Early platform mound communalism and co-option in the American Southeast: Implications of shallow geophysics at Garden Patch Mound 2, Florida, USA

Abstract

Flat-topped platform mounds of earth, shell, or both, were constructed for millennia in the American Southeast and became pervasive during the Mississippi period (ca. 1000 CE to 1500) as elevated surfaces for buildings that served as temples, council houses, and residences of the elite. The sub-structural functions of Mississippian platform mounds departed significantly from those of most platforms that preceded them, which lacked buildings or enclosures on summits and served primarily as stages for communal feasts and other ceremonial events. The transition between these alternative functions of platform mounds is critical to understanding the emergence of social differentiation and hierarchical power in the region. Here we look to the last centuries of the Middle Woodland period (ca. 200 BCE to 600 CE) as a key moment of change in Florida and the American Southeast, and present results of investigations of the platform mound at Garden Patch, a civic-ceremonial center on the northern Florida Gulf coast, as a prominent example. Ground-penetrating radar, magnetometry, resistivity, and limited test excavation indicate a series of construction stages reflecting communal feasting and ceremony as well as a summit structure that belies collective control. We argue that these features denote social tensions between communal and exclusive functions and rights of access to the platform mound and corresponding social, political, and spiritual powers in the context of the earliest aggregated villages of the region.