Monument volumes and viewshed analysis at the Carson mounds site (22CO505), Coahoma County, Mississippi

Abstract

Earthen mound construction is a cultural practice in the American Southeast that has over 5000 years of history. During this time, earthen mounds were variously associated with mortuary rituals, communal practices, social and political leadership, and/or cosmological structures of the universe. After CE 1200 in Mississippi’s Yazoo Basin, a floodplain of the Mississippi River stretching from Memphis to Vicksburg, numerous large, fortified and mounded towns were constructed. At these sites there is significant variation in numbers of mounds and mound volume. Blitz and Livingood and Payne stipulate in earlier studies that most earthen mounds were built slowly by kin groups for community integration and possibly flood relief. They also suggest that large mounds at large sites take on meanings of hierarchy and leadership. Using Peircean semiotics, Jerry Moore’s concept of relative scale, and with data compiled by Blitz and Livingood and Payne, this study evaluates mound volume and monumental viewsheds at the Carson site, a large Mississippian culture settlement that once had over 88 earthen mounds, some of which were small house mounds, and some of which were monumental.