Moundville was a Mississippian period society located in the Black Warrior Valley of west-central Alabama. Between the 12th and 15th centuries, the Moundville site was the political and ceremonial center of a regionally organized Mississippian polity. The Moundville site encompasses 70 hectares and consists of 32 mounds grouped in pairs around a rectangular plaza. There is a very orderly arrangement of these earthen monuments. The largest mounds are located on the northern edge of the plaza and become increasingly smaller going either clockwise or counter clockwise around the plaza to the south. This community plan has been interpreted as a sociogram, an architectural depiction of a social order based on ranked clans. According to this model the Moundville community was segmented into a variety of different clan precincts, the ranked position of which was represented in the size and arrangement of paired earthen mounds around the central plaza. The largest earthen mounds on the northern portion of the plaza were associated with the highest-ranking clans while smaller mounds to the south were associated with lower-ranking clans.

The Moundville site and other affiliated settlements are located within a portion of the Black Warrior River Valley starting below the fall line just south of Tuscaloosa, Alabama and extending 40 km down river. Below the fall line, the valley widens and the uplands consist of rolling hills dissected by intermittent streams. This region corresponds with the transition between the Piedmont and Coastal Plains and encompasses considerable physiographic and ecological diversity. Environmentally this portion of the Black Warrior Valley was an ecotone that had floral and faunal characteristics from temperate Oak-Hickory, Maritime Magnolia, and Pine forests.

Important References

Knight, Vernon James, Jr. 1998 Moundville as a Diagrammatic Ceremonial Center. In Archaeology of the Moundville Chiefdom, edited by V.J. Knight Jr. and V.P. Steponaitis, pp. 44-62. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington.

Steponaitis, Vincas P. 1983 Ceramics, Chronology, and Community Patterns: An Archaeological Study at Moundville. Academic Press, New York.

Welch, Paul D. 1991 Moundville's Economy. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

Welch, Paul D., and C. Margaret Scarry 1995 Status-related Variation in Foodways in the Moundville Chiefdom. American Antiquity 60:397-419.

Wilson, Gregory D. 2001 Crafting Control and the Control of Crafts: Rethinking the Moundville Greenstone Industry. Southeastern Archaeology 20(2):118-128.

See also Moundville Archaeological Museum

• Moundville