A Late Woodland & Emergent Mississippian Village (Range site),
with a central plaza.
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A Late Woodland & Emergent Mississippian Village (Range site), with a central plaza. | The combination of larger and more numerous storage pits, and their location within (in addition to outside) a residence, along with a dispersal of households seems to represent a privatization of production and wealth. Prior to maize agriculture, the usual pattern was for individual households to group together and form villages. Storage pits in these villages tended to be located outside of the individual residences. At least in part, this association of households in a village may represent the communal nature of economic resources. Families whose garden failed or who experienced poor hunting success could rely on others within the village with whom they were no doubt closely related. A young male, for example, could count on his older brother, father, or other relatives in distant villages to help support his family should catastrophe or illness strike his household. Both the close association of individual households and the location of storage pits outside of individual residences seem to reflect the communal nature of many necessary goods. |
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In contrast, during the Mississippian Period, families lived in dispersed
hamlets or larger towns with mounds. The reasons for this dichotomous pattern
are unclear. As is the case today, some Mississippians may have simply
preferred to live "in the country", while others preferred the social benefits
of towns and mound-centers. It is also worth considering that maintaining a
household was economically more costly in towns than in isolated farmsteads. If
for no other reason, higher population density means that the density of
household agricultural fields was greater and townspeople probably had to
travel further to acquire needed resources. Regardless, the dispersal of
households along arable ridges seems to reflect the ability of each household
to produce its own food and store enough as insurance against unanticipated
hardships.
In both rural and town residences, storage pits, located exclusively in communal space outside of the residence before the Mississippian, were now located both outside and inside the residence. It seems reasonable to infer that some portion of food stores, the Native American "cupboards and root-cellars" located in the residence were privately owned and not for communal use. In spite of what appear to be private food stores, Mississippian families when beset by hard times, like families throughout the world, probably relied on assistance and aid from nearby relatives. A relative's ability to provide that aid might be limited, however, due to demographic (more mouths to feed) and similar ecological conditions at their farmstead or fields. Moreover, hardtimes such as a maize crop failure would create more pressure on previously supplemental resources by other nearby households also experiencing a poor harvest. |
Mississippian (Cahokia Tract 15B) house structure with internal pits.
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Thus, hard times would have created pressure on households to travel farther to acquire necessary resources. But the ability of households to move to more productive places would be hampered by the presence of other Mississippian groups with established access to now needed resources. How the sociopolitical mechanisms for food redistribution may have operated under failing support from nearby kin is unknown.
