| This dissertation investigates the origins and causes of warfare during the Mississippian Period (AD 1000-1500) in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. Mississippian peoples shared similar religious beliefs and practiced maize-based agriculture subsistence. They also built bastioned palisades, which are considered archaeological indicators of regional hostility, to defend their towns. Mississippian scholars have divergent opinions about the causes and timing of warfare, but generally agree that the two primary motivations were to control economic resources and to gain political status. Bastioned palisades serve as a proxy measure for the intensification of organized warfare, complexity of military organization, and other aspects of warfare. This dissertation applies Bayesian statistical analyses of stratigraphic and absolute age data to model when palisades were constructed. Through such an analysis, several broadly accepted propositions about Mississippian warfare are evaluated.;The sample in this study includes nine Mississippian settlements in the Midwest and Southeast, four of which are the largest and most culturally influential towns in the region. This is an adequate sample for understanding the trends and history of warfare in the region. The results of chronological models for palisade building indicate that bastioned palisades were built primarily in the late Mississippian period. This reflects advances in Mississippian military technology and a rise in warfare intensity after AD 1250. Intensified warfare appears largely to have been spurred by diminished resource control and a climate of political instability, suggesting that economic resource control was likely the main reason for Mississippian warfare. |
