# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Archaeology - Definition for English-Language Learners from Merriam-Webster's Learner's Dictionary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Definition of archaeology written for English Language Learners from the Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary with audio pronunciations, usage examples, and count/noncount noun labels.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Paleontology - Definition for English-Language Learners from Merriam-Webster's Learner's Dictionary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Definition of paleontology written for English Language Learners from the Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary with audio pronunciations, usage examples, and count/noncount noun labels.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Children

Cherokee children liked to go hunting and fishing with their fathers. Women taught Cherokee girls all of the home and gardening skills. In the past, Indian kids had more chores and less time to play. But they did have dolls, toys, and games to play, such as one game where kids tried to throw a dart through a moving hoop. Lacrosse was a popular sport among Cherokee teenagers.

Clothing and Appearance

Cherokee men wore breechcloths and leggings. Cherokee women wore wraparound skirts made out of woven fiber or deerskin. They all wore moccasins on their feet. Men decorated their faces and bodies extensively with tribal tattoo art and also painted themselves bright colors in times of war. Cherokee women didn't paint or tattoo themselves.

Food

The Cherokee were farming people. Cherokee women did most of the farming, harvesting crops of corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers. Cherokee men did most of the hunting, shooting deer, bear, wild turkeys, and small game. They also fished in the rivers and along the coast. Cherokee dishes included cornbread, soups, and stews cooked on stone hearths.

Home

The Cherokee tribes settled in a large area that included the Carolinas , the Virginias , Kentucky , Tennessee , and Georgia and Alabama . The Cherokee Indians lived in villages. They built circular homes made of river cane, sticks, and plaster. They covered the roofs with thatch and left a small hole in the center to let the smoke out. The Cherokees also built larger seven-sided buildings for ceremonial purposes.

Weapons and Tools

The men made tools and weapons. Hunters used blowguns for small game and birds. The blowguns were three to eight feet long. Fishermen generally used spears and fishing poles. In war they fought with a tomahawk or spear.

created by Eden Clark, ITS, and Kris Cable, LMS (January 2007)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Children Cherokee children liked to go hunting and fishing with their fathers. Women taught Cherokee girls all of the home and gardening skills. In the past, Indian kids had more chores and less time to play. But they did have dolls, toys, and games to play, such as one game where kids tried to throw a dart through a moving hoop.

# data[].attributes.body
Leadership

# data[].attributes.headline
Mrs. Ellett's Doodle Notes on a Cherokee Village 

# data[].attributes.subject
Mrs. Ellett's Doodle Notes on a Cherokee Village 

# data[].attributes.body
Article about Mississippian

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Southeast Indians - The Mississippians in Olden Times for Kids and Teachers - Native Americans in Olden Times for Kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Mississippians are often referred to as the mound builders. They spent hundreds of years building huge, steep platforms made of hard packed dirt - mounds. Many of the mounds were built in geometric patterns. Some were very long and wide - 1,000 feet long and over 700 feet wide.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
All About Archaeology | Nat Geo Kids Archaeology Playlist

# data[].attributes.body
Label your journal with "WHAT IS AN ARCHEOLOGIST?"

Use the Idaho Public TV site to answer the questions in the yellow box. Write these questions in your journal

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Mississippians are a vanished culture. Once, they lived along the banks of the Mississippi River. They built huge ceremonial sites and trading centers that serviced the tens of thousands of people - hunters, farmers, merchants - the native people who lived in the outlaying villages.

They were great traders. They traded with people from the Gulf of Mexico to Great Lakes region. They traded a stone that was native to their area. Natives in other parts of the country used this this stone to make weapons. In exchange they received a variety of goods including copper, food, clothing, pipes, headdresses, and masks.

They also grew food. They raised corn, beans, and other food.

The leaders of these people lived in luxury, with many servants. Scholars have also found pictographs of winged warriors, feathered snakes, and spiders. It has never been proven, but some scholars believe these ancient people visited the Aztecs in olden times.

The Mississippians are often referred to as the mound builders. They spent hundreds of years building huge, steep platforms made of hard packed dirt - mounds. Many of the mounds were built in geometric patterns. Some were very long and wide - 1,000 feet long and over 700 feet wide. If you think of it as a football field - these huge mounds would cover over 3 football fields long and over 2 football fields wide! We're talking huge!

Most of the mounds were not very tall, perhaps only 3 feet or so. But some were over 70 feet tall! Scholars estimate it took over 200 years to build one of the super huge mounds. What does it take to get people working on one project for 200 years? For one thing, it takes strong rulers.

