the boundaries, along with other cultural materials such as ceramics. The amount of data available from each of the surrounding regions I have chosen to look at is variable. In the American Bottom, literally hundreds of prehistoric houses have been excavated. In contrast, in the Nashville Basin, even though we think of the stone-box grave builders as being fairly well documented archaeologically, there have been few excavations of buildings.

Introduction to Architectural Data

in Mid-South Archaeology

The first tangible descriptions of excavated prehistoric architecture in and around the Mid-South come from such sources as the Bureau of American Ethnology (Thomas 1894) and some of the work done in the Nashville Basin around the turn of the last century. In most cases the data returned is insufficient by modern standards, but at least it was recognized and recorded somewhat systematically. Based on the work of P.W. Norris and other field workers, Thomas (1894) presents enough information about excavations at such St. Francis basin sites as Tyronza Station, Miller, and Taylor Shanty to let us know that these were groups of Mississippian house mounds supporting rectangular wattle and daub houses. Taking manuscript sources for the early twentieth century excavations at the Middle Mississippian Obion site  (Garland) and the Woodland through Protohistoric period Oliver site in the upper Yazoo basin (Peabody 1904, Belmont 1962), it has been possible to reconstruct mound architecture to some degree of satisfaction, but these two examples still leave much to be desired in terms of modern reporting of architectural data. In some cases concerning the BAE collections and notes, there is considerably more information available in the original collections than is reported by Thomas (1894).  The notes and artifacts have still not been written up in any more modern format.  The BAE collected a lot of daub and burned clay, among other architectural materials, and fortunately many of the specimens are still available for study.

Throughout the mid-continent, except for a few locales such as the American Bottom, complete-settlement excavations are few, and many of the ones available, such a Jonathan Creek in eastern Kentucky, are of WPA-CCC vintage.  There are several portions of settlements where data have been salvaged by cultural resource management programs. For the southern Central Valley, Connaway’s as-yet unreported excavation of the mounded, palisaded Austin village site in Tunica County is the only example. The northeast Arkansas-southeast Missouri core of the Central Valley is much more thoroughly investigated in terms of complete structures as well as well-documented town plans, such as those of the Moon and Priestly Late Mississippian towns. The area further north has seen extensive documentation through the I-270 American Bottom project. However, throughout the Central Mississippi Valley, most sites, even famous and supposedly well-known sites have almost no architectural data recorded for them. What we do know is often based on field contour sketch maps of mounds, plazas, house mounds, and borrow pits as they were evident before long-term plowing leveled them. Due to the paucity of comparative data, I will not consider town planning in depth, and will instead focus on that basic unit of the built environment, the house. However, as town plan is a major element of architecture, the topic must be addressed to a certain extent. Often a rough site plan is the only architectural information available from an archaeological site. Late prehistoric period settlement types range from single-house farmsteads and bank-line hamlets to large, loose groups of house mounds. There are also large and small compact, gridded villages and mounded ceremonial centers with extensive evidence of multi-generational adherence to plans and house rebuilding on the same locations, with or without fills between the floors.

Few Central Mississippi Valley sites have been excavated on the scale needed to reveal plaza poles, palisades, and special buildings, but of those that have, the Middle Mississippian period (A.D. 1200-1400) Moon site (3PO488), lacked central features.  There were some pits and posts, and a grave, in the plaza but “no large ‘village’ post (Benn 1998:248).”  The site did have many elements of a planned village: a rectangular plaza, aligned houses, a rectangular palisade, and a regularly-shaped addition (Benn 1998:248).  Zeebree, excavated by the Arkansas Archeological Survey in the early 1970s, was a smaller village, but it did have a central posthole (Morse and Morse 1990).

Saunders (1999) has noted floors and postmolds in Middle Archaic mounds in Louisiana. The proposed roughly contemporary Benton winter pit houses have been identified in the uplands surrounding the Mid-South. These earliest cases provide the base-line of technology upon which the Mississippian societies developed their architectural rules. Very little is known of pre-ceramic domestic or sacred architecture. The early end of the substantially documented history of architecture in the region lies in the Marksville through Coles Creek periods, and this evidence comes largely from Middle Woodland mortuary structures.By the Late Woodland period, linear post arrays and floors, presumably representing rectangular houses, are detectable in the Plum Bayou culture in central and east Arkansas (Nassany 1996). In addition to what has been learned at Toltec (Rolingson) and the Coy Mound (3LN20), the Ink Bayou and Alexander (3CN117) hamlets also produced evidence of architectural elements (postholes) and woodworking tools (adzes; Nassaney 1996:24,25). At about the same time, in the Peabody phase in the Upper Yazoo basin, rectangular, daubed houses that would pass for Mississippi period houses were being built by the Peabody phase people.

            Like town plans, floors with intact domestic arrangements are rare in the south Central Valley. Throughout the region, even when wall lines indicating plan have been preserved, house floors themselves have generally been plowed away. The complete excavation of a well-preserved house is a major undertaking, but highly rewarding. Buchner’s (1996:81,82) field school students excavated a child’s bunk area and a nearby wall-side pit and associated bodoc bow and corn and persimmon stores in one quadrant of a house at the West village in Tunica County, Mississippi (22TU520), providing one of the rare instances when internal details have been recorded. It was however, an atypical case, being a large house on Stage 1 of Mound A. At about A.D. 800, when transitional Woodland-early Mississippian components are recognized in the Sunflower basin, northeast Arkansas was seeing the development of the Big Lake phase, best known from the Zebree site (Morse and Morse 1980).  By A.D. 1000 agricultural villages were to be found in a variety of habitats, ranging from the Wilson phase sites, such as Burris, in the Cache and upper White rivers basins (Jeter 1988) to the Brougham Lake farmsteads in the Eastern Lowlands (Klinger et al. 1983).  Some research in the late 1960s revealed the ceramic, lithic, and architectural content of early and middle Mississippian sites, such as the salvage work on the mound and houses at Hazel (3PO6) (Morse and Smith 1973), the Dumond mound (3AR40) on the Grand Prairie (Scholtz 1968b), and the Roland site (3AR30) on the lower White River (Scholtz 1991). To the south and east, a few smaller sites, such as Buford (22TL501) have provided indications of the extent of the developing Mississippian culture deep into the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta.

Around  A.D. 1400, much of the Western Lowland began to be abandoned in favor of settlement in densely populated, fortified villages along the St. Francis and Mississippi Rivers (House and McKelway 1982, Morse 1981, Morse and Morse 1983).  Farmsteads seem to disappear in many areas, and, while the reasons for these population shifts are not clear, they are thought to be linked to increasing regional population density and increased levels of organized intergroup warfare.  Rivalry over travel routes, hunting grounds, and high quality agricultural land are also thought to be associated with these shifts.  House and McKelway (1982) have also suggested that the shift to reliance on permanent field agriculture and large, long-term villages may have increased the need for a sustainable protein source such as could only be provided by fish from large oxbow lakes, the typical setting for the large late towns.  One such nucleated village on Bee Bayou, Dupree (3PH1), in southern Phillips County, was briefly tested during land leveling in the 1960s (Moselage 1965; McGimey 1965), but it was a long time before professional archeological attention focused on the Mississippi period in the locality again.

A South Central Mississippi

Valley Architectural Tradition

I begin with a summary of what is known about late prehistoric architecture in the southern portion of the Central Mississippi Valley, from about Memphis to the mouth of the Arkansas. I have excluded the better-known and more widely reported sites of the Cairo and Eastern Lowlands and the adjacent bluff sites of west Kentucky and Tennessee. The data emphasized here come from 21 sites in 11 counties of the south Central Valley. The sites are located in (in the state of Mississippi) Coahoma (n=5), Tunica (n=3), Bolivar (n=1), DeSoto (n=1), Sunflower (n=1) and Tallahatchie (n=1) counties; (in Arkansas) Crittenden (n=3), Phillips (n=2), Arkansas (n=1) and Lee (n=1) counties; and Shelby County, Tennessee (n=2).

