MORTUARY PATTERNS AT A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY TOWN IN NORTHWESTERN GEORGIA

Abstract

Investigations of Mississippian mortuary patterns in the Southeast traditionally focus on the hierarchical dimensions of chiefdom social organization and the individuals who occupied society's highest ranks. The 2.3 ha King site town, with its 250 burials interred in household plots and public spaces, provides an excellent opportunity to investigate the non-elite elements of Mississippian social organization. Analysis of these burials demonstrates that sex, age, and personal achievement were the major dimensions of variability in the community's mortuary practices. Comparison with the high-ranking burials excavated by Larson from Mound C at Etowah suggests that some of the social statuses represented in those burials were also achieved. Lewis Larson's (1971) classic paper Archaeological Implications of Social Stratification at the Etowah Site, Georgia provides one of the strongest and clearest examples we have of elite mortuary practices and ascribed social status in a Mississippian society. In it, he argues that the individuals interred in Mound C represent a superordinate descent group within Etowah society and that rank positions within the group were inherited. The paper has had a strong influence on the way archaeologists working in the late prehistoric Southeast think about Mississippian society, and it continues to serve as a model against which they compare their own Mississippian mortuary data. One important element, however, is missing from the paper; non-elite burials from the site's habitation zone are given only cursory consideration. In the absence of information on these burials, the place of Mound C individuals in Etowah society cannot be fully understood. The King site, a mid-sixteenth-century town located in northwestern Georgia, 58 km from Etowah, yielded a large collection of burials from nonmound contexts that can be usefully compared with those from Mound C. King was one of at least five towns comprising a chiefdom in the Upper Coosa River valley, but it was not the ceremonial and administrative center of that polity. As such, its burial population should represent the lower end of the Mississippian sociopolitical spectrum and should contrast in interesting and informative ways with the burials from Mound C. In this paper, I summarize some of the results of my investigation of King site mortuary patterns. I focus on the distribution of grave goods within the burial sample but also look at burial-pit configuration and location, and body position. I use this evidence to identify some of the major social statuses recognized by the King site inhabitants, and at the end of the paper I draw some comparisons with those Larson recognized in the Mound C burials at Etowah. The King site is square in plan, covers 2.3 ha, and is bounded by a ditch and palisade on three sides and the Coosa River on the fourth (Figure 1). A large plaza containing two structures lies at the center of the town and is surrounded by a habitation zone that contained between 25 and 30 domestic structures. Overbank erosion and plowing have impacted nearly all aboriginal deposits and features to some degree, but the extent of damage increases from east to west across the site. Two hundred forty-nine burials were recorded in the excavated portion of the site. Ten of these are located in Structure 17, the large public building situated in the northern half of the plaza; 11 are located in the plaza north of this structure; one is located in the plaza south of the large central post; and 227 are located in the habitation zone. Many of the latter can be assigned to distinct household burial plots. Erosion, plowing, looting, and aboriginal disturbance have had varying levels of impact on burial preservation at King. As a result, I have had to distinguish in my analysis between reliable burials in which skeletal elements and grave goods have not been effected by these processes and disturbed burials where these processes have resulted in loss of human bone and artifacts or, in a few cases, mixing of these materials between adjacent burials. …

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