[Previous] [Next] [Up] [Top]

Villages & Towns with Mounds:
Connecting Farmstead & Hamlet to the Elites

Although much less frequent than farmsteads, village sites containing one or a few mounds dot the landscape. At first glance, most villagers daily lives differed little from that outlined for farmstead and hamlet residents - farming and household maintenance dominated most family activities. Nevertheless, archaeological data show that villagers and townsfolk lives differed in at least one important aspect. Villagers and townsfolk had greater access to the religious, mortuary, and socio-political activities, as well as to the elite decision-makers who performed many of these activities. Mounds, plazas, burial areas segregated from residences, and sweatlodges found in Mississippian towns and villages are all indicative of ritual activities.

Other structures including, house mounds, and larger and more numerous sweatlodges, and what may have been granaries all indicate more civic and/or religious functions occurred here than in the hamlets.

Distribution of major mound centers (red dots) in the American Bottom. Other towns
with one or a few mounds are not indicated. 		Greater access to religious and civic activities provided villagers and townsfolk greater access to wealth, prestige goods, and information about both secular and religious matters. Their access to the elite presented them with opportunities not available to commoners located some distance from the village or town.

While it is true that we should expect to see more religious and civic activity in larger settlements (see for example the variation in sweatlodge size), we want to know to what extent these activities integrated the local farmsteads, hamlets, villages, and towns with Cahokia. That is, do these mound villages and mound towns represent largely autonomous chiefdoms serving the needs of their inhabitants and those of nearby farmsteads, hamlets and nodal settlements? Or, were they part of a highly integrated society where surpluses were passed up the hierarchy from farmstead to hamlet to nodal settlement to village to town and finally to Cahokia, and where directions from the Cahokia elite passed down through lesser chiefs or other members of the elite assigned some socio-political responsibilities (functionaries of the chief) in towns to village leaders to the nodal settlements, hamlets and finally individual farmsteads?

[Previous] [Next] [Up] [Top]