Artifacts and activities associated with mound-area public contexts at the Town Creek site, North Carolina

ABSTRACT

Attributes of Mississippian public architecture have been used to infer aspects of social organization and political economy, but the inclusion of artifactual datasets in these interpretations has occurred less frequently. As a result, we often do not know much about the activities actually associated with public buildings and spaces. This article discusses several public contexts at the Town Creek site (31Mg2), a single-mound Mississippian civic-ceremonial center in central North Carolina that was occupied between AD 1150–1400. Architectural remains and multiple artifact classes are used to explore the activities associated with several public buildings in the mound area at Town Creek. Premound and mound-summit public spaces at Town Creek were associated with food consumption at multiple scales, some of which is consistent with feasting, the consumption of special foods, craft production, and ritual activities that included smoking and tattooing. Some of these activities appear to have been integrative and inclusive while others took place in smaller, more inaccessible spaces, which suggests they were more exclusive in nature. Our findings are consistent with the idea that crafting and the performance of rituals in public spaces were important aspects of leadership at Town Creek.

KEYWORDS:

• North Carolina
• Mississippian period
• craft production
• ceramics
• botanical
• faunal remains
• lithics
• platform mound
• public buildings

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Joffre Coe and to all the people who excavated at Town Creek and took care of its collections over the years. This research was supported by the Department of Anthropology at East Carolina University and by the Whitey Graham Award from the North Carolina Archaeological Society. The Research Laboratories of Archaeology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill provided us access to the collections and allowed us to use lab space and cameras. Thanks especially to R. P. Stephen Davis Jr. at the RLA for all of his help with everything Town Creek. Susan Scott analyzed the faunal remains. Our research at Town Creek has been shaped by many discussions with Steve Davis, Kandi Hollenbach, Jon Marcoux, Brett Riggs, Chris Rodning, Vin Steponaitis, and Greg Wilson. We also want to thank Mary Beth Trubitt, Ben Steere, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a draft of this article.

Data availability statement

The materials reported in this study are curated by the Research Laboratories of Archaeology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 All of the materials from the premound midden were not analyzed due to the extent of this deposit and the large number of artifacts that it contained. Instead, materials from a 20-×-100-ft block of excavation units that crosscut the center of the mound were analyzed as a sample (Boudreaux 2005:55 and Figure 2.14).

2 This alignment was noted by Tiede (1995:319), and it was evaluated for this article using SunCalc (www.suncalc.net).

3 Mound Stage I as defined here was not recognized in early interpretations of Town Creek, which, instead, considered all of the moundfill beneath the lower pair of excavated summit structures (Structures 45a and 45b) as part of the same construction episode (Coe 1995:81; Reid 1985:25).

4 Tens of pipes and pipe fragments were found in mound-area contexts that we did not analyze, and hundreds have been found across the entire site (Coe 1995:223).

5 The remains of rattles also were found with burials within a large enclosure (Enclosure 1) across the plaza from the mound (Boudreaux 2007:75–78).

Additional information

Funding

The Whitey Graham Award was awarded to Armour by the North Carolina Archaeological Society. This grant provided funding for an AMS date and the zooarchaeological analysis conducted by Susan Scott.

Notes on contributors

Edmond A. Boudreaux

Edmond A. Boudreaux III is Director of the Center for Archaeological Research and an Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Mississippi. His research interests include Mississippian societies, architecture, ceramics, ritual, and the Early Contact period.

Daryl W. Armour

Daryl Armour is an independent scholar who is a Senior Lighting Asset Specialist at Duke Energy. His research interests include Mississippian societies and North Carolina archaeology.