Plum Bayou culture is a

Pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...

Native American culture that lived in what is now east-central

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 Osage ...

from 650–1050 CE,"Plum Bayou Culture."
''The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.'' (retrieved 26 September 2011) a time known as the

Late Woodland Period In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BCE to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some archaeolog ...

. Archaeologists defined the culture based on the

Toltec Mounds Plum Bayou Mounds Archeological State Park (Smithsonian trinomial, 3 LN 42), (formerly known as "Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park") also known as Knapp Mounds, Toltec Mounds site or Toltec Mounds, is an archaeological site from the Woodland ...

siteOdell 185 and named it for a local waterway.

Relationship to other cultures

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 Si ...

(300 to 650 CE) preceded the Plum Bayou culture, and was then followed by early

Mississippian culture The Mississippian culture was a Native Americans in the United States, Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern United States, Midwestern, Eastern United States, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from appr ...

s, which flourished from 900—1600 CE, until diseases brought by Europeans decimated their populations. The Plum Bayou culture had contact with the

Coles Creek culture Coles Creek culture is a Late Woodland archaeological culture in the Lower Mississippi valley in the Southeastern Woodlands. It followed the Troyville culture. The period marks a significant change in the cultural history of the area. Population i ...

, located along the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

, and early

Caddoan culture The Caddoan Mississippian culture was a prehistoric Native Americans in the United States, Native American culture considered by archaeologists as a variant of the Mississippian culture. The Caddoan Mississippians covered a large territory, inclu ...

s, located in river valleys of the

Red Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondar ...

, Ouachita, and Arkansas Rivers in Arkansas and into

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

. Exotic materials found at Plum Bayou sites reveal trade with the

Ozark Plateau The Ozarks, also known as the Ozark Mountains, Ozark Highlands or Ozark Plateau, is a physiographic region in the U.S. states of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and the extreme southeastern corner of Kansas. The Ozarks cover a significant porti ...

, West Gulf Coastal Plain, and the

Ouachita Mountains The Ouachita Mountains (), simply referred to as the Ouachitas, are a mountain range in western Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma. They are formed by a thick succession of highly deformed Paleozoic strata constituting the Ouachita Fold and Thru ...

. Major Plum Bayou sites with single or multiple mounds include: *

Baytown Site The Baytown Site ( 3 MO 1) is a Pre-Columbian Native American archaeological site located on the White River at Indian Bay, in Monroe County, Arkansas. It was first inhabited by peoples of the Baytown culture (300 to 700 CE) and later briefly by ...

Chandler Landing Site Chandler or The Chandler may refer to: * Chandler (occupation), originally head of the medieval household office responsible for candles, now a person who makes or sells candles * Ship chandler, a dealer in supplies or equipment for ships Arts ...

, Prairie County * Coy Site * Dogtown Site * Hayes Site * Maberry Site, Woodruff County *

Roland Site The Roland Site ( 3 AR 30) is an archaeological site located on Dry Lake, an extinct channel of the White River in Arkansas County, Arkansas. It was inhabited intermittently from the beginning of the common era to late prehistoric times, but its ...

Settlements

Toltec Mounds Archeological Site Overview HRoe 2013

Plum Bayou culture was one of the earliest groups to build ceremonial community centers with

platform mound Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system or ...

s and rectangular plazas. They primarily lived in small villages in the uplands and floodplains of the

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...

and

Arkansas River The Arkansas River is a major tributary of the Mississippi River. It generally flows to the east and southeast as it traverses the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The river's source basin lies in the western United Stat ...

s. Archaeologists divide Plum Bayou settlements into "single household, multiple household, multiple household with mound, and multiple mound sites."

Subsistence

Farmers grew crops such as

amaranth ''Amaranthus'' is a cosmopolitan genus of annual or short-lived perennial plants collectively known as amaranths. Some amaranth species are cultivated as leaf vegetables, pseudocereals, and ornamental plants. Catkin-like cymes of densely pack ...

chenopodium ''Chenopodium'' is a genus of numerous species of perennial or annual herbaceous flowering plants known as the goosefoots, which occur almost anywhere in the world. It is placed in the family Amaranthaceae in the APG II system; older classifica ...

bottle gourd Calabash (; ''Lagenaria siceraria''), also known as bottle gourd, white-flowered gourd, long melon, birdhouse gourd, New Guinea bean, Tasmania bean, and opo squash, is a vine grown for its fruit. It can be either harvested young to be consumed ...

knotweed Knotweed is a common name for plants in several genera in the family Polygonaceae. Knotweed may refer to: * ''Fallopia'' * ''Persicaria'' * ''Polygonum'' * ''Reynoutria japonica ''Reynoutria japonica'', synonyms ''Fallopia japonica'' and ''Poly ...

little barley ''Hordeum pusillum'', also known as little barley, is an annual grass native to most of the United States and southwestern Canada. It arrived via multiple long-distance dispersals of a southern South American species of ''Hordeum'' about one mil ...

maygrass ''Phalaris caroliniana'' is a species of Poaceae, grass known as Carolina canarygrass and maygrass. Background It is native to the southern United States, and it can be found as a introduced species, naturalized species along the west coast of ...

squash Squash may refer to: Sports * Squash (sport), the high-speed racquet sport also known as squash racquets * Squash (professional wrestling), an extremely one-sided match in professional wrestling * Squash tennis, a game similar to squash but pla ...

sunflower The common sunflower (''Helianthus annuus'') is a large annual forb of the genus ''Helianthus'' grown as a crop for its edible oily seeds. Apart from cooking oil production, it is also used as livestock forage (as a meal or a silage plant), as ...

, and sumpweed. In some later Plum Bayou sites,

maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...

was cultivated in small amounts. Supplementing their farming, Plum Bayou peoples also hunted game and gathered wild plants, such as cherries, grapes, plums, persimmons, and nuts.

Material culture

This culture is defined in part by its

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...

. Much of Plum Bayou ceramics was plainware, tempered with shells. Named types of ceramics found at Plum Bayou sites include Coles Creek incised var. Keyo, Larto Red, Officer Punctated, and French Fork incised."Notice of Inventory Completion: Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, Arkansas State Parks."
''National Park Service: Federal Register.'' Vol. 68, No. 228: 66,481—66,482. 26 November 2003 (retrieved 26 September 2011) Red slip, or clay paint, was also used to decorate some ceramic vessels.

Decline

While neighboring cultures adopted maize cultivation and increasingly complex religions and political organization, the Plum Bayou people did not. People continued to occupy the region, but they abandoned their ceremonial sites. The exact descendants of the Plum Bayou culture are not known; however,

Quapaw people The Quapaw ( ; or Arkansas and Ugahxpa) people are a tribe of Native Americans that coalesced in what is known as the Midwest and Ohio Valley of the present-day United States. The Dhegiha Siouan-speaking tribe historically migrated from the Ohi ...

today are responsible for Plum Bayou human remains and artifacts through the

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Pub. L. 101-601, 25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq., 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law enacted on November 16, 1990. The Act requires federal agencies and institutions tha ...

Notes

References

*Odell, George H
''Stone Tools: Theoretical Insights into Human Prehistory.''
New York: Springer, 1996. . {{DEFAULTSORT:Plum Bayou Culture Late Woodland period Archaeological cultures of North America Native American history of Arkansas Mound builders (people) 7th-century establishments in North America 650s establishments