I will consider several architectural features or elements: plan, foundation, walling, roofing, and details. By way of introduction to the descriptive data presented in Tables 1 and 2, a brief normative description of Late Prehistoric architecture in the south Central Valley follows. Plans are square or rectangular, almost always of a single room. A few cases of possible Woodland structures in the form of postmold arcs have been reported (Klinger et al. 1983), but circular Mississippian structures appear to be rare. Houses are sometimes but not always placed on substructural fills covering the remains of previous houses. Floors may be sunken rectangular basins or level with the surrounding surface. Two Coahoma County sites have produced the remains of houses with floors raised on piles.  Wall trench and singly set post walls are documented in combination with the floor and substrate types just mentioned.

The cane lath used, generally split or quartered, is Arundinaria. It was typically woven in rectangular plats as mat to receive daub. Daub can be untempered if the soil is of the proper consistency, but often has grass temper. One case of wood chip and splinter tempered daub was noted. The favored structural woods are, as might be expected, deciduous trees forming straight, limber poles. Species identified as structural elements, coming from 9 of the 21 sites, are hickory (n=15), ash (n=9), cypress (n=5), elm (n=4), oak (n=3), sweet gum (n=3), catalpa (n=1), and pecan (n=1). These figures should be used judiciously, as the identification and reporting is variable from site to site, but it does appear that hickory and ash were the preferred wall poles. Cypress was in all cases used as internal support piers or, in the platform houses, central posts. Riven wood is sometimes noted and the use of grapevine, probably as ties, has also be documented. Samples are inadequate for comparison with environmental settings. Wherever it is documented, the thatching material is Andropogon gerardia  or big bluestem.

A number of other sites have produced only limited architectural information such as post holes and wall trenches in test units. In Mississippi, Connaway (1981) has collected much other scattered architectural information in the course of salvage work resulting from agricultural site destruction, as have the many Arkansas Archeological Survey archaeologists, but these are more often tantalizing scraps than clear and fully developed plans. As another instance, House’s (1991) excavations at Kent (3LE8) cut into a mound apron or midden ridge, a compact series of floors cut by a confusing array of posts and wall trenches.  The vertical profile does show a small (25 cm) silt wedge or bank against the outside of one wall (House 1991:145, 147). We spent considerable time pondering it at the time, but I have since encountered others and found that Dick Marshall, for one, called them “wall stubs.” This exterior wall feature appears to seal water along the base of the wall, and to serve as a seat for the wall daub.

We have collected little information about details such as openings. Buchner (1996, Dye and Buchner 1988) found a door in the center of a wall in an apparent Protohistoric house on West Mounds A. Open corner wall trenches do not necessarily imply the use of corners as doors. Buchner interpreted the structure he excavated on Mound B as a undaubed, thatch charnel house/temple and that on Mound A as an elite residence. This house, probably 11 x 11 m, has an entrance amid the south wall, made of riven planks set in the ground 70 cm apart, reinforced by sets of 20 cm diameter posts.  At 121 m2, this mound-top structure is smaller than those at Natchez Grand Village (184-232 m2), Lake George (204 m2), or Chucalissa (232 m2; Buchner 1996:81). The excavations also showed a partition and several ceramics-using activity areas, and three dates, two on thatch, indicate protohistoric Mississippian (1600-1700) occupation. If the dates are good, this must be one of the last large, chiefly, mound-top wall trench houses. The Protohistoric house at the Humber site (Tesar 1975) had an extended entry in the middle of a wall.

A great number of Late Woodland components (Peabody phase and Plum Bayou culture) are known, but few have been excavated.  Many of the traits commonly found in operational definitions of “Mississippian” began in the Coles Creek period cultures of the Lower and Central Valleys; Coahoma County sites ca. A.D. 750-1000 have many of these characteristics, such as rectangular wall-trench houses and platform mounds (Connaway 1981:32-35).  Coahoma County provides much of the evidence for the transition to Mississippian culture in the southern Central Valley.  A 10th century date from a large bell-shaped storage pit lined with grog-tempered sherds at the Barner village site (22CO542) may place the transition from Baytown with Plum Bayou characteristics to Mississippian (Connaway 1981:82).  The site had a 15 by 16 foot wall trench house surrounded by pits backfilled with matrix containing Woodland ceramics; a small amount of shell tempered pottery; and a small, plowed-down mound where human bone and flat disc shell beads have been observed (John Connaway, personal communication 1997, Sam Brookes 19--).      A date of A.D. 875+85 (UGa-280) from a pit at Barner (22CO542), a village site on Big Creek tested by Sam Brookes, appears to place the transition from Woodland to emergent Mississippian in the county (Connaway 1981:82, Connaway and Sims 1997:103).  The site also had a 15 by 16 foot wall trench house surrounded by pits, most or all attributable to the Woodland period.  Barner does have a small amount of shell tempered pottery and a small, plowed-down mound where human bone and flat disc shell beads have been observed (John Connaway, personal communication 1997).  The white Missouri chert mentioned as an Early Mississippi period diagnostic is generally believed to have been used for drilling shell beads, particularly around Cahokia, where it originates (Morse and Morse 1983:207, 222).           

Hasty and limited salvage at the Bobo Site (22CO535) resulted in the recording of four house patterns out of 80-100 uncovered at this large village site with an 8 foot high mound (Connaway 1981:36-40).  Bobo was a 6-8 acre Coles Creek and Mississippi period midden on the Sunflower River.  Overlapping and rebuilding of structures were noted, along with internal features (roof support and bench/bed posts, hearths, storage/refuse pits, and graves).  Structures measured from 15 to 32 foot on a side.  The larger, seemingly contemporary, structures were oriented north-south.  Rows of thatched, wattle-and-daub, wall-trench houses around a plaza west of the mound were indicated, but not documented.  Artifacts recovered included Mississippi Plain, Winterville Incised, and an oval-shaped (Mill Creek?) chert hoe.  Two dates, here shown uncalibrated, were run from the site: A.D. 890+90 (UGa-560) on a large, deep house post under the mound and A.D. 1275+100 (UGa-559) on corn from a pit outside overlapping structures (see Connaway and Sims 1997:103 for calibrated results).  Occupation for several centuries of the late Coles Creek and early Mississippi periods is indicated.

In what is probably the most important CRM work to have import for Mississippian archeology in Coahoma County, Panamerican Consultants, Inc., has recently conducted excavations at the McKnight village site (22CO560) adjacent to Barbee Cemetery Mound (22CO510), a presumed Woodland period (Peabody and Coahoma phase) conical mound along Highway 61. Two wall trench structures and associated Mississippian pit features were encountered along with a Mississippian assemblage including thin, plain, coarse shell tempered ceramics similar to Powell Plain and Mississippi Plain, var. Coker.  One of the houses was oriented with the sides to the cardinal directions and the other with the corners to these points.  Both were about 7 meters on a side and roughly square, however, one dated to the Early Mississippi and the other several centuries later in the Late Mississippi period.  There was a small pit in the corner of one house and a large bell-shaped pit near the same structure.  The Powell Plain-like medium jar fragment from this exterior pit had the thin body, high shoulder, and everted rim typical of the northern areas where “true” Mississippian culture began. A small, flaring bit Mill Creek hoe was also recovered from the surface (Walling and Chapman1998). 

Farmsteads or hamlets around vacant ceremonial centers are often thought of as typical of the first centuries of the Mississippi period throughout the Central Valley. Another cluster of five wall-trench houses and associated graves at Bonds produced transitional Woodland and Mississippian ceramics and 12th century dates (Sam Brookes…).  At Rock Levee, a bell-shaped pit near a square wall trench house contained corn which produced an early assay (Weinstein et al. 1995). In what is probably the most important CRM work conducted in Coahoma County, excavations along the Highway 61 right-of-way at the McKnight village site (22CO560) uncovered other small early Mississippian components.  Two farmsteads, widely separated in time, were placed near a conical mound.  One wall trench house with a small corner hearth had a bell-shaped storage pit, containing a few Powell Plain-like rims, about 2 m from the south corner; this pit returned a date in the 13th century.  In an interesting contrast to the presumed pattern of farmsteads being early, the other structure appears to date in the 15th century  (Walling and Chapman 1998).  A Mill Creek hoe, also quite common on the early sites, was recovered at McKnight.

