Part Seven
Mississippian Farmers and Horticulturalists
A.D. 1000 – 1700
The long Woodland dominance in southern Minnesota came to an end between A.D. 900 and 1100 with the sudden appearance of Native American societies with new material cultures, subsistence-settlement patterns, social organizations, and ideologies. These societies were more dependent on maize than earlier local Woodland societies, and lived in larger, more permanent settlements that were often fortified. Their sites are easily recognized by their distinctive pottery, which was usually decorated on the shoulder rather than the rim and often had smoothed rather than cord-marked exterior surfaces, shell temper rather than grit temper, and handles rather than collars or castellations.
During the taxonomic phase of Midwestern archaeology in the 1930s and 1940s, these new complexes were grouped into subdivisions of the Mississippian cultural tradition, because many of their material and adaptive traits were considered more like those of complex cultures in the central Mississippi River valley than like those of local Woodland cultures. Because of their geographical location, the more hierarchically organized fully sedentary, farming societies in the central Mississippi River valley were called Middle Mississippian, while the simpler societies on their northern fringe were called Upper Mississippian, if they were woodland or prairie adapted, or Plains Mississippian, if they were plains adapted. It was generally assumed at one time – and some archaeologists still make this assumption – that these fringe societies were either migrants from the south or heirs of Woodland populations whose own cultures were radically modified through contact with Middle Mississippian societies. Today, we realize that the processes leading to the appearance of these new societies were more complex – and interesting – than these simple scenarios suggest, and the terms Upper and Plains Mississippian with their connotations of southern dependence are falling from general usage. We continue to use the term ‘Mississippian’ here, however, because it is widely used, its use makes comparisons with other areas easier, and some term is still necessary to mark the transformation that did occur.
In Minnesota, there are four Mississippian-related archaeological complexes: Silvernale, Great Oasis, Cambria, and Oneota. As we will see, the time spans of these complexes vary in length, and some (Great Oasis and Cambria) contain more Woodland traits than do others.
Contributors to this section: Guy Gibbon
Date of last contribution: December 2008