Why all the mounds? Scholars believe that mounds were used as a burial grounds. As archaeologists explore the mounds, they have found the ancient remains of toys and clothes and bones. But some mounds have nothing hidden in the dirt. No one knows what they were built to accomplish. It is a history mystery.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Southeast Indians - The Mississippians in Olden Times for Kids and Teachers - Native Americans in Olden Times for Kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Mississippians are a vanished culture. Once, they lived along the banks of the Mississippi River. They built huge ceremonial sites and trading centers that serviced the tens of thousands of people - hunters, farmers, merchants - the native people who lived in the outlaying villages. They were great traders.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mississippian culture is the culture of the Mississippian people. They were Native Americans who lived in the Mississippi River Valley. Around 900-1450 AD, the Mississippian culture developed and spread through the Eastern United States. Mississippian people were most often farmers who settled into river valleys and grew the "three sisters" of corn, beans and squash.

The Mississippian peoples lived throughout the Southeast and Midwest, an area from the Florida panhandle westward into Oklahoma, northward to Minnesota and eastward to Ohio.

Cultural traits

A number of cultural traits are recognized as being characteristic of the Mississippians. Although not all Mississippian peoples practiced all of the following activities, they were distinct from their ancestors in adoption of some or all of these traits.

1. The construction of large, truncated earthwork pyramid mounds, or platform mounds. Such mounds were usually square, rectangular, or occasionally circular. Structures (domestic houses, temples, burial buildings, or other) were usually constructed atop such mounds.

2. Maize-based agriculture. In most places, the development of Mississippian culture coincided with adoption of comparatively large-scale, intensive maize agriculture, which supported larger populations and craft specialization.

3. Shell tempered pottery. The adoption and use of riverine (or more rarely marine) shells as tempering agents in ceramics.

4. Widespread trade networks extending as far west as the Rockies, north to the Great Lakes, south to the Gulf of Mexico, and east to the Atlantic Ocean.

5. The development of the chiefdom or complex chiefdom level of social complexity.

6. The development of institutionalized social inequality.

7. A centralization of control of combined political and religious power in the hands of few or one.

8. The beginnings of a settlement hierarchy, in which one major center (with mounds) has clear influence or control over a number of lesser communities, which may or may not possess a smaller number of mounds.

9. The adoption of the paraphernalia of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC), also called the Southern Cult. This is the belief system of the Mississippians as we know it. SECC items are found in Mississippian-culture sites from Wisconsin (see Aztalan State Park) to the Gulf Coast, and from Florida to Arkansas and Oklahoma. The SECC was frequently tied into ritual game-playing, as with chunkey.

The Mississippians had no writing system or stone architecture. They worked naturally occurring metal deposits, such as hammering and annealing copper for ritual objects like Mississippian copper plates and other decorations, but did not smelt iron or practice bronze metallurgy.

Chronology

The Mississippi stage is usually divided into three or more chronological periods. Each period is an arbitrary historical distinction varying regionally. At a particular site, each period may be considered to begin earlier or later, depending on the speed of adoption or development of given Mississippian traits. The "Mississippi period" should not be confused with the "Mississippian culture". The Mississippi period is the chronological stage, while Mississippian culture refers to the cultural similarities that characterize this society.

The Early Mississippi period (c. 1000-1200 CE) had just transitioned from the Late Woodland period way of life (500-1000). Different groups abandoned tribal lifeways for increasing complexity, sedentism, centralization, and agriculture. Production of surplus corn and attractions of the regional chiefdoms led to rapid population concentrations in major centers.

The Middle Mississippi period (c. 1200-1400) is the apex of the Mississippi era. The expansion of the great metropolis and ceremonial complex at Cahokia (in present-day Illinois), the formation of other complex chiefdoms, and the spread and development of SECC art and symbolism are characteristic changes of this period. The Mississippian traits listed above came to be widespread throughout the region.

The Late Mississippi period (c. 1400-1540) is characterized by increasing warfare, political turmoil, and population movement. The population of Cahokia dispersed early in this period (1350-1400), perhaps migrating to other rising political centers. More defensive structures are often seen at sites, and sometimes a decline in mound-building and large scale, public ceremonialism. Although some areas continued an essentially Middle Mississippian culture until the first significant contact with Europeans, the population of most areas had dispersed or were experiencing severe social stress by 1500. Along with the contemporaneous Ancestral Pueblo peoples, these cultural collapses coincide with the global climate change of the Little Ice Age. Scholars theorize drought and the reduction of maize agriculture, together with possible deforestation and overhunting by the concentrated populations, forced them to move away from major sites. This period ended with European contact in the 16th century.

