Intersite and intrasite analysis of Mississippian sites of the Northern Hinterlands

Abstract

Over the past one hundred and fifty years scholars interested in the past have pondered over the settlements of Mississippian peoples throughout the Midwestern United States. Many excavations and studies have been undertaken in an attempt to understand the past cultures and life ways of these people. It is the goal of this paper to examine and compare several of these sites in the hinterlands of Mississippian settlement in the upper Midwest. Furthermore, these sites will also be compared to Mississippian site in the Mississippian heartland. This will be done using several distinctive characteristics of Mississippian culture: housing structure, site structure, and ceramics. This study will analyze each of these attributes for three sites to determine how similar and different these sites were to one another in this region of the Mississippian world. The three hinterland sites used will also then be compared to a core Mississippian site to see how they related to core Mississippian sites as well.