Brown 2015 Plaquemine Culturepottery

____ Exploring ____ THEA TERN Edited by Patricia Galloway and Evan Peacock University Press of Mississippi I Jackson Essays in Honor of Samuel 0. Brookes To the memory of John W. Baswell www.upress.state.ms.us The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Copyright @ 2015 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2015 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Exploring southeastern archaeology I edited by Patricia Galloway, Evan Peacock; foreword by Jeffrey P. Brain. pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978+62846-240-1 (hardback) - ISBN 978-1-62674-689-3 (ebook) 1. Indians of North America-Southern States-Antiquities. 2. Excava tions (Archaeology)-Southern States. 3. Southern States-Antiquities. I. Peacock, Evan, 1961- editor. II. Galloway, Patricia Kay, editor. E78.S65E93 2015 975'.01-dc23 2014047540 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available Contents xi Foreword Jaffrey P. Brain 3 Chapter 1. Introductory Remarks Evan PHcock and Patricia Galloway PART I: PUBLIC ARCHAEOLOGY AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 9 Chapter 2. Archaeology on the National Forests of North Mississippi: A Brief Retrospective EvanPHcock 23 Chapter 3. Pimento Cheese and Bacon? Revisiting Mounds in the Lower Mississippi Delta Cllff Jenkins PART II: THE ARCHAIC PERIOD 43 Chapter 4. Early Holocene Climate in the Eastern United States: A View from Mississippi Samuel O. Brookes and Mellssa H. Twaroskl 55 Chapter 5. Sam Brookes and Prehistoric Effigy Beads of the Southeast Jessica Crawford 71 Chapter 6. Archaic Chert Beads and Craft Specialization: Application of an Organization oflechnology Model All son M. Hadley and Phlllp J. Carr 99 Chapter 7. From Missouri to Mississippi to Florida: Some Research on the Distribution of Poverty Point Objects Christopher T. Hays, James B. Stoltman, and Richard A. Weinstein p Contents Contents PART Ill: THE WOODLAND AND MISSISSIPPIAN PERIODS PART V: REFLECTIONS 119 Chapter 8. Artifact Assemblages from Two Early Woodland Tchula-Period Sites on the 319 Chapter 16. Brookes@Forest: Building an Epistemic Community for Archaeological Holly Springs National Forest, North Mississippi Research-in-Action Evan Peacock Patricia Galloway 146 Chapter 9. The Slate Springs Mound, a Woodland-Period Platform Mound in the 337 Appendix. Citation for USDA Forest Service National Heritage Award North Central Hills of Mississippi Keith A. Baca 341 Bibliography 166 Chapter 10. Mississippian-Period Occupations in the Ackerman Unit of the Tombigbee 387 Contributors National Forest Andrew M. Trlplett 389 Index 189 Chapter 11. Owl Creek, Thelma, and Bessemer Mounds: Large Peripheral Mississippian Mound Groups and Bet-Hedging Janet Rafferty 216 Chapter 12. Plaquemine Culture Pottery from the Great Ravine at the Anna Site (22ADsoo), Adams County, Mississippi lanW.Brown PART IV: THE CONTACT AND HISTORIC PERIODS 243 Chapter 13. Excavations at the South Thomas Street Site (22LE1002): An Early Eighteenth- Century Hamlet Located on the Periphery of the Major Chickasaw Settlement in Northeastern Mississippi Jay K. Johnson and Edward R. Henry 266 Chapter 14. The Symbiotic Relationship between the National Forests of Mississippi and the Civilian Conservation Corps: The Early History of the Chickasawhay Ranger District Marla Schleldt 282 Chapter 15. Logging Out the Delta: From Mosquitoville to the Sardis & Delta Railroad Mary Evelyn Starr viii ix Plaquemine Culture Pottery, the Great Ravine at the Anna Site Figure 12.1. Selected Plaquemine sites in the Natchez Buffs and SO THERN surrounding regions (from Brown 1985:Figure 1). Used with per CHAPTER 12 LOWER VAL LEY mission of the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology. Plaquemine Culture Pottery from the Great Ravine at . the Anna Site (22ADsoo), Adams County, Mississippi ~ / .. I• I I ; I J . lanW.Brown Introduction (- '11 never fo rget the first time I descended into the Anna site Great Ravine. ...~ • ' ;"' ,,. Although I had walked all over Anna in the summer of 1971 as part ofJeff I Brain's Lower Mississippi Survey's operations, our efforts were confined to the area on and around the mounds. At one point, in peering over the edge Figure 12.2. An artist's rendering of the Anna site from Brain 1978: of the terrace into the depths below, I made a mental note to do all that I Figure 12.6. Courtesy Jeffrey P. Brain. could to avoid ever venturing into such treacherous terrain. Little did I know that about 10 years later I would be hanging on to a long rope-for dear life, I might add-gingerly making my way down a near vertical slope. Even though the bottom of the Great Ravine was far below what I could actually see when I threw my body over the edge, the trust that I had in