Foodways and community at the Late Mississippian site of Parchman Place

ABSTRACT

Communal eating events or feasts were important activities associated with the founding and maintenance of Mississippian communities in the southeastern United States. More often than not, however, archaeological deposits of food refuse are interpreted along a spectrum, with household-level consumption at one end and community-wide feasting at the other. Here, we draw attention to the important ways that domestic food practices contributed to social events and processes at the community level. We examine ceramic, botanical, and faunal assemblages from two fourteenth-century contexts at Parchman Place (22CO511), a Late Mississippi period site in the northern Yazoo Basin. For the earlier deposit, everyday ceramics and plant foods combined with high-utility deer portions and exotic birds suggest potluck-style feasting meant to bring people together in the context of establishing a community in place. We interpret the later deposit, with its pure ash matrix, focus on serving wares, and purposeful disposal of edible maize and animal remains, as the result of activities related to maize harvest ceremonialism. Both practices suggest that household contributions in general and disposal of domestic food refuse in particular are critical yet underappreciated venues for creating and maintaining community ties in the Mississippian Southeast.

KEYWORDS:

• Mississippian
• foodways
• feasting
• maize harvest ceremonialism
• ceramics
• botanical
• and faunal remains

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank C. Margaret Scarry, Dale L. Hutchinson, and Benjamin Arbuckle for initiating the Archaeology of Food Working Group at the University of North Carolina and for their invitation to participate in the Ancient Foodways Conference held in Chapel Hill in 2017, where we presented a preliminary version of this paper. We also extend our gratitude to Vincas P. Steponaitis, C. Margaret Scarry, R. P. Stephen Davis, Amber M. VanDerwarker, H. Edwin Jackson, Susan L. Scott, and Walter E. Klippel, who were generous with their time and provided laboratory space and access to comparative collections. Scarry verified plant taxon identifications, while Jackson, Scott, and Klippel verified faunal identifications. We thank the Archaeological Conservancy and Joe Noe for granting permission to work at Parchman Place, and Jay K. Johnson, John M. Connaway, and Jessica Crawford for much-appreciated logistical support. We extend our thanks to the students in C. Margaret Scarry’s 2012 Archaeobotany Laboratory Methods class, as well as those who assisted with the fieldwork and various stages of ceramics and faunal analysis. Gregory A. Waselkov, C. Margaret Scarry, Amber VanDerwarker, and three anonymous reviewers provided useful feedback that undoubtedly improved this manuscript. Finally, we wish to thank members of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, especially David Proctor and RaeLynn Butler, for sharing their expertise, and for their insights into modern Creek ceremonial practice and its Mississippian antecedents.

Data availability statement

Collections and data reported here are housed at the Center for Archaeological Studies, University of South Alabama, Mobile.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on the contributors

Erin S. Nelson is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of South Alabama, Mobile. Her research examines the material remains of foodways, monumental and domestic architecture, and the organization of space to understand how past people negotiated issues of kinship, group identity, leadership, and worldview in the context of their communities. She is the author of Authority, Autonomy, and the Archaeology of a Mississippian Community.

Ashley Peles is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research employs paleoethnobotanical and zooarchaeological methods to understand how foodways were used to negotiate issues of labor and community among Native American groups in the North American Southeast.

Mallory A. Melton is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research uses macrobotanical and microbotanical analysis to investigate how large-scale social changes, such as cross-cultural encounters and urbanization, impacted the daily lives of past peoples. She specifically considers the implications of subsistence activities for understanding social diversity, inequality, and commensal politics. Her projects examine these issues in North, Central, and South America.

ORCID

Erin S. Nelson http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6167-9203

Ashley Peles http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1990-4005

Mallory A. Melton http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2058-7801

Notes

1 This sentence originally referred to “extinguishing the fire” and “disposing of its remains.” Conversations with members of Muscogee (Creek) Nation, particularly RaeLynn Butler and David Proctor, resulted in our better understanding of these practices as caring for the fire by letting it rest. Proctor also related that after removing the fire from the center, it is kept going for a couple of hours. People may light cigarettes from it, “kind of like shaking hands with the old fire,” and they do the same thing “to greet the new fire and for it to know us.” Our language regarding the practice of “feeding the fire” is also a result of these conversations.

2 Members of Muscogee (Creek) Nation expressed doubt that fragments of medicine pots would be included in ash heaps created from a ceremonial fire, but said that medicine is currently taken within the camps as well as in the ceremonial space so it is feasible that both medicine pots and cooking and serving dishes would result from activities in the camps.

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted with funding from the National Science Foundation [DDIG #1036363], the Graduate School at the University of North Carolina, the Center for the Study of the American South, and the Timothy P. Mooney Fellowship.