Regional variations

Middle Mississippian

The term Middle Mississippian is also used to describe the core of the classic Mississippian culture area. This area covers the central Mississippi River Valley, the lower Ohio River Valley, and most of the Mid-South area, including western and central Kentucky, western Tennessee, and northern Alabama and Mississippi. Sites in this area often contain large ceremonial platform mounds, residential complexes and are often encircled by earthen ditches and ramparts or palisades.

Middle Mississippian cultures, especially the Cahokia polity located near East St. Louis, Illinois, was very influential on neighboring societies. High status artifacts, including stone statuary and elite pottery associated with Cahokia, have been found far outside of the Middle Mississippian area. These items, especially the pottery, were also copied by local artists.

South Appalachian Mississippian

The term South Appalachian Province was originally used by W. H. Holmes in 1903 to describe a regional ceramic style in the southeast involving surface decorations applied with a carved wooden paddle. By the late 1960s archaeological investigations had shown the similarity of the culture that produced the pottery and the midwestern Mississippian pattern defined in 1937 by the Midwestern Taxonomic System.

In 1967 James B. Griffin coined 'South Appalachian Mississippian' to describe the evolving understanding of the peoples of the Southeast. South Appalachian Mississippian area sites are distributed across a contiguous area including Alabama, Georgia, northern Florida, South Carolina, central and western North Carolina, and Tennessee. Chronologically this area became influenced by Mississippian culture later than the Middle Mississippian area (about 1000 CE as compared to 800 CE) to its northwest. It is believed that the peoples of this area adopted Mississippian traits from their northwestern neighbors.

Typical settlements were located on riverine floodplains and included villages with defensive palisades enclosing platform mounds and residential areas. Etowah, Ocmulgee, and Moundville are prominent examples of the South Appalachian Mississippian settlements.

Caddoan Mississippian

The Caddoan Mississippian area, a regional variant of the Mississippian culture, covered a large territory, including what is now eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas, northeastern Texas, and northwestern Louisiana. Archaeological evidence has led to a scholarly consensus that the cultural continuity is unbroken from prehistory to the present, and that the Caddo and related Caddo language speakers in prehistoric times and at first European contact are the direct ancestors of the modern Caddo Nation of Oklahoma.

The climate in this area was drier than areas in the eastern woodlands, hindering maize production, and the lower population on the plains to the west may have meant fewer neighboring competing chiefdoms to contend with. Major sites such as Spiro and the Battle Mound Site are in the Arkansas River and Red River Valleys, the largest and most fertile of the waterways in the Caddoan region, where maize agriculture would have been the most productive. The sites generally lacked wooden palisade fortifications often found in the major Middle Mississippian towns. Living on the western edge of the Mississippian world, the Caddoans may have faced fewer military threats from their neighbors. Their societies may also have had a somewhat lower level of social stratification.

The Caddoan people were speakers of one of the many Caddoan languages. The Caddoan languages once had a broad geographic distribution, but many are now extinct. The modern languages in the Caddoan family include Caddo and Pawnee, now spoken mainly by elderly people.

Hernando de Soto led an expedition into the area in the early 1540s, he encountered several native groups now thought to have been Caddoan. Composed of many tribes, the Caddo were organized into three confederacies, the Hasinai, Kadohadacho, and Natchitoches, which were all linked by their similar languages.

Plaquemine Mississippian

The Plaquemine culture was an archaeological culture in the lower Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana. Good examples of this culture are the Medora Site (the type site for the culture and period) in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, and the Anna, Emerald Mound, Winterville and Holly Bluff sites located in Mississippi. Plaquemine culture was contemporaneous with the Middle Mississippian culture at the Cahokia site near St. Louis, Missouri. It is considered ancestral to the Natchez and Taensa Peoples.

Known Mississippian settlements

Although the Mississippian culture was heavily disrupted before a complete understanding of the political landscape was written down, many Mississippian political bodies were documented and others have been discovered by research.

Related modern nations

Mississippian peoples were almost certainly ancestral to the majority of the American Indian nations living in this region in the historic era. The historic and modern day American Indian nations believed to have descended from the overarching Mississippian Culture include: the Alabama, Apalachee, Caddo, Chickasaw, Catawba, Choctaw, Muscogee Creek, Guale, Hitchiti, Houma, Kansa, Missouria, Mobilian, Natchez, Osage, Quapaw, Seminole, Tunica-Biloxi, Yamasee, and Yuchi.

