“Nearly a quarter century has passed since [Bruce] Smith's (1990) seminal volume The Mississippian Emergence was published” (p. 1). This first sentence in Gregory Wilson's book makes clear that it aims to be a benchmark statement on Mississippian beginnings like its predecessor. Although the goal is similar—presenting summaries of Mississippian origins in different regions of the Midwest and Southeast—the detailed archaeological knowledge accumulated since Smith's volume makes this a very different book.
In the introduction, Wilson and Lynne Sullivan chart the conceptual distance that separates current Mississippian archaeology from the theoretical orientation of that earlier volume. Contributors to The Mississippian Emergence viewed Mississippian origins as a gradual evolutionary process rooted in local eco-demographic conditions, and they downplayed or denied external cultural inputs. Contributors to Mississippian Beginnings locate change in the social dynamics of migration, culture contact, “entanglement,” and “networked associations,” a flow of people, ideas, and products that initiated reformulations of identities and practices to become Mississippian.
Maize was once the sine qua non of Mississippian development. Amber VanDerwarker, Dana Bardolph, and Margaret Scarry address the topics of when maize was adopted, if or when it was intensified, and its importance in Mississippian foodways. Some findings are revolutionary, especially the diverse ways people engaged with food production in different regions. More native starchy seeds were grown than maize well into the Mississippian period in the American Bottom; maize intensification preceded/coincided with political consolidation at Cahokia, Moundville, and Etowah; maize postdated communal mound centers in the Lower Mississippi Valley; and maize intensification arrived with Mississippian peoples but did not lead to political consolidation in the Illinois River valley. Direct dating of maize indicates that intensification took place after AD 900 in the Midwestern Mississippian heartland. Motivating circumstances for maize adoption and intensification are discussed but remain speculative.
Cahokia as Mississippian incubator is well documented by Alleen Betzenhauser. Populations with disparate origins converged on the American Bottom, which necessitated social compromises and innovations and which created new collective identities and practices. Reorganizations of site plans and settlement shifts accompanied an unprecedented degree of political integration. What is so impressive is how rapid these radical changes were.
Wilson, Colleen Delaney, and Phillip Millhouse take us farther north to the Illinois and Apple River valleys, where Mississippianization began with the arrival of small groups from the American Bottom, followed by the adoption of Cahokian serving wares and other artifacts, platform mounds and wall-trench houses, and new settlement patterns. The overall impression is one of Mississippianized Woodland locals who “broadly but selectively emulated aspects of a Cahokian way of life” (p. 98). Rare finds of northern-style pottery at American Bottom sites suggests occasional “pilgrimage” visits by these Cahokia-inspired peoples.
The title of Robert Cook's chapter, “Mississippian Processes and Histories: The Evolution of Fort Ancient Culture in the Miami Valleys,” alerts the reader that his approach to Mississippianization diverges somewhat from others in the volume. He wishes to avoid what he sees as overly dichotomized separations between history, process, and evolutionary insights. Cook has systematically pursued Fort Ancient origins and its Mississippian linkages for more than a decade. It is fair to say that this chapter, the longest in the book, brings the greatest variety of interdisciplinary research evidence to bear on the problem of Mississippianization. Cook integrates an array of archaeological, bioarchaeological, radiometric, and climate change measures to identify the timing and specific social context of Mississippianization.
The variation in regional Mississippianization presented in other chapters is remarkable: emulation of Mississippian pioneers by Florida communities (Jeffrey Du Vernay and Nancy White), reordering of household groups in North Carolina (Edmond Boudreaux), and the introduction of sacred objects and rituals that replicated the Mississippian worldview in Georgia and South Carolina (Adam King, Christopher Thornock, and Keith Stephenson). At the edge of the Mississippian world, Amanda Regnier depicts the Red River Caddo of Oklahoma as so regionally distinct that it is doubtful whether Mississippianization even occurred there. All the cultural diversity on display in these chapters raises the questions that archaeologists have often asked: Just what and where is Mississippian, and what boundaries should we erect around it? In summary, David Anderson points the way forward and emphasizes the technologies currently available for an improved archaeology. Not all contributors take full advantage of these tools, and so more work can be and should be done.
This is a fine volume, based on solid research. This brief review barely scratches the surface. If you want to understand the current state of knowledge about Mississippian beginnings, get the book.