my friends convinced me that the trip was worth risking life and limb. I remain convinced that was so. But first let's take a look at the Anna site (22AD500) itself, which is a notable landmark in the prehistory of Mississippi (Figure 12.1). It is, in fact, a National Historic Landmark, a distinction that is most deserved. The site itself is located in the northern extreme of Adams County and consists of eight mounds, with six of them arranged along the edge of a flat bluff top over looking the Mississippi alluvial valley (Figure 12.2). At one time in late pre history the Mississippi River flowed directly beneath the site, and even then the ravines that surround Anna must have been of phenomenal depth. Early visitors to Anna would either have followed a thin ridge that heads due east of the site, or they would have had to come from the river itself, scaling the bluffs that rose to the east. An old historic trail, which is still quite visible in the for est, ran through the site. It may even have been the same artery that was used '•t._ in prehistoric times. And what a sight the big mound at Anna would have Figure 12.3. Location of Mounds 3 and sand the Great Ravine at the Anna site. Adapted from been to any traveler who approached it from the west. Mound 3, the largest Jennings (194o:Flgure 2). 216 217 lanW. Brown Plaquemine Culture Pottery, the Great Ravine at the Anna Site mound (Figure 12.3), currently rises 16.5 m above the plaza, but when viewed of the site. Block 1 was very interesting because it produced the remains of a from the alluvial valley it would have been impossible to determine where small, buried mound. There is no visible surface expression to this mound, but bluff ended and mound began. In short, the residents of buildings placed on excavations revealed a clear dome. Beasley excavated this area and discovered the summit of this tumulus would surely have elicited a certain amount of awe evidence of feasting behavior, which was the focus of his Master's thesis (Bea and respect from any visiting emissaries. sley 1998, 2007). A wall trench dating to the Anna phase (A.D.1200-1350) was John L. Cotter (1951) was the first to publish a detailed description of discovered beneath this small mound. On the southern end of the Mound 4 the site and of Colonel Stowers's magnificent collection from Mound 5, but Flats another block was excavated under the direction of Tony Boudreaux. long before that most early recorders of Mississippi's antiquity who passed A series of individually set post features arranged in an oval pattern came to through the Natchez region made note of this enormous site. Benjamin L. C. light not far below the surface. This unusual structure was the subject of Jen Wailes, arguably Mississippi's first professional archaeologist, was well aware nifer Warhop's Master's thesis (Warhop 2005). of Anna as early as the mid-nineteenth century (Brown 1998:173-174). War ren K. Moorehead (1932:162-163), who followed in Wailes's footsteps in the twentieth century, also recognized the importance of this site, as did Calvin The Anna Great Ravine Brown (1926) and James A. Ford (1936:m). The National Park Service was so intrigued by the size and importance of Anna that there were detailed plans Let us now turn our attention to a part of the site that few visitors of the past to make it into a park, complete with a museum (Jennings 194o:Figure 3). The or present have ever seen-the Great Ravine (Figure 12.3). I can assure the nearby Emerald site (22AD504) ended up receiving this honor, for at least the reader that only the hardy prehistoric Indian would ever have approached park dimension, but that decision had more to do with proximity to the Nat Anna from the north, but thankfully a couple of modern Natchez residents chez Trace than to the relative importance of the two sites. elected to do so, or an important part of the Anna story would never be Anna currently remains a landholding of the Stowers family. Mrs. Luther known. In 1980, as I was planning some new investigations in the Natchez Stowers graciously permitted the Alabama Museum of Natural History to con region, Smokye Joe Frank and Robert Prospere told me of some discover duct its Summer Expedition at Anna in 1997· For well over three decades now ies that they had recently made in a ravine adjacent to the Anna site. Upon the museum has been taking high school children into the field on scientific showing me some of the pottery that they had picked up in a wash far below projects, and in 1997 I was fortunate to host the Expedition at the Anna site. the site, I immediately decided to take the plunge and see the context of these Our objectives that season were to explore the summit of Mound 3 and the finds.

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