The Americas

Fort Ancient Culture (Mississippian) (North America)
c.AD 1000 - 1650

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The mound-building tradition of the Americas was a feature of many Native American woodland tribes - including those of the Mississippian culture. Mound building had begun in North America's middle 'Archaic Period' around 3500 BC, when the people who were responsible for the appearance of this practice were still hunter-gatherers.

Their successors throughout the subsequent Woodland period all practiced farming and animal husbandry, and their collective cultures covered the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River and its various (many) tributaries, and the Ohio river valley. The people of the non-Mississippian Chacoan culture were also moundbuilders, as were the Chancay people of Peru.

First appearing along the Mississippi River before spreading outwards, the Mississippian was also the last of the mound-building cultures of North America in the mid-western, eastern, and south-eastern United States. Echoes of it lingered for at least a century after its end amongst tribes which had formed or arrived in the wake of its ending.

Cahokia formed the cultural capital of the Mississippian, near what is now Collinsville, Illinois. This was the largest pre-Columbian settlement to the north of the Aztec empire in what is now Mexico - the largest city on North America until Philadelphia in the 1790s. But although it formed the heart of the Mississippian, various regional forms also existed.

Mississippian culture disseminated widely through eastern North America, generally following the river valleys to extend itself or to bump up against similar cultural groups. The Fort Ancient form evolved in the Ohio river valley by about AD 1000, covering southern Ohio, northern Kentucky, south-eastern Indiana, and western parts of West Virginia.

This culture is seen as having succeeded the Hopewell culture whose people built the type site at Fort Ancient in Oregonia, Ohio. Like the people of the Hopewell, Fort Ancient people were descended from late Woodland populations, although recent DNA analysis suggests that the Fort Ancient people were not direct descendants of Hopewell people. Archaeology though suggests a degree of connection - and perhaps relation - to the people of the South Appalachian culture.

Archaeological finds are constantly being made, and archaeological cultures are frequently being updated with new information. Get in touch here if this page also requires updating.

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(Information by Mick Baker and Peter Kessler, with additional information from Osage Texts and Cahokia Data, Alice B Kehoe (2007), from Wind Jewels and Paddling Gods: The Mississippian Southeast in the Postclassic Mesoamerican World, Alice B Kehoe (2005), Mississippian Period: Overview, Adam King (New Georgia Encyclopaedia, 2002), from A Visit to Fort Ancient, Felix J Koch (Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Publications: Vol 20, 1911, pp 248-252), and from External Links: Mississippian Period (Encyclopaedia of Alabama), and Study challenges the narrative of Cahokia's abandonment (Heritage Daily), and Timeline of Native American Cultures (Cuyahoga Valley National Park), and Points in Time: Assessing a Fort Ancient Triangular Projectile Point Typology, Kelli Carmean (Southeastern Archaeology, Vol 28, No 2, pp 220-232, Taylor & Francis, Winter 2009 and available via JSTOR), and Siouan Tribes and the Ohio Valley, John R Swanton (American Anthropologist, Jan-Mar 1943, and available via AnthroSource).)

c.1000

The Fort Ancient mound-building culture forms along the Ohio river valley, succeeding directly from older Hopewell and Adena cultural practices even though its people may not directly be related to those of the preceding cultures.

The Mississippian culture and its related neighbours essentially had Cahokia as their capital, this being the largest pre-Columbian settlement to the north of the Aztec empire (click or tap on map to view full sized)

Even so, the people of these three cultures collectively are responsible for the creation of 'Elder Mound' effigies in Wisconsin, burial mounds which primarily are built between 700-1200.

Such mounds are shaped like animals, spirits, or humans, with Wisconsin being considered the centre of this cultural practice. Many are later destroyed, especially by European colonial settlers when building new settlements, but others which still contain the burials of Native American ancestors remain protected.

c.1050 - 1100

The transition from late Woodland to early Mississippian is complete by this stage. Tribal living has been exchanged to an increasing level in favour of a sedentary, pastoral lifestyle. Corn production is high, allowing regional chiefdoms to form, around which cultural centres coalesce.

SunWatch Village in Dayton, Ohio, recreates lath-and-mud-daub structures with grass thatched roofs, standing in precisely the same location as the originals, and with the 'SunWatch Indian Village and Archaeological Park' nestling amongst mature trees along the Great Miami River to the south of Dayton

However, that concentration on corn production reduces protein intake and diet diversity to alarmingly low levels. Archaeologists at SunWatch Village analyse human bone samples using 'Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis' to discover that corn may comprise more than half the diet of the average villager. Resultant dental trouble, spinal diseases, and osteo-related afflictions severely dent quality of life.

To the west, Cahokia expands in terms of growth and organisation during what has been shown to be one of the wettest half centuries of the last millennium. Migrants flock into the area in this time of plenty as agriculture and fishing reach their zenith.

c.1150

Tree-ring data suggests that the rains fail around this time, resulting in drought and crop failure - around the Mississippian heartland of Cahokia at least - which in turn leads to unrest and civil disturbance as people struggle to find sufficient food. Within a quarter of a century the population has plummeted, as shown by archaeology in abandoned dwellings and other areas of the Cahokia.

Cahokia is known as the mound-building city, after the Mississippian culture to which it belonged between AD 600-1400 until collapse occurred due to several external factors and a few subsequent internal factors too

c.1200

The frequent rains of eleventh century Cahokia would seem to increase even further in intensity after that period. There is evidence of a catastrophic, almost Biblical flood for the central Mississippian people of the type which had been seared into the memory of ancient Sumerians.

For mound-building culture as a whole though, the start of the 'Middle Mississippian' at this point shows it reaching its peak. Regional chiefdoms are at their most evolved, with traits which have been developed at Cahokia being disseminated throughout the entire culture.

c.1300 - 1400

The 'Late Mississippian' is a period of decline. By 1300 Cahokia is a ghost town. A second massive flooding event takes place between 1340-1460, which probably helps to terminate the already-fading Mississippian culture itself.

Cahokia at the start of the Middle Mississippian was reaching its peak, with regional chiefdoms having emerged but ceremonial complexes still being built

Cultural and even language traits survive in many former Mississippian groups, however. As those groups coalesce into the Native American tribes which exist to greet the Europeans in the next three centuries, many of those traits are recorded.

c.1650

The Fort Ancient culture has survived the core Mississippian by about two and-a-half centuries. Its end comes as an indirect result of the arrival of Europeans on the east coast.

No direct contact is recorded between the people of the Fort Ancient and the Europeans, but their culture disappears quite rapidly around this time, long before the Ohio valley is permanently settled by Europeans. The precise cause remains uncertain, with transmitted European diseases being the most likely factor.

Mound-building ends in the region. Native American tribal groups which migrate into the Ohio river valley most likely form the ancestors of the later Shawnee tribes, with them perhaps replacing equally recent Sioux arrivals.

The semi-migratory Algonquian-speaking Shawnee could be found in areas of Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, western Maryland, South Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania

Emerging directly out of Woodland period traditions with no direct links to the Fort Ancient, they have no ability to explain the mounds. The mystery takes several centuries to iron out, with modern experts in the USA being largely responsible for that achievement.