Mississippian Community Organization

The Powers Phase is the name given to a short-lived complex of communities (c. A.D. 1250-1400) founded on low sandy interfluves extending across 300 square kilometers of the Little Black River watershed of southeastern Missouri. There appears to have been a distinct hierarchy of communities ranging in size from Powers Fort, an enclosed area of about 15 acres that contained four mounds and perhaps several hundred houses; to at least 10 large, compact villages ranging in size from 40 to 100 houses; to communities containing 10 to 12 houses; and finally to small one or two house farmsteads. What makes the communities unique is that almost without exception the houses burned (accidentally or intentionally) and collapsed walls and roofs sealed artifacts that were on the structure floors. The Powers Phase Project, which ran from 1967 to 1976, was a high-profile archaeological program throughout its existence and archaeologists eagerly awaited published results, which came out through the late 1970s. The centerpiece of the project was the excavation of two large villages, Turner and Snodgrass, the latter of which received considerable treatment in the literature.In fact, Snodgrass, because it was excavated almost in its entirety, became a proxy for other Mississippian communities in the central Mississippi River valley that either were unexcavated or received only limited excavation. Unfortunately, we now know that many of the claims made about Snodgrass were erroneous. The present book, through painstaking analysis and attention to detail in the archaeological record of Snodgrass, points out those errors and offers an entirely different perspective on that community as well as on other Powers Phase communities.