At 3CT324, one wattle-and-daub house at a linear hamlet on low-lying clayey ground dated to  the mid 1300s, perhaps as part of a wider community centered on Mound City, which is apparently an early “vacant” ceremonial center (Childress et al. 1995).  In Lee County, Arkansas, a house, one of a long string along North Alligator Bayou, produced a similar Middle Mississippian date (AAS 199-).  These Alligator Bayou farmsteads were probably part of the community using the Mound Cemetery vacant ceremonial center, where mound use ended around 1400 (John House personal communication 1997).

Standing in contrast to the small sites called hamlets and farmsteads are some larger early villages.  Analysis is underway on the salvaged Austin site (22TU--), which had a small mound with graves, rows of wall trench houses frequently rebuilt on the same locations, two palisades with bastions and loop entryway, and material culture transitional between the Woodland and Mississippian modes (John Connaway, personal communication 1997).  In addition, salvage at the Bobo Site (22CO535) resulted in the recording of four house patterns out of 75 to 100 uncovered during the destruction of this 6-8 acre Coles Creek and Mississippi period village midden and 8’ high mound on the Sunflower River (Connaway 1981:36-40). Thatched, wattle-and-daub, wall-trench houses in north-south rows around a plaza west of the mound could not be recorded, but overlapping and rebuilding of 15-30’ square structures were noted, along with internal features such as roof support and bench/bed posts, hearths, storage/refuse pits, and graves.  Artifacts recovered included Mississippi Plain, Winterville Incised, and a Mill Creek hoe. Occupation for several centuries of the late Coles Creek and Early and Middle Mississippi periods is indicated.  Wall trenches under the mound returned a 10th century date.

Two Coahoma County Late Mississippian sites have a type of structure that is unique in the archaeological record of our area, in that they were built on piles. Such buildings are, however, described in Garcilaso “The Inca” de la Vega’s ca. 1580 oral history of the De Soto entrada’s spring flood adventures in Aminoya, perhaps in the lower White/Arkansas river basin.  French reports of the Mississippi Valley also appear to describe such structures.  Baird (1980:11) mentions that around  1700, the Quapaw built platforms 15 to 20 feet high to sleep on in summer, to escape the mosquitoes and to gain some breeze. Wilsford (22CO516), between the large 14th and 15th century Salomon and 15th and 16th century Parchman mound groups, had a small rectangular mound, other daub-covered rises, but very sparse surface material.  The Wilsford pile structures show evidence of rebuilding in the same location.  They have wall trenches, and, in the area they enclose, a closely-spaced grid of support posts.  Each structure had a deep, ramped pit for a large centerpost, and probably, a surrounding porch or balcony and entryway/ladder.  A Nodena Red and White bottle and an Addis Plain (a southern analog of Bell Plain, generally with little or no shell) carinated flaring-rim bowl were recovered from one centerpost pit. The later dates are on smaller posts, and probably are fairly close to the construction date, while the earlier centerpost date can be accounted for by the large size of this timber.  The main occupation date for the site appears to be around  A.D. 1425 (Connaway 1985).  

A smaller elevated structure at the Hays farmstead site (22CO612) produced a date in the 1600s on the centerpost (Connaway 1981:84).  The one-acre site had only been disked once when it was excavated by the MDAH in 1969.  Like other single-family sites, Hays had a concentration of debitage and unfinished pebble-core triangular points adjacent to a daub scatter.  The structures uncovered had been rebuilt at least two times on the same spot.  One construction appeared to be a standard wall trench building with internal posts indicative of beds around the walls.  The other construction had singly set wall posts and a rough grid of interior posts, a ramped center post placement pit, and a set of short, close-spaced wall trenches perpendicular the southeast wall, probably part of the stair or ladder.  This latter feature was also noted at Wilsford.  The five foot deep, tapering center pit had daub with grapevine impressions, split and woven cane impressions, grass temper, and smoothed surfaces.  It also contained cypress charcoal, corn, and persimmon seeds.  Pecan and white oak were also apparently used in the buildings (ms notes MDAH).

Ellis, on the Mississippi River in Phillips County, and Powell Bayou, in the Sunflower River meander belt in Sunflower County were typical small mound groups.  Both had some salvage work done after the villages had been largely disturbed and the main mounds were half removed.  A series of dates from each indicates 14th and 15th century construction. Powell Bayou (22SU5--) is a minor ceremonial center and village lying between a dry bayou and an open cypress lake, well away from the main area of high ground along the Sunflower River,  on some of the only land in its township to be considered of any value by the GLO surveyor (Starr 1991).  To the east lies the Quiver River backswamp.  Soon after the 1969 excavations, a radiocarbon sample from “a post” on the mound remnant top was submitted, and in 1989 two additional samples were processed (Starr 1996).  Construction probably began in the late 14th century and at least two stages had been erected by the early 15th century. The end of the Mississippian developmental cycle at Powell Bayou was lost to the dirt buggy, but it should be noted that the 15th century village succeeded insofar as they added at least one but probably several more stages to their mound and at some point had a population of more than a dozen houses, based on the extent of daub and pottery scatter. Slight social differentiation of the mound inhabitants from their undoubted kin and allies living physically and figuratively below them is one of the more interesting aspects of social organization that can be inferred from the Powell Bayou excavations. The apparent contemporaneity, side-by-side, on the mound of typical-to-middling sized domestic or residential and much larger, presumably communal architecture is also indicative of this ambiguity.  There is evidence for the storage and processing of large quantities of food on the mound in bathtub-size pits, but much of what was found in these pits was gathered or orchard produce (white oak acorns and persimmons) rather than grain from field agriculture (corn).

Ellis (3PH19) is a mound group lying in and along the Corps of Engineers levee between Old Town Lake and the end of Crowleys Ridge.  A 15th century ceramic complex has been defined from the site based on 1990 excavations and radiocarbon dates (Childress et al. 1995). Two Dover chert artifacts from Ellis, a definite hoe flake with earth-polish and heavy use on the lateral flake margins and a second flake with retouch/utilization but no earth polish, were some of the very few lithics recovered from Ellis. These large imported tools were no doubt instrumental in intensive farming involving hilling and in earthwork construction.  They must have also been used to dig wall trenches. While mid-1300s pre-mound construction at Ellis included wall trenches, the early 1400s Stage III/IV structure at Ellis appears to have individual post holes, and such singly-set post structures have been documented at Parchman, Hushpuckena, and Winterville phase sites as well by around 1500.  By historic times, they were also used by the Natchez (Brown 1990:230). The protohistoric Dupree house (3PH1; Moselage 1965, McGimsey 1965) was of single post construction, as was the one excavated by Ford (1961:154) at Menard (3AR4) and that excavated by Tesar (1975) at Humber (22CO601), two protohistoric/early historic sites.  These last three sites, based on their ceramics, are later than Ellis and probably were occupied by a different, perhaps actual Quapaw, ethnic group.  It seems likely that wall trenches were not so practical when hoes, or as they might better be called, mattocks, were no longer available, so that people returned to digging all foundation elements with dibble bars or other wooden tools.  Identification of a terminal date for the importation of Dover and Mill Creek hoes is a critical chronological and economic problem.

The wall trench at the base of the Ellis mound seems to date to the mid-1300s. Dates for Stages II and III are ambiguous, but a range near the end of the fourteenth century seems reasonable. There are three dates from the Stage III/IV interface associated with the construction of semisubterranean, individually set post houses ca. 1400.  The initial accumulation of burned structure rubble on Stage IV has a calibrated intercept at 1431.  The second continuous rubble zone, on the Stage V summit, is calibrated to 1478.  Daub fragments in the uppermost disturbed mantle indicate that the mound supported at least one additional occupation after the application of Stage VI fill, suggesting that the mound was in use until at least 1500.  The two sigma ranges for calibrated calendar years allows a span of 350 years to be postulated for construction of the earthwork.  Most likely the mound was built in episodes over only 150 to 200 years between 1300 and 1500, with stages added at intervals of 50 years or less.

