Economic and Social Interactions in the Piedmont Village Tradition-Mississippian Boundarylands of Southeastern North America, AD 1200–1600

Abstract

This research seeks to understand the economic and social interaction patterns among dispersed Piedmont Village Tradition communities in the North American Southeast, AD 1200–1600. Piedmont Village Tradition communities lived adjacent to Mississippian societies and have been categorized as a peripheral society because of this spatial relationship. We examine economic behaviors by constructing fall-off curves of local versus nonlocal lithic material proportions at settlement sites and examining the reduction behaviors and tool types at sites. The results support a possible gateway model for the acquisition and distribution of nonlocal materials that linked spatially proximate communities. To examine social interaction patterns, we conducted a Brainerd-Robinson analysis of ceramic attributes from six sites and combined our results with work by Rogers (1993). The results show sites with stylistic similarities are not the same sites that share lithic resources. We conclude that these spatially non-overlapping artifact patterns result from a heterarchical social organization with a high degree of independence between economic and social interactions. Finally, we contextualize our results within the current knowledge of Mississippian and Piedmont Village Tradition societies in the region to broaden the discussion of gateways in reciprocity-based economies, societies traditionally thought of as peripheral to complex societies, and coalescence.