Large storage pits inside a residence.

At the household level, archaeological evidence for a food surplus might include increases (compared to earlier culture periods) in storage pit size, the number of pits per capita, the dispersal of farm households across arable ridges, and placement of storage pits within the residence. The correlation between the number and size of storage pits and agricultural productivity seems to be self-evident: Why, after all, build larger and more numerous storage pits unless there was more food to store? However, the type of food being stored, and the manner in which it is stored may also influence both storage pit size and number. Small seeds from floodplain weeds will take up less volume than larger maize kernels, for example. Similarly, cob maize will take up more room than kernels. Nevertheless, the fact that Mississippians continued to use of wild plants and cultivated weeds at the same time they invested in pruductive maize agriculture seems to indicate an increase in food availability.

One hypothesis to account for the Mississippian dispersal of individual farmsteads in rural areas removed from mound centers and towns is that technology and labor afforded each family the ability to provide for its own subsistence. Reliance on pooled community resources, such as indicated in earlier Woodland villages, may not have been necessary. Alternatively, however, Mississippian redistribution mechanisms may have granted households the insurance needed to guard against crop failure and hunger on their farmstead. If this was the case, then dispersal does not represent a change in food surplus per se, but simply a change in redistribution mechanisms. It seems likely that both changes were involved.

Particularly significant may be the location of storage pits within the residence. Unlike like previous American Bottom inhabitants whose pits were located almost exclusively outside their (admitedly smaller) homes in village communal space, Mississpian storage pits were also located withing the private confines of the home. This shift in location seems to represent privatization of some household food surplus.

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