Ellis Trench A’s upper 20 cm contained many small brick and daub fragments but, all traces of the final  aboriginal occupation were probably obliterated by the twentieth century occupants. At     90 centimeters below the present surface in the east end of Trench A, the first intact daub and charcoal lens was encountered.  This burned rubble was 10 to 20 cm thick, representing the remains of a collapsed structure that sat atop the Stage V living surface.  This material and the fill directly under the rubble were excavated separately to obtain a separate sample of the Stage V material culture. Excavation of the Stage V mound fill continued to 40 cm below the burned rubble (120 cmbs) before the trench was stepped to the west.  A 10 to 12 cm diameter charred post was identified under the Stage V rubble.  Excavation of the post halted upon encountering ash, daub, and charcoal of the next lower mound stage.  The total thickness of Stage V was 60 cm.

At 130 cmbs, a horizontal, 5 cm thick, charcoal lens was noted and sampled; this probably corresponds to the second “floor” noted in Trench C, described below.  About 30-35 cm below this charcoal, beginning at 175 cmbs, was a third layer of structural remains (Feature 4) consisting of daub overlying cane in a shallow baked depression (Figure 5).  The cane was consistently oriented in the same direction and followed the eastward slope of the baked depression.  A flat rock was found on the baked surface, and by 180 cmbs the depression was found to have a distinct outline indicating the corner of a sunken floor structure.  Most of the structure appeared to be intact, extending to the east into the mound remnant. At 190 cmbs, two postholes were encountered at the edge of the depressed floor.  One yielded a carbon sample.  Feature 4 seemed to overlie a second basin filled with light yellowish brown basket loads intruding a fill zone of very dark grayish-brown soil mixed with small daub fragments.  I interpret this as indicating that there were two consecutive structures atop Stage IV without the addition of mound fill, although, alternately, Stage IV may have been a very thin mound fill, as a second group of three postholes began at a level slightly below the base of Feature 4. Interpretation of the structure(s) atop Stage IV as having semisubterranean floors is also supported by the north wall profile, which shows daub rubble lying on a sloping surface.  The surface bearing the rubble rises from the west to a crest at the presumed wall line and then descends into a depression which slopes to the east.  The second mentioned basin seemed to be in the same location and orientation as the first.  The mound surface at the time of the initial basin’s burning lay at about 180-190 cm below the present mound surface. The final burned structure encountered in Trench A was a bright orange baked surface overlain by a thin white ash and charcoal lens at 210 cmbs.  This corresponds approximately with the top level of the modern asphalt pavement.  Little of the Stage II fill was excavated below this level, but postholes from the Stage II occupation beginning at 200-205 cmbs were recorded (Figure 6). 

Ellis Trench B lay 4 m north of Trench A.  The existing exposed mound fill was cut back to the first burned clay floor.  Subsequently the trench was stepped westward and down, following the burned material as each intact construction stage was encountered (Figures 7 and 8).  About half of the volume of Trench B was disturbed slump from the last three or four construction stages.  Artifacts, carbon, and floatation samples were collected from three baked occupation levels.  Each had a daub/charcoal/ash sequence indicative of rapid covering with soil after the burning structure collapsed.  The charcoal is mostly cane, although wood was also noted.  These thin lenses of burned debris lay on compact, baked surfaces believed to be the floors or, perhaps, heavily trafficked immediate exterior eaves or yards of structures.  They correspond well in depth to the portions of the Stage III/IV structures encountered in Trench A.

Two Tunica County mound groups with dense, compact village deposits similar to those of St. Francis-type towns to the north, in the eastern part of the area Phillips assigned to the Kent phase, date 1600-1700.  The very late dates from West (22TU520; Dye and Buchner 1988, Buchner 1996), from a moundtop structure with plank door jamb, are commensurate with the ceramics from this very large wall-trench structure. Hollywood (22TU500, Stallings19--, Ross-Stalling19--) and the adjacent presumably affiliated Flowers #3 village and cemetery similarly date to the 15th through 17th centuries.  The late component of Hollywood also produces Nodena lanceolate arrow points and bundle burials.

I believe that one of the basic formats of Mississippian architecture, the wall trench house, disappears late in the sequence, presumably as part of the formation of the vacant quarter, which includes the hoe quarries. House’s (1991) test trenches at the Protohistoric Clay Hill (3LE11) site seem to support the contention. Otherwise, the Clay Hill daub and floors indicate considerable continuity in the general tradition. Perhaps only the seating of the posts was changed. Two early contact period sites in Coahoma County in the Yazoo Basin have architectural data supporting this contention as well. Both sites date to the period before ca. 1700, when prolonged contact with the French and British was initiated. The first to be discussed is the Humber site, where Tesar (1975) excavated a square, set-post house with extended entry way. Humber produced large amounts of the polychrome and effigy pottery and other elements of the popularly-defined “Quapaw” ceramic complex, including Bell Plain teapots and red and white bottles. A small area with a meter deep midden was tested (Tesar 1975).  The site was evidently occupied intensively over an extended period, as there are many examples of overlapping sequential buildings.  A 5 meter square rectangular structure made with individually set posts, packed gumbo floor, grass tempered daub, and large southeast-facing entrance was recorded.  It perhaps sat on a house mound.  Parts of 3-to-4 m diameter arcs of postholes were also noted, along with fire pits and dumps containing corn, beans, persimmon, deer, and fish remains.  The Humber village consisted of many houses and, apparently, some platform mounds lying along a mile and a half of high, sandy natural levee near the Mississippi River. The extent and linear nature of the site seem to preclude its having been fortified. The house plan documented at Humber is unlike any other known from the Central Valley, given its extended entry. The style of the ceramics associated with the many bundle burials dug through this house’s floor places the Humber site in the very late 1500s or early 1600s.

The second to be discussed is the Oliver site, excavated by Charles Peabody (1904) in 1901-1902. Belmont (1962) reconstructed the architecture present on each Oliver mound stage from the Peabody notes. The final late Mississippian and Protohistoric structures were apparently made of posts; Peabody’s notes mentioned no trenches and only posts.

Architecture in

Northeast Arkansas-Southeast Missouri,

The Central Valley’s Mississippian Core

Marshall (1987:164) describes a granary from the Little River Lowland of southeast Missouri.  This 1.5 x 2 m structure had a slightly depressed floor.  Food stores were arrayed along either side of a central aisle. One side had bags of shelled corn in twined bags and acorn meat and sunflower seed laid up in cane mat or basket-lined bins; the other side had additional shelled corn and corn laid up on the cob. This feature type is almost unrecorded elsewhere in the Central Valley.

Northern Central Mississippi River Valley

(American Bottom) Architecture

The sequence of architectural styles, like seemingly every other aspect of prehistoric material culture, is very well documented for the Cahokia region (American Bottom) because of the I-270 project, which resulted in the excavation of many villages of all types, sizes, and time periods.  The architectural tradition in evidence in the American Bottom ca. AD 500-1400 is remarkably similar to what is known about the southern end of the Central Valley. Set post and semisubterranean rectangular houses date to the Late Woodland in the American Bottom, and wall trenches were constructed only after the introduction of Mill Creek hoes. Village plans had also attained the regularity provided by central open areas with public buildings, poles, or special pit clusters during the Late Woodland period. There are cases of Mississippian town plans when it appears that the plaza was laid out prior to beginning construction of a town or mounds.  The placement of a pole from which the rest of the site plan could be measured out could be one of the first formal acts in the creation of a settlement.  Stout and Lewis (1998:151) believe that the plaza is the central element in Mississippian town planning as well as a physical symbol of the “center of the world,” and as such, a vertical post would serve as a marker of this central point.  Posts are often implicated in attempts to find alignments of village features, particularly mounds, with astronomical and solar events such as the equinoxes and solstices (see Sherrod and Rolingson 1987).  These large central posts appeared at least 1000 years ago and were very widespread in the area of Mississippian cultures.  They are evidently an important element in these sites’ public spaces and are probably much more common than we have recognized—simply because, unless a full village plan is being exposed, archaeologists seldom choose to excavate plazas, which are, after all, by definition empty spaces. The American Bottom around Cahokia has a detailed history of posts in the centers of plazas and “courtyards” (courtyard refers to a space surrounded by a group of houses rather than mounds as around a plaza; a courtyard is larger than a “patio” in a single domestic building group) as many town and village sites have been excavated (Kelley 1990 a, b; Pauketat 1994; Mehrer and Collins 1995; Demel and Hall 1998). 

