The Marksville culture was an
archaeological culture
An archaeological culture is a recurring assemblage of types of artifacts, buildings and monuments from a specific period and region that may constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society. The connection between thes ...
in the lower
Lower Mississippi
The Lower Mississippi River is the portion of the Mississippi River downstream of Cairo, Illinois. From the confluence of the Ohio River and Upper Mississippi River at Cairo, the Lower flows just under 1000 miles (1600 km) to the Gulf of ...
valley,
Yazoo valley, and
Tensas valley areas of present-day
Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is bord ...
,
Mississippi
Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
,
Arkansas
Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the O ...
,
and extended eastward along the Gulf Coast to the
Mobile Bay
Mobile Bay ( ) is a shallow inlet of the Gulf of Mexico, lying within the state of Alabama in the United States. Its mouth is formed by the Fort Morgan Peninsula on the eastern side and Dauphin Island, a barrier island on the western side. The ...
area,
from 100 BCE to 400 CE. This culture takes its name from the
Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site in
Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. Marksville Culture was contemporaneous with the
Hopewell cultures within present-day
Ohio
Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...
and
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rock ...
. It evolved from the earlier
Tchefuncte culture and into the
Baytown and
Troyville cultures, and later the
Coles Creek and
Plum Bayou cultures. It is considered ancestral to the historic
Natchez and
Taensa peoples.
Description
The Hopewell tradition was a widely dispersed set of related populations, which were connected by a common network of trade routes,
known as the
Hopewell Exchange System. The Marksville culture was a southern manifestation of this network. Settlements were large and usually located on terraces of major streams. Evidence from excavations of burial mounds from this period suggest they were constructed for persons of high social status, and contained refined grave goods of imported exotic materials, such as
copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pink ...
panpipes, earspools, bracelets and beads, rare minerals, stone platform pipes,
mica
Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into extremely thin elastic plates. This characteristic is described as perfect basal cleavage. Mica is ...
figurines, marine shells, freshwater pearls, and
greenstone celts. The pipes had flat bases with a hole for a stem, and a bowl in the center. Animal figurines on the platform are not unusual, with the bowl being located in the animal's back.
[
The high-status leaders organized community life, and officiated at burial ceremonies, an important part of the Marksville Culture. The mounds were constructed in stages over many years, with the first stage being a flat, low platform. The ceremonies may have been held years apart, and those who died between ceremonies were temporarily stored in other locations. Their remains were later gathered up and buried together.][
The foraging and subsistence practices of the Marksville culture followed the same pattern of the Archaic and Tchefuncte periods.]
Pottery
Although made from local clay, Marksville pottery was similar in design and decoration (particularly the surface design) to pottery found in Illinois and Ohio, which suggests larger interaction networks than had been presupposed. A typical vessel was three to five inches tall and three to seven inches in diameter, and often decorated with geometric and effigy designs, usually stylized birds. The well-formed pottery is also decorated with a shallow incision. This decorated pottery was made primarily for ceremonial uses, with other, plainer utilitarian ware for daily use. Marksville pottery influenced Santa Rosa pottery, a defining characteristic of the contemporary Santa Rosa-Swift Creek culture, located to the east of the Marksville culture area along the Gulf coast.[
Aside from pottery, the Marksville culture also made jewelries and other artifacts that were usually created as part of the burial ceremony.]
Chronology
The Marksville culture was preceded by the Tchefuncte culture, and was eventually succeeded by the Troyville culture in southeastern and eastern Louisiana and western Mississippi, and the Baytown culture
The Baytown culture was a Pre-Columbian Native American culture that existed from 300 to 700 CE in the lower Mississippi River Valley, consisting of sites in eastern Arkansas, western Tennessee, Louisiana, and western Mississippi. The Baytown Sit ...
in northeastern Louisiana, northwestern Mississippi, and southeastern Arkansas.
See also
* Crooks mound
* Grand Gulf Mound
* List of Hopewell sites
References
External links
{{Pre-Columbian North America
Archaeological cultures of North America
Native American history of Louisiana
Native American history of Mississippi
Native American history of Arkansas
Classic period in the Americas
Woodland period
1st-century BC establishments
4th-century disestablishments