Archaeol Anthropol Sci DOI 10.1007/s12520-016-0369-1 ORIGINAL PAPER Look to the earth: the search for ritual in the context of mound construction Tristram R. Kidder 1 & Sarah C. Sherwood2 Received: 31 May 2015 /Accepted: 25 July 2016 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 Abstract In North America mound research traditionally fo- Introduction cuses on how these earthen structures functioned – as mortu- ary facilities, ceremonial platforms, observatories, and the res- Mound building and the resulting monumental architecture idences of political elites and/or ritual practitioners. This paper documented throughout the Eastern Woodlands of North acknowledges mound building as the purposeful selection of America are broadly considered part of actively constructed soils and sediments for specific color, texture, or engineering ritual landscapes (Knight 2001, 2010; Sherwood and Kidder properties and the organization of deposits suggesting that the 2011;Howey2012; Thompson and Pluckhahn 2012; Wright building process reflects both shared knowledge and commu- and Henry 2013). The construction of these cultural land- nicates specific information. We present two examples: Late scapes varies through time and across space taking on various Archaic period Poverty Point site Mound A, and forms and functions (Milner 2004). How we study these earth- Mississippian period Shiloh site Mound A, in the exploration en monuments has evolved significantly from their eighteenth of structured deposits to identify ritual in contrast to a more and nineteenth century treatments as abiding mysteries, con- mundane or purely practical origin. We argue the building of sidered by most Euroamericans of the time to be beyond the these earthen monuments was not only architecturally impor- technological and organizational skills of indigenous popula- tant as a means to serve a subsequent purpose but that the act tions. By the late nineteenth century science had finally put to of construction itself was a ritual process intended to serve its rest most of the ambiguity surrounding various racist ideas own religious and social purposes. In these contexts, ritual about their source and ascribed these impressive earthworks does much more than communicate underlying social relation- to the ancestors of the Native Americans (Silverberg 1968; ships; it is instrumental to their production. Thomas 1894). Through most of the twentieth century archeologists focused on the mounds as special features reflecting the behaviors and activities of indigenous Keywords Geoarchaeology . Earthen mounds . Southeastern populations. US . Ritual Mound research in North America evolved through the twentieth century to examine the function of these features as mortuary facilities, ceremonial platforms, observatories, * Tristram R. Kidder and the residences of political elites and/or ritual practitioners. [email protected] While research explored mound use, little regard was given to how the mounds were actually built. However, recent studies Sarah C. Sherwood have clearly demonstrated that mound building activities were [email protected] not haphazard or unplanned. Instead, mounds are understood to be the outcome of structured activities that included the 1 Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis, Campus Box 1114, One Brookings Drive, St. alteration of the landscape to receive the monument according Louis, MO 63130-4899, USA to an Barchitectural grammar^ (e.g., Lewis and Stout 1998; 2 Earth and Environmental Systems, The University of the South, 735 Gibson and Carr 2004; Kidder 2004;Thompson2009; University Ave., Sewanee, TN 37375, USA Knight 2010; Hermann et al. 2014). More recently, Archaeol Anthropol Sci archeologists have refocused on ritual process as it relates to to cultural processes (Buikstra and Charles 1999; Randall and mound building and monumental architecture across a range Sassaman 2010; Howey 2012). of monumental scales and time periods (Knight 2001; Sherwood and Kidder 2011; Thompson and Pluckhahn 2012; Wright and Henry 2013). Further, attention has turned Theory to the purposeful selection of soils and sediments for specific color, texture, or engineering properties and the organization Richards and Thomas suggested in 1984 that we could inter- of deposits suggesting that the building process reflects both pret curious or Bodd^ structured archeological deposits not as shared knowledge and communicates specific information the end product of inexplicable Bceremonial^ activities, but as (Charles et al. 2004;Purcell2004, 2012; Sherwood and the result of deliberate actions that could be explicated by Kidder 2011; Schilling 2012;Sherwood2013). careful analysis and interpretation of the processes of deposi- In this paper we explore structured