Emerson and Jackson (1987:172) describe Late Woodland architecture for the Rosewood, Mund, and Patrick phases.  They attribute the complexity witnessed in the American Bottom Late Woodland to “coalesence within the American Bottom Woodland tradition under outside influences (Emerson and Jackson 1987:176)”. The Rosewood phase (AD 300-450) had large single post rectangular and oval houses.  The Mund phase saw a shift in emphasis from floodplain locations to blufftop settlements. The increasing agricultural Patrick phases houses were substantial semisubteranean, rectangular “keyhole” structures, made with individually set wall posts and a long ramped entry.  Buildings with small set posts and no ramp and large, square, set post buildings are also recorded for the latest Woodland phase (Emerson and Jackson 1987:176).  In the southern American Bottom, Dohack phase settlements consisted of small, square to rectangular, set post houses with pit clusters. By AD 600, large, organized settlements had been formed. The fully sedentary and horticultural Range site had 22 small, rectangular, set post structures arrayed around a “courtyard” with central pole and by the George Reeves phase, the settlement consisted of more than 100 houses clustered around several small courtyards, with overlap showing long-term occupation (Emerson and Jackson 1987:176, 179).

Mill Creek chert hoes began to be used in the northern American Bottom during the Loyd phase (AD 800-900), and during this time small square or rectangular set post houses were built in basins. They were introduced in the southern American Bottom during the Lindeman phase, along with southeast-Missouri-style shell tempered pottery (Emerson and Jackson 1987:179, 187). All emergent Mississippian houses had individually set pots along basin edges.  Both set posts and wall trenches were used in the Lohman phase and by the Strilring phase wall trenches were used exclusively. Milner (1984:196) notes that structure floor area increased by three times from the emergent Mississippian Merrell phase to the terminal Mississippian Sand Prairie phase (or from AD 900 to 1400.) By the emergent Mississippian, most American Bottom communities consisted of houses grouped around an open area containing central posts, pits, or large structures. Other special use structures include sweat lodges and granaries (Milner 1987:198). The Edelhart phase village at the BBB Motors site was linear, without a plaza, following the bank of a slough. The 16 rectangular, set post, shallow basin houses varied in size from 5 to 14 square meters (enclosed floors of 3.4 to 10.9 square meters; Emerson and Jackson 1987:180). Basins were about 30 cm deep, and posts were generally about 10 cm in diameter and 20 cm deep. Twelve of the houses had internal features such as storage pits, large posts, and, rarely, shallow hearths.  In contrast, the Merrell tract at Cahokia showed contemporary structures of the same small size but of more permanent constrction than the presumed arbor-like buildings at BBB.  Basins were 63-89 cm deep, with posts 40 cm or more in depth.  The site appears to have three clusters of buildings, with a redundant complex of buildings in each.  Each has 3 or 4 with internal pits and floor areas greater than 11 square meters, a structure of 5 or 6 square meters and no features, and up to two 8-9 square meter buildings with internal features.  These suggest that extended family households had both residential and storage buildings (Emerson and Jackson 1987:186). During the early Mississippian, the diversified settlement pattern included widely dispersed farmsteads, densely occupied mound centers, and nonmound villages (Milner 1987:198).

West of Cahokia, in the Missouri River bluffs at St. Louis, The Thornhill site (23SL220) has returned dates indicative of occupation ca. AD 800. A large (6.75 x 4.85 m) rectangular wall trench building had been constructed in a shallow basin. it had a fired clay floor, hearth, and two pits, one small, and one large and bell shaped, still containing grass lining.  The floor also showed impressions of mats made of weft-twined two-ply, fiber such as grass or reed.  One raised area of floor may have been a bench or work area.  A pile of geodes, quartz pebbles, galena, and other pebbles was found in one corner, and tools such as grindstones and battered cores were found on the floor. Large stores of corn in the ear may have been in the rafters; this corn was mostly MidWestern 12-row, with some Eastern 8-and-10-row. The structure may have been daubed, as some burned clay was recovered. The site produced several Mill Creek hoes and a Mill Creek spade blank (Neathery 1987:169).

Cumberland/Lower Ohio River Valley Architecture

The Mississippian cultural sequence of the Nashville Basin or Tennessee Bluegrass appears to be truncated by the “Vacant Quarter” phenomenon around 1450, as is that of the northern Central Valley.  The Middle Cumberland Mississippian variant is considered one of the nuclear areas of earlier Mississippian developments, and the ceramics and other aspects of material culture, including the architecture, are highly similar to the Central Valley Mississippian variant.

Tombigbee/Alabama River Valley Architecture

The Moundville tradition sites (speaking widely to encompass the Tombigbee Valley, southern Tennessee Valley, and Mobile Bay-Gulf Coastal area) appear in many aspects of architecture to resemble the Central Valley Mississippian tradition, with rectangular plans and wall-trench, wattle-and-daub houses.  This broad and basic similarity across the Mississippian world is particularly interesting given the likelihood that the Central Valley cultures, from Cahokia to the Mid-South, represent Siouan speakers, and archaeological cultures of the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers and the Gulf Coast represent the Western Muskoghean speakers.

The Chickasaw sites have one aspect of architecture not documented for the Central Valley: the paired summer and winter house, or open-walled rectangular ramada or arbor and the circular, daubed, timber walled hothouse. Historic Choctaw and Chickasaw sites tend to be shallow. These are both settlement patterns of the uplands of Mississippi that consist of scattered houses making up sometimes large villages. Few archaeological traces have been recovered of historic Chickasaw, Choctaw or related architecture in eastern Mississippi.

Middle Arkansas River Valley

(Ozark) Architecture

The regional architectural style of late prehistoric southwest Missouri, northeast Oklahoma, and northwest Arkansas emphasizes rectangular structures with wall posts set in individual postholes, generally with central surface hearths and two, four, or more larger central roof support posts. The post spacing generally indicates that mat or bark was the probable covering. These archaeological patterns appear to be commensurate with the longhouses of ethnographic references.

Wilson (1962) notes that southeastern Oklahoma saw brief WPA survey work prior to the outbreak of WWII. Two important Middle Arkansas River basin, Ouachita Mountain sites were excavated, Clement and McDonald.  The Fulton aspect Clement site had three platform mounds, midden, cemetery, and associated village area. The largest mound, of two stages, had been built over a 25’ square house with a 4-square arrangement of  large internal support posts. This house in turn overlapped a 17.4’ x 18.7’ house with two roof supports. Both had south/southwest entries made with trenches. Other square and rectangular houses were encountered in the village area (Wilson 1962:104). The McDonald site was considered to date slightly later. Here, a circular set-post structure 18’ in diameter was excavated. It had an 11’ long wall trench entry with pairs of postholes at either end. The entry was on the north.

Proctor (1957) reported the WPA excavation at the Sam village site (Lf-28, Leflore County, Oklahoma), located on Fourche Maline Creek near its confluence with the Poteau River. Three possible houses were noted, one only by 4 large (12-18” diameter, 19-22” deep) posts in a square oriented with the cardinal directions, presumed to be the central support posts of a house whose walls were lost (Proctor 1957:55). The possibility that they are the pillars of a granary is not entertained. The second potential structure was a group of 6” diameter posts in a 14’ x 17’ rough rectangle, with some interior posts.  All posts were detected at the subsoil and no artifacts were associated with the post patterns. Pottery types were Woodward (67%) and Williams (13%) Plain, and in addition to conch, copper, quartz, and arrows and darts; axes, adzes, celts, and other ground stone were recovered. The excavator interpreted the site as having segregated house, cache pit, and cemetery areas, although the site had seen either extended or repeated occupation, as there was much unintelligible overlap of structures (Proctor 1957:46).

