The Big Picture at Hollywood: Archaeological and Geophysical Investigations at a Mississippian Mound Centre (original) (raw)
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Moving earth and building monuments at the Carson Mounds site, Coahoma County, Mississippi
Journal of Anthropology, 2012
The application of combined techniques such as aerial imagery, sediment coring, down-hole magnetic susceptibility, and mechanized trench excavation can provide critical information on landscape formation and mound stratigraphy, specifically if they can be used to understand mound sequences and development. This paper reviews preliminary findings from recent coring and test excavations at the Carson mounds site (22CO505) in Coahoma County, Mississippi. Aerial imagery assisted in the characterization of a crevasse ridge flood deposit underlying the site and detailed field descriptions of the pedology corroborated its existence. Subsequent sediment coring and trench excavation revealed the nature of flooding in prehistory, indicating that high-intensity floods were responsible for the formation of the crevasse ridge and that lower intensity floods were potentially responsible for interruptions in mound building at the site. This suggests that the Carson settlement was initiated on an actively flooding landform. Down-hole magnetic susceptibility correlated effectively with the pedology; however, it also helped discern anthropogenic surfaces (i.e., occupational layers) that are difficult to identify visually, such as those we found in Mound C. Findings from this pilot study demonstrate the utility of sediment coring and magnetic susceptibility as effective and feasible methods for developing hypothesisdriven research.
doi:10.1155/2012/192923 Research Article Moving Earth and Building Monuments at the Carson Mounds
2012
Copyright © 2012 Jayur Madhusudan Mehta et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The application of combined techniques such as aerial imagery, sediment coring, down-hole magnetic susceptibility, and mechanized trench excavation can provide critical information on landscape formation andmound stratigraphy, specifically if they can be used to understandmound sequences and development. This paper reviews preliminary findings from recent coring and test excavations at the Carsonmounds site (22CO505) in Coahoma County, Mississippi. Aerial imagery assisted in the characterization of a crevasse ridge flood deposit underlying the site and detailed field descriptions of the pedology corroborated its existence. Subsequent sediment coring and trench excavation revealed the nature of flooding in prehistory, indicati...
A New Look at Kincaid: Magnetic Survey of a Large Mississippian Town
Southeastern Archaeology, 2011
Despite extensive work by the University of Chicago in 1934-44, Kincaid has remained one of the least understood of the large mid-South Mississippian mound complexes. Between 2003 and 2009, large-scale magnetic gradient survey was done on 33.6 ha of the site, roughly half of the total site area and 65 percent of the larger and more accessible Massac County portion. The survey was highly successful, revealing large numbers of cultural features, including palisades, structures, pit features, and midden areas. This paper presents the preliminary results of the geophysical survey, complemented by small-scale groundtruthing excavations. Together these have significantly expanded and refined our understanding of this large prehistoric town. Kincaid is clearly much larger than once thought, both in terms of total site area and area of habitation. The site also exhibits much greater internal complexity, as evidenced by internal palisades and numerous small mounds and earthen platforms.
Archaeological Prospection, 2007
Magnetic susceptibility is emerging in archaeogeophysical projects in the USA as a distinctive method for survey that is now more frequently applied. Spurred in part by developments in instrumentation and software, encouraged by a strong geoarchaeological focus, and influenced by the nature of the North American archaeological record, the magnetic susceptibility method has arisen in a number of areas of application. These include magnetic susceptibility studies within trenches and excavation units, the use of down-hole sensors to investigate magnetic stratigraphy, visualization and interpretation of three-dimensional susceptibility data sets, the incorporation of magnetic susceptibility data into pattern analyses of the spatial distribution of archaeological materials, and the integration of magnetic susceptibility studies with magnetometer and other surface geophysical surveys and with soil magnetic studies accomplished in the laboratory. The scale of application has ranged from microgeophysical surveys confined to single excavation units to investigations of broad archaeological landscapes; problem orientation has been equally diverse. Soil magnetic techniques are being tapped to enhance understanding of the formation of sites, features and landscapes, and also post-depositional processes. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
PhD Dissertation, Tulane University, Department of Anthropology, 2023
The research presented in this dissertation focuses on archaeological investigations of the Hollywood Mounds site, one of several large Mississippian mound centers located in the northern Yazoo Basin of northwestern Mississippi. On a site level, the goal of the research is to delineate Hollywood Mounds’ structure and layout, and to understand how it changed during its occupation. These goals were explored through the multivariate analysis of artifacts recovered during an earlier systematic surface collection, acquisition and analyses of high-density geophysical data, excavations of areas associated with structures and other features, and radiometric dating of samples recovered during this project and previous projects. These data indicate there were three phases of occupation consisting of: (1) a village; (2) a mound center with several small mounds situated around a plaza; and (3) a mound center with one large mound and several small mounds organized around an artificially raised plaza. I propose that these occupational phases correspond to sociopolitical changes. This occupational sequence began in the mid-thirteenth century A.D. and lasted through the mid-sixteenth century A.D., and the latest occupation stage may postdate the 1541 visit to the region by the Hernando de Soto expedition. This dissertation explores the regional perspective through the analysis of mound site location, historical accounts of the Soto expedition, radiometric dating, and the multivariate analysis of previous surface collections. These analyses indicate that the northern Yazoo Basin contained a uniquely dense assortment of mound centers that formed a complex arrangement of polities. Different patterns of spacing and organization were present than those seen in other areas of the Mississippian world.
