Archaic era , the oldest known mound complex in North America in
West Carroll Parish, Louisiana Radiocarbon dating has established the age of the earliest Archaic mound complex in southeastern Louisiana. One of the two Monte Sano Site mounds, excavated in 1967 before being destroyed for new construction at Baton Rouge, was dated at 6220 BP (plus or minus 140 years). It has since been dated as about 6500 BP or 4500 BCE, although not all agree.
Watson Brake is located in the floodplain of the
Ouachita River near Monroe in northern Louisiana. Securely dated to about 5,400 years ago (around 3500 BCE), in the Middle Archaic period, it consists of a formation of 11 mounds from to tall, connected by ridges to form an oval nearly across. In the Americas, the building of complex earthwork mounds started at an early date, well before the
pyramids of Egypt were constructed. Watson Brake was being constructed nearly 2,000 years before the better-known
Poverty Point, and the building continued for 500 years. With the 1990s dating of Watson Brake and similar complexes, scholars established that pre-agricultural, pre-ceramic American societies could organize to accomplish complex construction during extended periods, invalidating scholars' traditional ideas of Archaic society. Watson Brake was built by a hunter-gatherer society, the people of which occupied this area only on a seasonal basis. Successive generations organized to build the complex mounds over 500 years. Their food consisted mostly of fish and deer, as well as available plants. Poverty Point, built about 1500 BCE in what is now Louisiana, is a prominent example of Late Archaic mound-builder construction (around 2500 BCE – 1000 BCE). It is a striking complex of more than , where six earthwork crescent ridges were built in concentric arrangement, interrupted by radial aisles. Three mounds are also part of the main complex, and evidence of residences extends for about along the bank of
Bayou Macon. It is the major site among 100 associated with the
Poverty Point culture and is one of the best-known early examples of earthwork monumental architecture. Unlike the localized societies during the Middle Archaic, this culture showed evidence of a wide trading network outside its area, which is one of its distinguishing characteristics. The
Tomoka Mound Complex on the
St. Johns River in Florida included a mound constructed between 4629 and 4000
BP (2679 to 2050 BCE).
Horr's Island in
Southwest Florida included a burial mound dated to 3400 BCE, making it the oldest known burial mound in North America.
Woodland period ,
Moundsville, West Virginia,
Adena culture The oldest mound associated with the Woodland period was the mortuary mound and pond complex at the
Fort Center site in Glade County, Florida. Excavations and dating in 2012 by Thompson and Pluckhahn show that work began around 2600 BCE, seven centuries before the mound-builders in Ohio. The Archaic period was followed by the Woodland period (
circa 1000 BCE). Some well-understood examples are the
Adena culture of
Ohio,
West Virginia, and parts of nearby states. The subsequent
Hopewell culture built monuments from present-day
Illinois to Ohio; it is renowned for its geometric earthworks. The Adena and Hopewell were not the only mound-building peoples during this period. Contemporaneous mound-building cultures existed throughout what is now the Eastern United States, stretching as far south as
Crystal River in western Florida. During this time, in parts of present-day Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana, the Hopewellian
Marksville culture degenerated and was succeeded by the
Baytown culture. Reasons for degeneration include attacks from other tribes or the impact of severe climatic changes undermining agriculture.
Coles Creek culture in
Warren County, Mississippi The Coles Creek culture is a Late Woodland culture (700–1200 CE) in the
Lower Mississippi Valley in the Southern United States that marks a significant change in the cultural history of the area. Population and cultural and political complexity increased, especially by the end of the Coles Creek period. Although many of the classic traits of
chiefdom societies had not yet developed, by 1000 CE, the formation of simple elite polities had begun. Coles Creek sites are found in Arkansas,
Louisiana,
Oklahoma,
Mississippi, and
Texas. The Coles Creek culture is considered ancestral to the Plaquemine culture.
Mississippian cultures with the large
Monks Mound in the central precinct, encircled by a palisade, surrounded by four plazas, notably the Grand Plaza to the south Around 900–1450 CE, the
Mississippian culture developed and spread through the Eastern United States, primarily along the river valleys. The largest regional center where the Mississippian culture was first definitely developed is located in Illinois along a tributary of the Mississippi and is referred to as
Cahokia. It had several regional variants including the Middle Mississippian culture of Cahokia, the South Appalachian Mississippian variant at
Moundville and
Etowah, the Plaquemine Mississippian variant in south Louisiana and Mississippi, and the
Caddoan Mississippian culture of northwestern Louisiana, eastern Texas, and southwestern Arkansas. Like the mound builders of the Ohio, these peoples built gigantic mounds as burial and ceremonial places.
Fort Ancient culture Fort Ancient is the name for a Native American culture that flourished from 1000 to 1650 CE among a people who predominantly inhabited land along the
Ohio River in areas of modern-day southern Ohio, northern
Kentucky, and western
West Virginia.