The definite Sam house was not excavated far enough beyond the walls to have detected an extended entry.  The house stood on a small rise and was marked by a “wattle” concentration (burned clay) found to lie on the house floor. The 21’ x 14’ rectangular structure had 2 symmetrically placed large (18” diameter) support posts along its long north-south axis.  There were numerous other internal posts, 6-10” in diameter. It is possible that some of these are additional posts for a 4-square plan and that the east wall was not uncovered; the overall structure dimensions given are rather uncertain, the house may have been 21’ square (Proctor 1957:55). There was a potentially-associated 3’ diameter cache pit to the north of the northern central support post, between it and the wall. The structure was not dated, although the site’s main component is Fourche Maline.

The A.W. Davis site (Mc-6) is a Fulton component in McCurtain County, Oklahoma. It had been badly looted in the 1930s prior to the 1955 University of Oklahoma excavations (Wilson 1962:107). The excavations were troweled and dry screened in 6” levels (Wilson 1962:107). The Fulton aspect is characterized by Wilson (1962:105) as having  few “temple” mounds and the reuse of the platforms of earlier people, extended inhumations with frequent grave goods, sandstone hones, stemmed arrows, end scrapers, scapulae hoes, and many other bone artifacts. The Fulton aspect was believed to be Protohistoric, prior to the ca. 1700 French and Spanish trade, and to represent small village agriculturalists, leaning heavily on hunting/gathering/fishing, and dispersed about the Caddo area, as the neighboring Mid-Ouchita Bossier focus. They were perhaps the ancestral Wichita nation, who lived in conical grass houses (Wilson 1962;109, 123).

The A.W. Davis house was round, 18’ in diameter, with a second ring 6’ outside the first (30’ diameter), interpreted as rebuilding or repair. The posts of the outer ring were smaller, and sometimes doubled, and spaced about 2’ apart. The inner ring posts were about a foot in diameter and sometimes wider spaced. Two posts were identified as pine.  There were no entryway, floor, fireplace, or pits reported (Wilson 1862:109).There was considerable burned chink (“wattle”) with grass and reed impressions; it was interpreted as being packed between upright timbers. No floor or firepits were defined. A single posthole was located at the center of the concentric rings of posts (Wilson 1962:Plate 39).

There were 5 extended inhumation graves south of the house. One had 13 Talco arrows, probably a quiver. The site produced primarily shell-tempered pottery, particularly Keno Trailed-Incised. Tools included scrapers, cores, manos, hammers, hoes, celts and hematite. The environment is riverine, lying in the bottomland of Glover River, with cane, pecan, and cottonwood, as well as hardwoods and pine nearby (Wilson 1962:107).

Bareis (1955) reported on WPA excavations at the Brackett site (Ck-43) in northeast Oklahoma’s Illinois River Valley’s Barren Fork Creek (Tenkiller Reservoir, Cherokee County), where 8 houses were excavated at a mound and village site in rugged, wooded blufflands of the middle Arkansas River Valley Ozark Mountains. The site lay on a high bank on Barren Fork, a quarter-mile from its confluence with Illinois River. No graves were associated with these houses and artifact recovery was spotty. However, an adjacent cemetery area with 17 graves and 27 individuals was excavated. Ceramics indicate contemporaneity with the houses. Grave furnishings relevant to the study of architecture include included knives, a double-bit ax, a perforated mussel shell hoe, a metate and manos (Bareis 1955:7). The perhaps earlier Gary dart was the commonest projectile point type found, followed by Ellis, but Alba and other arrows were abundant as well. The site’s mound is interpreted as a three-stage substructure, although no postholes were reported (Bareis 1955:13). This late prehistoric site was assigned to the later Gibson aspect. Then-defined Gibson aspect traits included burial and flat-topped mounds, extended burials, clay/sand and bone tempered elaborate as well as simple domestic ceramics and barbed and side-notched arrows. Exotic materials include reposee copper and copper beads, spatulate celts, pearls, quartz crystals, stone and ceramic pipes, conch dippers and engraved shell.

All of the Brackett site houses were square to rectangular with one to four center posts, prepared clay floors, and post or wall trench entryways. House 1 was 22’ square with a 6’9” long, 3’ wide single post entry in the middle of the east wall. Wall posts were about 6” in diameter, 6” apart, and 1’ deep, as were the 14 posts making up either side of the extended entry. The center posts were larger, as is typical, about 1.6’ in diameter and 3’ deep. Some 13 interior posts were identified parallel to the walls; these were smaller, about 4” in diameter and 11” deep. Portions of prepared floor were noted, including clay at the entry, but no fireplace was identified. Charcoal was noted, along with burned clay bearing stick wattle imprints.  House 2 was rectangular, measuring 28’ north-south and 24’ east-west.  The interior support posts, however, formed a square and were 1’3” to 2” deep.  There were 24 interior posts interpreted as strengthening or reinforcing the wall. No entry was identified, but a clay floor and 2’10” diameter central circular fire pit were (Bareis 1955:4). 

Brackett House 3 was also rectangular, but more pronouncedly so, measuring 22’6” north-south and 15’6” east west. It had a single central post 1’3” in diameter and 1’ deep; only 3 un-patterned secondary posts; and a 7’long, 6” deep wall trench entry in the middle of the east wall.  Charcoal, wattle, and burned clay were recovered from the prepared clay floor. A metate was recovered from the southwest corner (Bareis 1955:5).  House 4 was 28’6” square with 4 central posts and a trench entry in the middle of the east wall.  The interior posts were 1’4” in diameter and 2” deep. They were set in a square. There was only 1 other interior post.

House 5 was superimposed diagonally with House 6 (Bareis 1955:5). House 5 was 28’ square with 4 center posts and post entry in the middle of the east wall.  The main support posts were 1’6” in diameter and 2’ deep. There were 4 other similar large posts, suggested to be additional roof supports, in addition to 4 other interior posts near the walls. The entry had 3 posts on one side and 4 on the other. Charcoal, bifaces, deer bones and teeth, a bird nest, and other burned plants seemed to be in association.  House 6 was roughly square (26-28’ on the side) with a trench entry in the middle of the east side. The wall posts were 6” to a 1’ deep. Four central posts in a square were 1’3” in diameter and 2’2” deep. There were 7 posts in one entry trench and 6 in the other.  Hickory Fine Engraved, Williams (clay-tempered) and Woodward (shell-tempered) sherds were recovered in association, along with some bone-tempered and some sand-tempered sherds and charcoal and “wattle” (Bareis 1955:6).

Brackett House 7 was 24’ square, with 4 central support posts in a square and a trench entry in the middle of the east wall.  The central posts were around 1’8” in diameter and 2’10” deep. There were 6 secondary posts along the west side.  Similar ceramics were recovered, along with a number of stone tools (ax, celt, mano, bifaces), and charcoal with wattle. House 8 was 16’ square, with central posts 1’6” in diameter and a 5’-long trench entry in the middle of the east wall (Bareis 1955:6).

Although the methods used in the 1930s to record these structures were rudimentary, the Gibson aspect Brackett site presents well-defined architectural rules. The typical house was 1) 24-28’ square, with 2) 4 roof support posts in a central square, and 3) an extended entry in the middle of the east wall. The roof supports were placed in post holes more than a foot in diameter and often 2’ deep. Smaller secondary posts near walls are interpreted as reinforcement of walls. Prepared clay floors are also typical, but are not described in detail. The walling between the 6’ diameter, 6’ apart wall posts is not stated clearly, but wattle and charcoal are frequently mentioned, along with some burned clay. By “wattle,” “daub” seems to be intended, as the wattle is described as having 2.4 cm diameter deep stick imprints and as being used as “linear material between the posts and framework (Bareis 1955:4).” In one case cane is mentioned as associated with the structure. The main deviations from this pattern are 1) somewhat to markedly rectangular structures, 2) irregular arrangements of fewer or greater than 4 support posts, and 3) one case where no entry was noted (probably destroyed, Bareis 1955:33). 

