Mississippian culture pottery

Analysis of local differences in materials, techniques, forms, and designs is a primary means for archaeologists to learn about the lifeways, religious practices, trade, and interaction among Mississippian peoples.

It is buff colored, contains large fragments of ground mussel shell as a tempering agent, and is not as smooth and polished as finer varieties.

Woodland vessels tend to have thicker walls, flat or conical bases and a large amount of either coarse sand or grog used as temper.

[11] The team conducted research at the AAS Station Lab at Arkansas State University involving macroscopic, microscopic, petrographic thin-sections, atomic absorption and x-ray diffraction analyses.

A member of the team, Michael G. Million, also conducted replicative experiments, perhaps the first person to do so with the exact clays, tempers and tools used by prehistoric Mississippian potters.

A high shrinkage rate probably meant much effort lost to broken pots in both the drying and firing stages for inexperienced potters and ineffective technologies.

Woodland potters attempted to remedy the high shrinkage by using large amounts (up to 33%) of coarse sand and/or grog temper in their efforts to render the clay usable for vessel construction.

A thick-walled construction was required in order for the vessel to stand, in an unfired state, without collapsing during the air-drying process in preparation for firing.

In terms of soil technology, the addition of shell (calcium carbonate) has the effect of neutralizing the ionic charge of the clay particles.

[11] Adding as little as 10–15% shell temper created an excellent pottery paste that was lighter, stronger and more able to withstand the drying process, and the clay's originally high plasticity was subdued.

A round vessel bottom allows easy stirring of the contents, a more even dissipation of the cooking heat and also permits a more even dispersion of the shock of impacts reducing breakage.

[11] The benefits of shell-tempered pottery vessels to the Mississippian household were much more efficient utility containers for cooking, particularly the increasing amounts of maize being grown in the valley, and thus sustaining larger and healthier populations in evidence in the archeological record.

Around 800 CE, shell-tempered pottery spread widely and rapidly from the middle Mississippi River valley to become an integral part of the expanding Mississippian culture and its improved set of technologies for horticulture, hunting and crafting.

Implements such as sticks, reeds, or bone fragments, were dragged through wet clay to incise it, or they were scratched into the surface of the dried but as yet unfired pieces to engrave.

Funeral urns were either crafted specifically to hold human remains or were large utilitarian jars fitted with elaborately decorated lids.

[19] Each is unique and it is thought because of the shapes of their eyes and half opened mouths that they are representations of deceased individuals, a death mask of sorts, although it is unclear if they are meant to be the trophy heads of enemies or of their own honored dead.

Pottery from the Cahokia site was especially fine, exhibiting smooth surfaces, very thin walls, and distinctive tempering, slips and coloring.

Some have slips of liquid clay and pigment with common colors being red, grey, and black and the surfaces polished to a high sheen.

[22] As the influence of the Cahokian religion, lifestyle and trade network expanded outward from its American Bottom origins, examples of its high status pottery went with it.

These earlier pieces also show more influences from outside thematic sources, specifically early Walls phase and late Braden style shell engravings from the Central Mississippi Valley.

Stylistically they closely resemble pottery found along the Tennessee, Cumberland, the lower Ohio River and the central Mississippi Valleys.

Similar in manufacture to the engraved ceramics, the painted pottery has thin walls, was tempered with finely ground mussel shell and was given a polished exterior.

This style comes in two major shapes, a bottle with a spherical body and a narrow curving neck and a terraced rectangular bowl that is a Moundville specialty.

[31] Pottery of the Piedmont and Blue Ridge regions differed dramatically from surrounding traditions; potters there used crushed quartz crystal and grit as tempers.

[34] Throughout the southeast, samples of negative pottery can be found, featuring circles, crosses, and rings of dark slip on lighter backgrounds.

Although the vast majority of Mississippian pottery was produced for daily utilitarian uses, the finer varieties seem to have been made specifically for trade or for ritual use.

As Europeans began to settle in the lush river valleys of the Midwest and Southeast, they discovered the abandoned village sites and monumental architecture left behind by the former Mississippian culture inhabitants of the region.

[39] They dynamited the Great Mortuary of Spiro in 1934,[40] and this destruction spurred preservationists to pass laws protecting American archaeological sites.

After two months complaints by local people led to the arrest of the perpetrators for the misdemeanor of "desecrating a venerable object" (a charge which is now a felony, in part due to the controversy over Slack Farm).

Prosecution on this charge was difficult in the late 1980s, in part because this predated the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and related state legislation, which made it clearer that such activities were illegal.