Mississippian Beginnings
The emergence of the complex societies of the late prehistoric era in Eastern North America has been the subject of extensive research in recent years, resulting in a new appreciation for how these changes played out at specific sites and across the region. Concern with variation within local historical trajectories, the movements and practices of peoples, and detailed site reconstructions have replaced the broad general neoevolutionary approaches that characterized research on Mississippian origins a generation ago. Aided by a wealth of new fieldwork and analytical tools, our understanding of the Mississippian emergence and what is meant by Mississippian itself has become much clearer in recent years, as has our knowledge of events at specific sites.