Contact with Europeans

Scholars have studied the records of Hernando de Soto's expedition of 1539-1543 to learn of his contacts with Mississippians, as he traveled through their villages of the Southeast. He visited many villages, in some cases staying for a month or longer. The list of sites and peoples visited by the Hernando de Soto Expedition chronicles those villages. Some encounters were violent, while others were relatively peaceable. In some cases, de Soto seems to have been used as a tool or ally in long-standing native feuds. In one example, de Soto negotiated a truce between the Pacaha and the Casqui.

De Soto's later encounters left about half of the Spaniards and perhaps many hundreds of Native Americans dead. The chronicles of de Soto are among the first documents written about Mississippian peoples, and are an invaluable source of information on their cultural practices. The chronicles of the Narváez expedition were written before the de Soto expedition; the Narváez expedition informed the Court of de Soto about the New World.

After the destruction and flight of the de Soto expedition, the Mississippian peoples continued their way of life with little direct European influence. Indirectly, however, European introductions dramatically changed native societies in the Eastern United States. Because the natives lacked immunity to new infectious diseases, such as measles and smallpox, epidemics caused so many fatalities that they undermined the social order of many chiefdoms. Some groups adopted European horses and changed to nomadism. Political structures collapsed in many places.

At Joara, near Morganton, North Carolina, Native Americans of the Mississippian culture interacted with Spanish colonizers of the Juan Pardo expedition, who built a base there in 1567 called Fort San Juan. Expedition documentation and archaeological evidence of the fort and Native American culture both exist. The soldiers were at the fort about 18 months (1567-1568) before the natives killed them and destroyed the fort. (They killed soldiers stationed at five other forts as well; only one man of 120 survived.) Sixteenth-century Spanish artifacts have been recovered from the site, marking the first European colonization in the interior of what became the United States.

By the time more documentary accounts were being written, the Mississippian way of life had changed irrevocably. Some groups maintained an oral tradition link to their mound-building past, such as the late 19th-century Cherokee. Other Native American groups, having migrated many hundreds of miles and lost their elders to diseases, did not know their ancestors had built the mounds dotting the landscape. This contributed to the myth of the Mound Builders as a people distinct from Native Americans, which was rigorously debunked by Cyrus Thomas in 1894.

In Spanish: Cultura misisipiana para niños

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn Mississippian culture facts for kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Woodland period in Alabama was characterized by increasing cultural complexity and population growth and began about 1000 BC and lasted until about AD 1000. During this era, people widely adopted horticulture, pottery-making, the bow and arrow, and complex ceremonies surrounding death and burial. Archaeologists divide the Woodland period into the Early, Middle, and Late Woodland time periods. They base these divisions on changes in the way people lived, including their settlement patterns (where they lived), subsistence (what they ate), the tools they used, and mortuary practices (how they buried their dead).

The Early Woodland lasted from about 3,000 years ago to about 1,000 years ago. The transition from the Late Archaic to the Early Woodland is marked by an increase in cultural developments that can be traced to the Middle and Late Archaic. Although pottery, horticulture, and earthen mounds were familiar to some people who lived during the Archaic period, after about 1000 BC such innovations became widespread across Eastern North America. As in the Archaic, Early Woodland people lived in small groups of related families, known as bands, who shared a base camp most of the year. People usually located their base camps along the Gulf Coast or in Alabama's river valleys and then left as needed to hunt or fish in the surrounding areas. However, unlike the people of the Late Archaic, Early Woodland peoples generally did not travel long distances from their base camps. As a result, the long-distance exchange networks that developed during the Late Archaic broke down. Leadership during the Early Woodland probably consisted of a male elder who provided guidance to the band but had no real power. Everyone was of generally equal status in Early Woodland society.

Archaeologists learn about the lives of prehistoric peoples by studying the remains of the things that they made and used, which they call artifacts. The most common types of artifacts found at prehistoric sites are made of pottery and stone because these materials do not deteriorate as easily as bone, textiles, or other organic remains. People made pottery in different ways and decorated it with different patterns at different points in time, and archaeologists use these changes to determine cultural stability and change as well as the age of an archaeological site or artifact. People collected local clays to make their pots and other vessels. Before they formed the object, they added temper to the clay to prevent the pot from cracking as the clay dried and then hardened in an open-pit fire. Tempers included plant fiber, grit (coarse sand), crushed limestone, crushed bone, and grog (crushed potsherds).

