This collection, addressing a topic of ongoing interest and debate in American archaeology, examines the evolution of ranked chiefdoms in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States during the period A.D. 700–1200. The volume brings together a broad range of professionals engaged in the fieldwork that has vitalized the theoretical debates on the development of Mississippi Valley cultures. The initial chapter provides a general discussion of various explanations for the rise of these distinctive ranked societies in the eastern United States (A.D. 750-1050) and sets the stage for the interdisciplinary analysis from multiple viewpoints that follows. The first section discusses a cluster of individual sites in the Midwest and Southeast and reveals the parallel—and occasionally divergent—paths followed by the inhabitants as they transitioned from Late Woodland into Mississippian lifeways. The chapters in the second half discuss by region the emergence of ranked agricultural societies and examine how these networks played a role in the large-scale and roughly contemporaneous socio-political development.

Bruce D. Smith is an Archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and editor of Rivers of Change.

“What is particularly useful in this volume is the inclusion of tremendous amounts of data distilled into tabular and graphic forms. . . . They make this work not only a theoretical or model-building contribution but also a substantial data base permitting readers to acquire a formidable knowledge of the cultural history of this period from a single source. . . . Both theoreticians and cultural historians will be pleased by the contributions in this volume.”

—Journal of Interdisciplinary History

“The papers take a strong ecological and adaptationist perspective, although there is an increased awareness of the ideological and symbolic components of the development. . . . The volume lays the groundwork for further studies of Emergent Mississippian focused on particular explanatory models.”

—Man

“It will be required reading for those working on the later prehistory of the Southeast or just interested in the social process of the Mississippian time range.”

—American Antiquity

 

“The final chapter is a superb summary of (Mississippian exchange and prestige goods) that may prove to be the most cited chapter in this volume.”

—American Anthropologist