deposits (or sets of tion (Richards and Thomas 1984; Garrow 2012;Thomas deposits) in two earthen mounds to identify ritual in contrast 2012). Thomas (2012:126) argues that this shift is especially to a more mundane or purely practical origin. We seek to recognized because increasingly the processes of deposition demonstrate that ritual practices are incorporated in the final are understood to not only be the outcome of natural and product of the monument revealing ritually ascribed choices physical actions but also the end product of social practice. and actions throughout the process. Thus, we argue, the build- But how do we extract that social practice from the static end ing of monuments was not only architecturally important as a product? Long ago archeologists took up this challenge with means to serve a subsequent purpose (e.g., place of burial, the need to reconstruct Bsite formation processes^ and, as platform for a structure) but that the act of construction itself articulated by Schiffer (1987), to sort out the C-transforms was a ritual process intended to serve its own religious and from N-transforms. This task is, however, only a part of the social purposes. In these contexts, ritual does much more than story in the study of the construction of earthen monuments. communicate underlying social relationships; it is instrumen- Earthen construction materials, even before they are integrated tal to their production (Swenson 2012:23). To address these into the depositional sequence, may undergo significant mod- issues archeologists must fully contextualize the cultural land- ification at that transition between the natural landscape and scape in relation to the natural environment. the cultural landscape. Without identifying these processes Our case studies are derived from two sites, Shiloh, that reflect that cultural practice, we cannot fully grasp the Tennessee (ca 1200 to 300 cal BP) and Poverty Point, development of the cultural landscape. Louisiana (ca. 3600 to 3200 cal BP) (Fig. 1); each site includes The challenge comes in determining what among these platform mounds, which are defined as elevated, quadrilateral patterned deposits are purely practical, related to shared flat-topped earthen pyramids that are often raised in stages knowledge of the response of earthen materials to specific (Lindauer and Blitz 1997; Morgan 2008). The mounds conditions and what might be considered ritual practice, discussed from both sites were unfortunately originally where ritual is defined as Bexpressive performance that is pre- mapped as Mound A; each, however, have significantly dif- scribed by appropriateness, and is sanctioned by tradition^ ferent histories and represent opposite ends of the timeframe (Lewis 1980:8; Thomas 2012:127). Historically, ritual has under which mound building was actively practiced in pre- been considered non-functional or extraneous to the needs of contact North America (Ortmann and Kidder 2013;Anderson daily life. However, an increasing body of thinking recognizes et al. 2013). Platform mounds can vary in their form, function that within the context of a society, ritual is, in fact, functional and construction (see variability discussed in Sherwood and as a means of organizing and structuring social practices (e.g., Kidder (2011:71-73)) but are uniformly considered prominent Bell 1992, 1997, 2007; Bruck 1999;Swenson2012). As noted features on the landscape that are recognized as iconic and by Bruck (1999), the issue is not if ritual is functional or non- expressive acts (Knight 1986, 1990, 1998, 2001, 2006; functional, but how and in what ways ritual provides a frame- Blitz, 1993; Pauketat 1993; Hall 1997; Byers 1998, 2004; work for social practice. Making a case for mound deposits as Pauketat and Alt 2003; Charles et al. 2004; Emerson et al. Bstructured^ is obvious. They are organized together to mod- 2008; Sherwood and Kidder 2011). As such, ritual most cer- ify the natural landscape and can be recognized as the end tainly played a part in their layout and construction reflecting product of culturally sanctioned behavior. Making the concep- an integrated Native American world view. Elsewhere we tual or interpretive step from the construction of mounds as a (Sherwood and Kidder 2011:73) proposed that conceptualiz- socially functional action to one that is also ritually sanctioned ing the mounds as complex feats of geotechnical engineering and appropriate cannot be taken lightly, since ritual is one of is an important way to study their significance. In this paper the most significant social activities. we carry this notion forward with the recognition that at least We recognize, however, that not all structured deposits are part of that geotechnical knowledge was executed through