The earliest pottery included plant fibers as temper and was made during the Archaic period about 2500 BC Such pottery was not widespread, however, and people seemed to have preferred using stone bowls for cooking well into the Early Woodland. Between 1500 and 1000 BC, people began using sand as temper, and pottery-making became much more common and widely distributed. Early Woodland people made a variety of pottery, including bowls and straight-sided beakers for serving and jars for cooking, serving, or storing food. The pieces usually were decorated with stamped, punctuated, pinched, brushed, or incised designs. Jars with pointed bases seem to have been the most popular types for cooking directly on a fire, and Early Woodland pottery is known for its jars with three or four nodes (leg-like pieces) on their bases.

Because Early Woodland people did not move around as much as Archaic people, the various bands did not see each other and share ideas as much, so styles of making pottery became very distinct from region to region. For example, people in northern Alabama tempered their pottery with crushed limestone and decorated it with stamped designs, but in south Alabama, pottery was tempered with sand and decorated with different stamped designs. At the same time, Early Woodland people in central Alabama made their pottery with sand temper but decorated it by using sharpened sticks or other tools to incise designs on the exterior.

The stone tools of the Early Woodland are similar to those made during the Archaic. People continued to make stemmed points with broad blades, but they were slightly smaller. Because people tended to remain near their base camps in the Early Woodland, they used stone from nearby sources for making tools. Tubular stone pipes first appeared during the Early Woodland and were likely used for ritual and ceremonial smoking.

A remarkable development of the Early Woodland was the widespread construction of earthen mounds. Mound-building seems to have originated in what is now Louisiana during the Archaic, but by about 1000 BC the tradition was adopted by people all over eastern North America. Like early mounds elsewhere, those in Alabama were usually conical or dome-shaped and were small, usually between two and five feet high and 30 to 60 feet across at the base. The mounds generally were built on top of burial pits or tombs of important individuals. Often buried with the person were items such as projectile points, natural pigments like ocher, or a few special trade items. Not all Early Woodland people were buried under mounds, however. Village sites often include graves in round pits scattered over the site. Bodies were buried in a tightly flexed position, with knees and arms folded up against the chest, and grave goods were uncommon. As with pottery styles, there was much geographic variability in Early Woodland mortuary practices.

The Middle Woodland lasted from about AD 1 to 500 and is marked by changes in settlement and subsistence patterns. Populations increased, and people began to spread into a variety of environments where they could take advantage of diverse food resources. They also tended gardens and gathered shellfish from the local rivers, which enabled them to live in one place for long periods of time without having to hunt for food as often. An increase of exotic artifacts at Middle Woodland sites indicates that there was more interaction between different regions than there had been during the Early Woodland. People living near the Gulf Coast and Mobile Bay area likely interacted both with people in the interior and with other coastal peoples, as reflected in the similarities in their pottery styles, the nonlocal sources of stone for their tools, and the presence of exotic items.

The most remarkable aspect of Middle Woodland culture is the development of the Hopewell Ceremonial Complex. As used by archeologists, the term "complex" refers to a group of specific artifact styles and mortuary practices that occur together. The Hopewell Complex first developed in what is now the Ohio Valley and other parts of the Midwest and gradually spread southward. It is characterized by large, geometric earthworks; conical mounds that contain elaborate tombs of logs and stone with many exotic grave offerings; and nonutilitarian artifacts made of exotic materials such as copper, mica, obsidian, and ocean shells. The elaborate tombs are especially important because they indicate that the person buried there had a special status. Although Woodland society was still basically egalitarian, these tombs suggest that some people may have achieved higher status possibly because of their activities as important traders, warriors, or religious figures. In Alabama, the Hopewell Complex appeared in the northern Tennessee Valley region, where it is called the Copena Mortuary Complex and is marked by village settlement patterns, burials in caves, and burial mounds. The Oakville Indian Mounds, southeast of Moulton in Lawrence County, are excellent examples of these structures. The name Copena comes from the first three letters of copper and the last three letters of galena (lead ore), which are commonly found in the burials, either as raw materials or fashioned into items. Other characteristic Copena artifacts include copper reel-shaped gorgets (a type of necklace) and earspools (cylinders worn through holes in the ears); cups made from ocean shell; and long, stemless, stone projectile points. Some of these items were traded in from long distances. Pottery was generally absent from Copena burials, and Middle Woodland pottery styles remained basically unchanged from those of the Early Woodland. Sand temper became more and more common, and pots with nodes on the bottom became smaller and less popular.

