A PROLIFERATION OF CHIEFDOMS: A GEOSPATIAL ANALYSIS OF THE MIDDLE CUMBERLAND REGION OF TENNESSEE By CATRINA CUADRA A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2019 © 2019 Catrina Cuadra ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks to Charlie Cobb for his mentorship, guidance, and endless patience. I thank Neill Wallis and Ken Sassman for assistance as members of my committee. I also thank Joe Aufmunth for his GIS expertise and assistance. I thank Lindsay Bloch for her edits and support. I am deeply grateful for the amazing friends who supported me through this. Finally, my endless gratitude for Miri without whom I would not have survived graduate school. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................3 LIST OF TABLES ...........................................................................................................................6 LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................................7 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................8 1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................9 Research Questions .................................................................................................................10 The Mississippian Period ........................................................................................................11 The Middle Cumberland Region ............................................................................................13 Organization ...........................................................................................................................17 2 MISSISSIPPIAN SETTLEMENT ECOLOGY AND THE MIDDLE CUMBERLAND .....19 Environmental Factors in Southeastern Settlement Patterns ..................................................20 Sociopolitical factors ..............................................................................................................21 The Middle Cumberland Region of Tennessee ......................................................................26 3 SPATIAL DYNAMICS AND INTERPOLITY INTERACTIONS .......................................37 Dataset ....................................................................................................................................40 Methods ..................................................................................................................................41 Results.....................................................................................................................................43 Analysis ..................................................................................................................................46 Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................51 4 SETTLEMENT ECOLOGY ..................................................................................................61 Methods ..................................................................................................................................64 Results.....................................................................................................................................65 Nearest Neighbor .............................................................................................................65 Viewshed and Observation Points ...................................................................................65 Slope ................................................................................................................................67 Distance to River/Distance to Cumberland River ...........................................................68 Cumberland River Visibility ...........................................................................................69 Aspect ..............................................................................................................................70 Discriminant Function Analysis Results .........................................................................70 Discussion ...............................................................................................................................72 Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................75 5 CLOSING THOUGHTS ........................................................................................................85 4 LIST OF REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................90 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .........................................................................................................98 5 LIST OF TABLES Table page 2-1 Middle Cumberland Regional Periods ...............................................................................34 3-1 Sites and Mound Types ......................................................................................................54 3-2 Distance between the closest contemporary mound site in meters and in travel time .......58 4-1 Viewshed and observation extent ......................................................................................77 4-2 Slope over mound sites ......................................................................................................77 4-3 Distance to Cumberland River in meters ...........................................................................79 4-4 Distance to nearest navigable waterway in meters ............................................................80 4-5 Cumberland River visibility in meters ...............................................................................81 4-6 Aspect of Mound Sites .......................................................................................................82 4-7 Discriminant function analysis classification results .........................................................83 4-8 Discriminant function analysis factor scores .....................................................................83 4-9 Discriminant function analysis factor scores excluding 3 lowest variables ......................83 4-10 Early variable summary statistics ......................................................................................84 4-11 Late variable summary statistics ........................................................................................84 6 LIST OF FIGURES Figure page 1-1 Middle Cumberland Region of Tennessee (Beahm 2012:15) ............................................18 2-1 Physiographic regions of Tennessee (Moore and Smith 2001) .........................................34 2-2 Elevation cross section of Tennessee facing north (Sayler 1866, Library of Congress) ...........................................................................................................................34 2-3 All recorded mounds in the Middle Cumberland Region (Beahm 2012: 30) ....................35 3-1 Mound and non-mound sites in the Middle Cumberland Region. .....................................53 3-2 Mound sites in the Middle Cumberland Region ................................................................55 3-3 Early mound sites with 22 km Hally circles ......................................................................56 3-4 Late mounds with 22 km Hally circles ..............................................................................57 3-5 Cost path raster from Castalian Springs.............................................................................59 3-6 Cost path raster from Old Town ........................................................................................59 3-7 Cost path raster from Fisher-Reams ..................................................................................60 4-1 Flow chart showing Jones 2017 discriminant function analysis results (adapted from .. Jones 2017b) .................................................................................................................... 76 7 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts A PROLIFERATION OF CHIEFDOMS: A GEOSPATIAL ANALYSIS OF THE MIDDLE CUMBERLAND REGION OF TENNESSEE By Catrina Cuadra May 2019 Chair: Charles Cobb Major: Anthropology During the Mississippian period, the Middle Cumberland region of Tennessee was home to an unusually large number of mound sites posited to be competing chiefdoms. Some archaeologists refer to this regional period as a “proliferation of chiefdoms” (Smith and Moore 2009: 2019). This thesis explores two routes to better understand the high number of contemporaneous mound sites in the region: the first route was an investigation into mound spacing, the second route looked at settlement ecology factors. This study compares the spacing of mounds in this region to David Hally’s (1993; 1996; 2006) settlement model which argued that mounds in the same polity were located within 22 kilometers while competing mounds were located at least 32 kilometers away from