A Large Town, All Enclosed

Sissel Schroeder - University of Wisconsin

Abstract: The Chronicles of the de Soto expedition to North America in 1539-1543 include descriptions of many large towns surrounded by walls studded at regular intervals with bastions. The frequency with which substantial walls were constructed around settlements had increased dramatically across the Eastern Woodlands half a millennium earlier, during the 11^th century A.D. Routinely associated with warfare, such walls reflect vertical integration involving regional elites as they vied for adherents, struggled to establish and maintain alliances, cultivated and enhanced the sanctity of chiefly office, and attempted to augment their prestige and expand their spheres of influence through the use of coercive force and the construction of monuments, and horizontal forms of integration involving followers and allies who weighed the benefits and costs associated with a loss of autonomy in a contentious social landscape. The implications of this variation in village fortification for the ascent, attrition, transformation, and eventual dissolution of chiefly leadership strategies are explored using an archaeological case example from the Lower Tennessee River Valley in western Kentucky, the Jonathan Creek Site.