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Bullheads: a common source of protein.

Fish bones recovered from Mississippian sites demonstrate that a variety of aquatic habitats were actively exploited by Mississippian fishermen and women. Habitat preferences of fish and mussels from Mississippian faunal assemblages include slow moving streams, backwater lakes and sloughs, streams with more rapid flow, and large, deep rivers.

Fishing became particularly important, so much so that by the Late Woodland and Emergent Mississippian, fish were the primary protein source for Native Americans in the American Bottom (Styles 1994). Recent deer and fish biomass estimates (Milner 1998) have shown that the size of deer hunting territories would need to be several orders of magnitude larger than available wetlands.


Increasing utilization of aquatic resources in the central Mississippi valley.

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