Square Pegs in Round Holes: Organizational Diversity Between Early Moundville and Cahokia (original) (raw)

Variation in the political economic organization of Mississippian polities has long been recognized. There have been few studies, however, that have examined these differences in any detail. We offer a comparison between Moundville and Cahokia, two of the largest and most complex Mississippian polities in the greater Southeast. Well-demarcated differences in settlement patterns, community patterns, and craft production reveal important organizational dissimilarities between Moundville and Cahokia during the early Mississippian period. By highlighting these differences we hope to problematize the overuse of societal types as a means of analyzing and comparing Mississippian polities.