On Reconsidering Display Goods Production and Circulation in the Moundville Chiefdom

Abstract

The Goods Economy model was created to explain the rise of political complexity as the result of elite strategies to control access to exotic, finely crafted display goods. This concept is so ingrained in our current understandings of social, economic, and political life in Mississippian chiefdoms that it has become part of the very definition of Mississippian. The political of the Moundville chiefdom, in particular, has long been associated with the goods concept and a highly centralized system of crafting and long-distance exchange. In this paper, I bring together extant data from past excavations at Moundville and surrounding sites in order to test the current model of display goods production and circulation during the peak of the chiefdom's power (ca. A.D. 1300-1450). I find that while the production and circulation of display goods is overwhelmingly associated with elites at the Moundville center, the scale of local display goods production and the quantity of nonlocal display goods relative to locally made display goods at the site does not match the expectations generated by the current model of Moundville's political economy. Within the last quarter century, researchers have cast the prehistoric development of political complexity as the result of a limited set of strategies employed by individuals and groups seeking political advantage (e.g., Blanton et al. 1996; D'Altroy and Earle 1985; Earle 1987, 1994, 1997; Frankenstein and Rowlands 1978). Central to this political-economy approach is the concept of a prestige goods economy Ui which the production and circulation of display goods together form a crucial leverage point that was manipulated by individuals in order to estabtish and maintain potitical, social, and economic power.1 Among studies of Mississippian chiefdoms Ui the Southeast, one often encounters the goods eeonomy concept, whether it is explicitly evoked as an explanatory model or implied within a broader theoretical framework (e.g., Anderson 1994; King 2003; Steponaitis 1991; Trubitt 2000; Welch 1991, 1996). In this paper, I revisit the original context and intent of the goods model, show how this model was modified to fit data from the Moundville chiefdom, and test how well the modified goods concept fits current evidence of display goods production and circulation in the Moundville chiefdom during the height of its paramountcy ca. A.D. 1300-1450 (Knight and Steponaitis 1998). I find that the concept of a prestige goods economy does not fit the patterns of production and circulation evidence in the Moundville case. While not discounting the importance of display goods in the political of Moundville, I suggest that we need to rethink how display goods related to the social, political, and econornic structures of this Mississippian society. The Prestige Goods Model In the 1970s as theoretical favor began to shift away from the view of chiefdoms as redistributive societies, archaeologists began to posit that chiefdoms were marked by inequality and control of social, political, and economic power (e.g., Earle 1978, 1991, 1997; Johnson and Earle 1987; Peebles and Kus 1977; Welch 1996; Wright 1984). Taking a lead from earlier ethnographical research by Malinowski (1922) and Mauss (2000), these archaeologists began focusing on the interplay between economy, politics, and ideology in chiefly societies. One of the most enduring products of this change in perspective was the prestige goods economy model. The model was originally conceived by Friedman (1975) and Rowlands (Friedman and Rowlands 1977) and applied to data from European Iron Age chiefdoms by Frankenstein and Rowlands (1978). The prestige-goods economy model described a very particular exchange system in which political power was held by those who could control access to exotic wealth items through external exchange relations (Frankenstein and Rowlands 1978:76). …

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