Brackett is 4 miles northwest of the Vanderpool site, believed to a pre-Gibson aspect (Bareis 1955:38). Area B of Vanderpool (Ck-32, Cherokee County, Oklahoma) produced a house pattern similar to those at Brackett. It was slightly rectangular (17’ north-south and 20’ east west floor area), with a 4-square arrangement of internal supports and a trench entry in the middle of the south wall (Harden and Robinson 1975).  This site lies along the southern edge of the Ozark uplift on rolling limestones of the Boone formation at the transition from the deciduous woodlands to the Prairie Plains. This area still provides the favored southeastern building materials (hickory, oak, grapevine, bluestem grasses; Harden and Robinson 1975:92). As the work was conducted later (a 1951 field school), the standards of recording were higher, including screening, and consequently the architectural information for the structure is somewhat better. The near surroundings of the structure were exposed, yielding 5 probably associated extramural features. These were 2 burials in small, circular pits containing acid-leached skull fragments; 2 other pits along the east and west side walls; and a rockpile at the back  or northwest corner. Burial 3 lay in a pit along the south (front entry) wall. Burial 2 lay in a pit several meters from the northeast corner. There were no associated materials. The 5’ diameter concentration of 4-10” fire-cracked rocks was interpreted as non-contemporaneous, because it was deeper (Harden and Robinson 1975:103).  Feature 4, the pit along the east wall near Burial 2 contained flint, sherds, and charcoal.

The Vanderpool Area B house entry is unusual in that it extents into the interior. It has trenches with larger postholes at each end. No evidence of a prepared floor was found, but the site appears from photographs to have been plow- and erosion-truncated (Harden and Robinson 1975:Plate 3). The wall posts were found to extend 6-10” below the depth of definition. However, a rectangular burned clay area (but “no evidence of a prepared hearth;” Harden and Robinson 1975:105) was found 6-8” above the level the posts were defined (Harden and Robinson 1975:105). The northeast corner of the house was excavated as having a large post, but the expected smaller wall posts of the angle were not found. The northeast corner has, in addition, rows of interior posts along the north and east walls. This observed complex post pattern is interpreted as evidence of remodleling/repair(Harden and Robinson 1975:105), however, it seems as likely that these are original furnishings of the house. The center posts were 9-12” in diameter and 10-21” into the subsoil.

Vanderpool tools include pitted stones/manos, 8-16 cm-long  Boone chert or sandstone chipped hoes, 7-14 cm siltstone or fine sandstone pelatoid celts, and Boone chert chipped double-bit axes. Vanderpool has a strong Archaic component, but the axes at least are strongly associated with Area B (Harden and Robinson 1975:111). Arrows are notched, with a few triangular (Harden and Robinson 1975:124-125). Knives, perforators, spokeshaves were all recovered, but most are probably come from the earlier components. Ceramics were predominantly clay-tempered Williams Plain, but the wide range of tempers expected in the area is present. The authors (Harden and Robinson 1975:165) note “so far not one Fourche Maline site has been C14 dated” and were still somewhat unclear as unclear as to when “Fulton” was. Hopefully, these sites have been dated by now. The 1200-1600 Fulton aspect component represented by the house was considered to include shell-tempered pottery, arrows, beveled knives, and cache pits.

Shaeffer (1958) reports a further architectural variant at the Horton Site, a “Fultonoid” (“after Gibson, though not Fulton in the sense that the southeastern Caddoan area was Fulton,” Schaeffer 1958:13) village in the lower Illinois River Valley and also in the Tenkiller Dam region. The site lay on a creek bank or first terrace, near a spring. Plowing turned up “wattle on burned clay house-chinking,” and subsequent excavation revealed a damaged 10’ x 12’ floor surrounded by paired, staggered small posts and having four larger 6-8” corner posts. The structure had burned, with the daub concentration and burned posts most pronounced at the typically windward northwest corner. The burned grass from the thatch covered a large area of the center of the floor, which was burned orange. No definite hearth was found and the north wall was missing. The Horton house also had exterior small posts about 3’ from the north and south walls, interpreted as a possible entrance or ramada (Shaeffer 1958:3).

Although damaged, a few floor-associations were made: there was a fragmentary flexed male burial in the southwest interior corner and a fine, white, ovate blade in the northeast part of the house. Other tools of significance were ground pelatoid and rectangular celts, small chipped stone hoes, hammerstones and manos, the double-bit ax, picks, and a naturally hollow concretion “paint container,” Shaeffer 1958:14). There was a cemetery 75 yards away from the house where 5 flexed individuals were uncovered. They had with them a celt, engraved bottles, a Gary dart, a serrated arrow, mussels shell,  scrapers, and a stone elbow pipe (Shaeffer 1958:3). Shell tempered Woodward Plain predominated the ceramics, with much grit/sand tempered Williams Plain and some Sanders Plain and Maxey Noded Redware, along with Avery Engraved and Davis Incised. Fresno triangular and Harrell, Scallorn, and Bonham sidenotched arrows were recovered (Scaeffer 1958:13). Corn and walnuts have been identified, but no mention is made of the charred posts.

Further west up the Arkansas River, in the Washita River valley of central Oklahoma, Pillaert (1963) reported the excavation of the McLemore site (Wa-5, on Pond Creek in Washita County) indicating that the architectural tradition of the Ozark Trench Arkansas Valley extended into the Plains. Here, we are approaching the stone, masonry, and jacal building traditions of the Greater Puebloan cultural sphere. However, the recovered biological materials from this Washita Valley site include deer, turkey, catfish and mussels; as well as bison, jackrabbit, prairie chicken, and antelope. This upland valley is thus a western extension of some of the Southeastern Woodland habitat into the Plains portion of the Arkansas Valley. Gary and Scallorn were rare and in the Plains pattern, the site has a vast array of worked bone items unattested in the Southeast (Pillaert 1963:6, 33 passim). This house at least is dated (R-829/1, AD 380+50; R-829/2, AD 1331+55; O-1245, AD 1011+105; Pillaert 1963:43).  It is interpreted as a single component instance of late Gibson “period” Caddoans onto the Plains (Pillaert 1963:1,42, 45). This was a thesis project at the University of Oklahoma; most soil was dry screened, logs were kept, and detailed maps made (Pillaert 1963:2).

The McLemore house pattern was of small posts, with 2 central and 1 off-center large support posts surviving. Note that the house has no extended entry. The 27 remaining outer wall posts were 5-8” in diameter and 5-16” deep. Interior support posts were 11-13” in diameter and 11-14” deep. One of the large posts was located very nearly in the center of the house.  The house measured 22’ north-south and 20’ east-west, nearly square. An ash concentration was noted in the area within these posts, but no floor or hearth. The house pattern was riddled with cache pits, prior, contemporary, and later, sometimes with caps or false bottoms; so many posts were missing from the excavated pattern (Pillaert 1963: Figure 4). Burned “wattle” (daub/chink) was recovered from one pit and thought to be associated with the structure (Pillaert 1963:42). This burnt clay is described as “both stick and grass impressed….This plaster-like mixture, approximately three and one-half inches thick, consisted of vertically placed sticks and cane covered with a layer of clay containing grass and twigs lying horizontally; (Pillaert 1963:42).”  The undisturbed northwest corner had a diagonal row of small posts across it, perhaps furniture, but was interpreted as having been “constructed at an obtuse angle or to have formed a gentle arc;” Pillaert 1963:6), and there were other internal posts.

Grid B-associated artifact classes of chronological significance for the house are Harrell and Fresno arrows, Harrahey knives, thumbnail endscrapers, Stafford series caliche/heterogeneous sub-conoidal jars with handles, mullers, various specialized abraders, scrapers, awls, shell beads, and bone rasps. Potential architectural tools included choppers, hammerstones, celts, manos, bison scapulae hoes and bison tibia digging sticks. The same range of materials was recovered with the 48 graves and 52 individuals, predominately flexed inhumations, excavated in Grid C. The graves also include as tools worked antelope/deer mandibles (in women’s graves) and shell scrapers and as ideotechnic/sociotechnic  items minerals, a shell gorget and beads, and an effigy vessel (Pillaert 1963:6).

