Infants, Mothers, and Gendered Space in a Mississippian Village: Revisiting Wilkie’s House 1 at the Hunze-Evans Site

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses a unique structure known as House 1 from the Hunze-Evans village site (23CG8) in Southeast Missouri as a small step toward addressing a dearth of infant-focused research in pre-Columbian North America in general, and within the Mississippian cultural tradition in particular. House 1 has previously been considered as a women’s special-use structure, and a review of archaeological and ethnohistoric sources regarding Mississippian gendered spaces lends support to this interpretation. However, specific attention to ideas that intersect with womanhood – particularly fertility, childbirth, and infancy – leads to a richer and more thorough interpretation of this structure. I suggest that House 1 represents a unique, local expression of Mississippian cosmological themes of gender and fertility as expressed through infant-focused activity, including mortuary ceremonialism, childbirth, and associated ritual seclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Mississippian
• gender
• infants
• burials
• women

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Toni Alexander of Southeast Missouri State University for the map in Figure 1. Jodie O’Gorman of Michigan State University provided helpful feedback on an early draft of this paper. Comments from the editorial staff of Childhood in the Past and two anonymous reviewers greatly improved the quality of this research. James Phillips of the Crisp Museum at Southeast Missouri State University provided access to artefacts and photographs. I would especially like to thank Duncan Wilkie for his thoughtful description and analysis of House 1 back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His interpretations and focus on gender was especially noteworthy given the time period during which he was working. Any errors or omissions are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jennifer Bengtson is Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Modern Languages, Anthropology, and Geography at Southeast Missouri State University. She is an archaeologist specializing in the late prehistoric Midwest and Southeastern U.S., particularly the Mississippian and Oneota traditions. Her research interests include gender, warfare, childhood, infancy, mortuary analysis, and bioarchaeology. Dr. Bengtson has done fieldwork and research in the Central Illinois River Valley and Southeast Missouri in the U.S. Her current projects include a survey of Mississippian infant mortuary practices and a comparative analysis of households and other structures at the Hunze-Evans site in Southeast Missouri.