Plaquemine culture in
Yazoo County, Mississippi A continuation of the Coles Creek culture in the lower
Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana. Examples include the
Medora site in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana; and the
Anna and
Emerald Mound sites in Mississippi. Sites inhabited by Plaquemine peoples continued to be used as vacant ceremonial centers without large village areas much as their Coles Creek ancestors had done, although their layout began to show influences from Middle Mississippian peoples to the north. The
Winterville and
Holly Bluff (Lake George) sites in western Mississippi are good examples that exemplify this change of layout, but a continuation of site usage. During the Terminal Coles Creek period (1150 to 1250 CE), contact increased with Mississippian cultures centered upriver near the future
St. Louis, Missouri. This resulted in the adaption of new
pottery techniques, as well as new ceremonial objects and possibly new social patterns during the Plaquemine period. As more Mississippian cultural influences were absorbed, the Plaquemine area as a distinct culture began to shrink after CE 1350. Eventually, the last enclave of purely Plaquemine culture was the Natchez Bluffs area, while the Yazoo Basin and adjacent areas of Louisiana became a hybrid Plaquemine-Mississippi culture. This division was recorded by Europeans when they first arrived in the area. In the Natchez Bluffs area, the
Taensa and
Natchez people had held out against Mississippian influence and continued to use the same sites as their ancestors. The Plaquemine culture is considered directly ancestral to these historic period groups encountered by Europeans. Groups who appear to have absorbed more Mississippian influence were identified as those tribes speaking the
Tunican,
Chitimachan, and
Muskogean languages. the mound-building cultures seem to have disappeared within the next century. However, there were also other European accounts, earlier than 1560, that give a first-hand description of the enormous earth-built mounds being constructed by Native Americans. One of them was
Garcilaso de la Vega (c.1539–1616), a Spanish chronicler also known as "
El Inca" because of his Incan mother. He was the record-keeper of the noted
De Soto expedition that landed in present-day Florida on May 31, 1538. Garcilaso gave a first-hand description in his
Historia de la Florida (published in 1605, Lisbon, as
La Florida del Inca) describing how the Indians had built mounds and how the Native American mound cultures practiced their traditional way of life. The
Fort Ancient culture of the
Ohio River valley is considered a "sister culture" of the Mississippian horizon, or one of the "Mississippianised" cultures adjacent to the main area of the mound building cultures. This culture was also mostly extinct in the 17th century, but remnants may have survived into the first half of the 18th century. While this culture shows strong Mississippian influences, its bearers were most likely ethnolinguistically distinct from the Mississippians, possibly belonging to the
Siouan phylum. The only tribal name associated with the Fort Ancient culture in the historical record is the
Mosopelea, recorded by
Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin in 1684 as inhabiting eight villages north of the Ohio River. The Mosopelea is most likely identical to the Ofo (
Oufé,
Offogoula) recorded in the same area in the 18th century. The
Ofo language was formerly classified as
Muskogean but is now recognized as an eccentric member of the
Western Siouan phylum. The late survival of the Fort Ancient culture is suggested by the remarkable amount of European-made goods in the archaeological record. Such artifacts would have been acquired by trade even before direct European contact. These artifacts include brass and steel items, glassware, and melted down or broken goods reforged into new items. The Fort Ancient peoples are known to have been severely affected by disease in the 17th century (
Beaver Wars period). Carbon dating seems to indicate that they were wiped out by successive waves of disease.
Massacre and revolt Because of the disappearance of the cultures by the end of the 17th century, the identification of the bearers of these cultures was an open question in 19th-century ethnography. Modern stratigraphic dating has established that the "Mound builders" have spanned an extended period of more than five millennia so that any ethnolinguistic continuity is unlikely. The spread of the
Mississippian culture from the late 1st millennium CE most likely involved cultural assimilation, in archaeological terminology called "Mississippianised" cultures. 19th-century ethnography assumed that the Mound-builders were an ancient prehistoric race with no direct connection to the
Southeastern Woodland peoples of the historical period who were encountered by Europeans. A reference to this idea appears in the poem "The Prairies" (1832) by
William Cullen Bryant. The cultural stage of the Southeastern Woodland natives encountered in the 18th and 19th centuries by British colonists was deemed incompatible The
Natchez language is a language isolate. The Natchez are known to have historically occupied the
Lower Mississippi Valley. They are first mentioned in French sources of around 1700, when they were centered around the
Grand Village close to present-day
Natchez, Mississippi. In 1729 the
Natchez revolted and massacred the French colony of Fort Rosalie. The French retaliated by destroying all the Natchez villages. The remaining Natchez fled in scattered bands to live among the
Chickasaw,
Creek, and
Cherokee people. They traveled with them on the
Trail of Tears when federal
Indian removal policies after 1830 forced the Native Americans out of the Southeast and west of the Mississippi River to
Indian Territory (admitted in the early 20th century as the state of
Oklahoma). The Natchez language became extinct in the 20th century, with the death in 1957 of the last known native speaker,
Nancy Raven. ==Maps==