Patterns of Faunal Utilization and Sociopolitical Organization at the Mississippian Period Kincaid Mounds Site

ABSTRACT

Archaeologists have debated the degree of complexity at Mississippian period polities with some arguing that they were highly stratified and centralized and others arguing that they were politically decentralized. Faunal analyses from the Cahokia Mounds and Moundville polities have been used to suggest that there were significant differences in the foodways of elite and nonelite peoples and that deer remains were part of redistributive economies. In this article, I discuss the distribution of faunal remains from five archaeological contexts at the Kincaid Mounds site in southern Illinois. In particular, I explore species diversity and the distribution of deer body parts using utility indices and anatomical units and compare these results to Cahokia Mounds and other Mississippian period villages in southern Illinois. The distribution of taxa and deer elements from both the mound- and nonmound-related contexts at Kincaid follows patterns of possible elite consumption at Cahokia and restricted use of rare species.

KEYWORDS:

• Mississippian
• zooarchaeology
• foodways

Acknowledgements

Research was carried out with the support of the Center for Archaeological Investigations at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Special thanks to Paul D. Welch, Heather A. Lapham, Brian M. Butler, and David Sutton for comments and feedback on the project. Additional thanks to Brian and Heather for providing access to resources and space at the CAI’s Stotlar facility. Susan Alt, Sarah Baires, Melissa Baltus, Elizabeth Konwest, Dawn Rutecki, and Elizabeth Watts also provided feedback on early drafts. Thank you also to Ed Jackson and two anonymous reviewers for comments and critiques on a much earlier version of this article. All mistakes and errors within are mine alone.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was report by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Meghan E. Buchanan, PhD, is an assistant professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at Auburn University. Her research explores the relationships between warfare, political fragmentation, coalescence, and the materiality of daily practices in Mississippian Period Precolumbian societies of the Midwest and Southeast.