Another partial Washita River site house, the bison hunting and gardening Custer focus (estimated 1400-1600) Mouse site on a floodplain ridge, was excavated by the University of Oklahoma in 1957 and reported by Authur (1959). Arthur (1959:29) considers his site part of afar-flung spread of villages with cordmarked jars onto the Plains around 1300, into Texas as far as the Alibates quarries and into Kansas and Nebraska, and coming into contact with the Caddoans of the Washita River (Arthur 1959:30). The occupants were believed essentially sedentary Prairie-Plains gardeners with a disintegrating, but still essentially Misissippian economy, but the silos and bison as well as lithics indicate increasing incorporation of Plains traits The eastern wall was completely missing (Arthur 1959: 26). The Mouse site post pattern was 20’ x 15’ with 4-6” diameter posts that extended 4-8” into the sterile clay. The posts recorded were widely spaced (2’-2.5’) where continuous. The eastern wall was completely missing (Arthur 1959: Figure 8). The posts were only defined at sterile clay, so some may have been missed, at any rate many were missing due to intrusive “silos” (probably a more accurate functional rendering than “cache pits;”  1959:18). The house has a central hearth containing charcoal, fire-cracked rock including manos, milling stones, and hammerstones; shell beads; and Stafford Plain pottery. The house was oriented with the long axis roughly north-south.

The Mouse site had a range of other materials similar to that found at McLemore, including endscrapers, Harahey knives, shell beads, caliche/heterogeneous-tempered pottery, cache/silo pits, and much worked bone. The architecture represents a further attenuation of the Caddoan ideal. In addition to not having a 4-square arrangement of internal posts, or any roof support posts for that matter, the Mouse house also lacks an extended entry and has somewhat more widely spaced wall posts.

In my opinion, the prehistoric architecture of the Ozark Trench Arkansas Basin has similarities to that documented in the southern (Red River) Caddoan area, as has been suggested by some of the above-cited authors, as well as many others. These traits include the use of central roof supports. However, the regions are marked by a divergence in square and round houses. These similarities are continued in the ceramics and, to a far greater time depth, the lithic styles. This interpretation is agreeable for glottochronological reconstructions showing a long-term northern spread of the Caddoan languages. It could easily extend to the Archaic when less sedentary ancestors followed vast annual north-south rounds from the Missouri to the Red River of the South, following migratory prey along the margins of the grasslands.

Repeated rebuilding in the same spot and same orientation, resulting in stacked prepared clay floors, is unknown. Nor do platform mounds have extensive serie  of construction stages. The architecture of the Middle Arkansas Valley lacks the prepared clay fire basins of the Central Mississippi Valley. Grass thatch was typical, and falls of roof debris are sometimes noted in the centers of the floors. No split and woven cane matting is noted, although burned cane and stick imprints in burned clay are sometimes noted. True daub, clayey, mixed to mud with cut grass and applied to cane lathe, is missing, and is rather mud and twigs packed between closely spaced posts. I have encountered little evidence of the building materials used. Some house burial was practiced but cemeteries of flexed inhumations typically removed from the house appear more typical.

Lower Arkansas River Valley Architecture

The Arkansas River Valley is proposed as a long-standing cultural boundary. It is generally taken to make the boundary between the Central and Lower Mississippi Valleys. Scholtz (1968) conducted land clearance salvage excavations at the Dumond site on the edge of the Grand Prairie terrace on Bayou LaGrue that revealed a cluster of daub-scattered house mounds when the site’s large pyramidal mound was leveled. Surface finds included shell tempered plain pottery, Parkin Punctated sherds and snub-nose endscrapers (Scholtz 1968;22), indicating a protohistoric date.  Mound 23 trenching revealed evidence of a house pattern, while Mound 44, with much daub, was a “maze” of postholes, with no pattern identifiable.  This pattern of large, set posts in dense arrays from an unknown number of rebuildings is repeated at Menard (House et al.1999). A similar condition exists in the pile houses of Coahoma County excavated by Connaway (1984). A number of Dumond site house mounds showed grass-tempered daub with split cane impressions and associated dirt dauber nests. However, the 10 cm thick layer of Mound 23 grass-tempered burned clay did not show cane or twig wattle imprints (Scholtz 1968:16, 25). A rectangular, open-corner wall trench measuring 7.1 x 6.2 m, with the corners to the cardinal directions, was revealed on the old land surface under Mound 23. The ends of the trenches come near to meeting. The wall trenches were 53-65 cm deep, with 8-20 cm (average 11-12 cm) postmolds evident in the trench.  The posts varied from closely adjacent to 34 cm apart.  A 60 cm gap in the center of the southeast wall is interpreted as a door. There was a large (35 cm diameter, 70 cm deep) post in the center, and three other large posts nearby, also perhaps roof supports, although they do not form a central square. No formal hearth was noted.  Smaller interior posts form a diagonal across one corner, something noted in earlier sites in the Central Valley core. A bundle burial had been placed on the floor at the time that the house was burned, razed and covered.  It had a bowl and large sherd with it, and a second shell-tempered bowl was found on the floor some distance away (Scholtz 1968:16).

Red River Valley Architecture

The Caddoan area (Fourche Maline-Caddo I-IV sequence) has a strong and distinctive regional tradition in architecture as it does in ceramics, lithics, and other aspects of material culture.  The four-centerpost house, circular or square, appears to be related to the four center post houses built in the Middle Arkansas River Valley and north, and its origin might be posited to the northward spread of Caddoan-speaking ancestral Arikara or Pawnee people. In strong contrast to most of the other Mississippian World culture areas discussed above, the Caddoan area lacks any sign of wall trench construction.

Lower Mississippi River Valley Architecture

Ian Brown has summarized what is known about the prehistoric archaeology of the Lower Mississippi Valley. The Lower Mississippi Valley participates to some extent in the rectangular wall trench trait of Mississippian culture. However, the region had, throughout prehistory, move circular structures than the Central valley.

There is a cluster of late seventeenth-early eighteenth centuries villages on the bluffs overlooking the lowermost Yazoo basin.  The Tunica, Yazoo, Koroa, Ofo, Chackchiuma and other tribes, of highly varied linguistic antecedents, congregated in the area, so attribution of material to specific groups is problematical. Haynes Bluff is one of the more important of the known historic Indian sites; occupation there goes back to at least the Coles Creek period.  Mound A excavations have revealed four construction stages, with intervening burned structures, dating between the Winterville II and Russell phases (Brain 1988:206).  Given the size of the test pit, little architectural detail can be expected.  The upper floor was hard packed, 2-5 cm thick yellow clay, burned in areas. Two posts, 15 and 18 cm in diameter, were noted in this Late Mississippian Wasp Lake II phase floor. At least 75 cm of fill was deposited over this structure during the Protohistoric Russell phase, indicating considerable historic earthmoving to bring this mound to 10 m height (Brain 1988:226). It stood on a 175 cm-thick Late Mississippian fill. No features were noted on the first (Winterville II) and second (Lake George II) floors. They were separated by a meter of fill.  Only half the height of the mound was plumbed by this test unit (Brain 1988:206). On the northwest side of the mound a series of superimposed burned structures was tested. They included at least three daubed wall trench houses, the earliest, dating to the Lake George phase, having its corners to the cardinal directions. Excavation on top of Mound C showed, immediately under the mould, a layer of ash, charcoal, and some burned clay from a structure which stood on a 18” fill covering an earlier burned structure. One of the three graves associated with this last component contained European goods (Brain 1988:198). This is consistent with the use of mound tops in the Mississippi Valley remaining in use until the historic period.

The historic Tunica Treaudeau site in Louisiana has yielded partial patterns of set post houses (Brain 1988:124-125).

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