Decoding Hollywood: Interpreting the Built Environment of a Mississippian Mound Center
Paper presented at the 2012 Society for American Archaeology Confefence, Memphis, TN.
The natural and cultural landscapes ordered Mississippian society. In the Yazoo Basin, the natural environment was dominated by the Mississippi River, which carved out the valley, leaving behind oxbow lakes and the natural levee surfaces that were the preferred locations for towns. The most characteristic features of the cultural landscape were earthen mounds and there is perhaps a higher density of these in the Yazoo Basin than anywhere else in the Mississippian Southeast. This paper presents an analysis of the monumental architecture at the Hollywood site and surrounding sites for the purpose of better understanding the nature of Mississippian political power in the Yazoo Basin.
Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting, 2022
Platform mounds play an important role in community building in the Mississippian Southeast. In this paper we use noninvasive shallow geophysical methods to examine one such mound at the Snow’s Bend site (1TU2/3), a single-mound center in Moundville’s hinterlands. We identify construction stages and the internal structure of the single mound to understand community-building activities as shown through public architectural projects in the hinterlands. We use a multi-method approach to map the mound summit and profile. For the mound summit, we combine resistivity mapping with ground-penetrating radar (GPR). The mound profile is explored through a combination of electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), time-domain induced polarization (TDIP), and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) along a single transect. We identified subtle variations in construction stages and materials along a single depth-profile and extended these horizontally using the resistivity mapping results. Our approach showcases the utility of TDIP in identifying subsurface archaeological features. Moreover, our work highlights the utility of multi-method shallow geophysics for exploring the complicated life histories of Mississippian platform mounds.
Geophysical Detection and Assessment of Leveled Mounds: An Example from the Upper Mississippi Valley
American Antiquity
Most earthen burial mounds of eastern North America have been destroyed—or have they? We review geophysical methods for assessing whether leveled mounds retain intact deposits or features. Magnetic survey holds promise for locating and evaluating leveled mounds because it is rapid and sensitive to magnetic variations associated with anticipated features such as pits and deposits of mound fill. As a case study, we discuss our magnetic survey of the Gast Farm site (13LA12) in eastern Iowa. The survey covered 8.64 ha, encompassing loci of one previously reported mound and possible geometric earthworks as well as Middle and Late Woodland habitation areas. Interpretation of survey results incorporated quantitative differentiation of magnetic anomaly types using GIS techniques, along with standard visual inspection. We found no evidence of geometric earthworks but identified at least six leveled mounds. Displaced mound fill appears to account for the earthwork-like features. We conclude t...
Return to the Great Mound Group: 2016 Investigations at Mound Bottom State Archaeological Area
Tennessee Archaeology, 2018
The Mound Bottom site is located along the Harpeth River west of Nashville, and with the adjacent Pack site comprises the largest Mississippian mound complex in the Nashville Basin during the eleventh through fourteenth centuries AD. The initial formation of these sites ca. AD 1000 may be tied to the arrival of Mississippian colonizers who carried with them influences seminal to the formation of the Middle Cumberland Mississippian culture. Despite its apparent importance in the late prehistoric sequence, few modern archaeological excavations have been conducted at Mound Bottom, and many aspects of the site remain poorly understood. The summer of 2016 witnessed the early stages of a new research effort at Mound Bottom which culminated in the first excavations in 40 years. Herein we discuss the results of our initial field season at Mound Bottom, including the use of LiDAR data to create the first modern map of the entire site, and subsequent ground truthing of previously unmapped above ground features.