Groups of conical mounds are found in the Tennessee River Valley and the central Tombigbee River Valley. However, flat-topped, or platform, mounds also began to be constructed during the Middle Woodland. The remains of houses have been found on top of the mounds, which, along with elaborate graves, is another indicator that some individuals in Middle Woodland society had achieved a high social status. In north Alabama, archeologists excavated a Copena platform mound at the Walling site. Artifacts in the mound were more diverse than those in the surrounding village, and food remains from the mound consisted primarily of deer bones. This indicates that special rituals and feasts took place on top of the mound. Another important Middle Woodland site is the Pinson Mounds, located in western Tennessee. The site was a major Middle Woodland ceremonial center of at least 12 conical and platform mounds, including a geometric earthwork. Log-covered tombs with shell beads, copper, and engraved turtle-shell rattles were found under some of the mounds.

The Late Woodland period began about AD 500 and lasted about 500 years, until AD 1000. Populations increased and settlements filled up the landscape, spreading northward up small streams. People continued to live in base camps, but their increased numbers led to competition for resources and an increase in warfare. By this time, the use of the bow and arrow had spread from cultures to the west and fulfilled the need for a more accurate hunting tool and weapon. The bow and arrow made hunting less of a communal activity than it had been in the past, and individual families became more self-sufficient. People began making stone projectile points that were shorter, thinner, and more triangular so they could be attached to arrows. Middle Woodland people still hunted, fished, and gathered wild foods, but they also spent increasing amounts of time tending their plots of maize, squash, and other plants. Because they now grew food that could be stored, people developed large, rounded jars used for storage of surplus food. They continued to use sand, grog, limestone, or grit temper in their pottery.

As the Hopewell culture declined, mortuary practices became more variable and simplified. Small amounts of exotic items still occur in Late Woodland graves, but they seem not to have been part of an elaborate mortuary complex. The decline in ceremonialism may indicate the development of a new form of religion that focused on a reverence for the ancestors of certain lineages. There is evidence that many small groups occasionally gathered together to build mounds and maintain long-range ties. Likely as a result of these regional gatherings, pottery from different places developed widespread similarities in form and decoration. The mound centers expanded their functions from places for burial to places where civic and ceremonial functions occurred. The combined developments of surplus food, special lineages, and mound centers marked changes in society that were much different from how people had lived up to that point. And these changes set the stage for the developments that would take place in the Mississippian period.

Additional Resources
Bense, Judith. Archaeology of the Southeastern United States: Paleoindian to World War I. San Diego: Academic Press, 1994.

Hudson, Charles. The Southeastern Indians. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976.

Knight, Vernon J. Excavation of the Truncated Mound at the Walling Site: Middle Woodland Culture and Copena in the Tennessee Valley. Tuscaloosa: Alabama State Museum of Natural History, 1990.

Walthall, John. Prehistoric Indians of the Southeast: Archaeology of Alabama and the Middle South. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980.

Zschomler, Kristen, and Ian W. Brown. Alabama Archaeology: Now and Forever? Montgomery: Alabama Historical Commission, 1996.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Early Woodland Period Incised SherdThe Woodland period in Alabama was characterized by increasing cultural complexity and population growth and began about 1000 BC and lasted until about AD 1000. During this era, people widely adopted horticulture, pottery-making, the bow and arrow, and complex ceremonies surrounding death and burial.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
NATIVE HISTORY ASSOCIATION - The Woodland Period

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A synopsis of the prehistoric Woodland Period in Middle Tennessee's Native American history.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/native-american-indians/woodland-indians.htm

# data[].attributes.body
1. Describe archaeology.
2. What is your favorite WEBSITE link  and why?
3. How will archaeologist know where to dig (Hint: Use the subheadings)?
4. What do archaeologist dig up (Hint: Use the subheadings)?
5. Which book under BOOKS would you want to read and why?
6. What is the most interesting NEW vocabulary word you learned?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Paleoindian | Pueblo Indian History for Kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Paleoindian period was when people first came to the Americas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sequoyah, a Cherokee Indian, created a system of writing for an unwritten language.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Cherokee Alphabet | PBS LearningMedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn about the story of Sequoyah, a Cherokee man who developed an alphabet for the Cherokee language in 1821, in this video segment adapted from AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: "We Shall Remain." Like most Native American groups at the time, the Cherokees did not have a written language.

# data[].attributes.body
Learn about the first written Native American language - developed in your backyard!