Highlighting the role of precontact Indigenous
women in building and transforming Mississippian culture
This volume highlights
how women were powerful farmers, economic decision-makers, spiritual leaders,
and agents of social integration in the diverse societies of the Mississippian
world, which spanned the present-day United States South to the Midwest before
the seventeenth century. While Mississippian societies are some of the most
well-researched pre-European contact societies on the continent, little attention
has been dedicated specifically to Mississippian women. These chapters offer
new insights into the vital role women played within their communities, an
approach directly informed by the powerful position of American Indian women
within contemporary American Indian communities.
Contributors
examine themes such as identity, labor, grieving, cooking, craft production,
spatial organization, prestige, morbidity, kinship, and fertility. Case studies
include sites throughout the Mississippian world, ranging from Illinois to
Florida, including Cahokia and Moundville. Mississippian
Women is the first volume to focus solely on the political, social, and economic
power of women during this period, linking their actions in building their culture
before European colonialism with the work of Indigenous women in the region
today.
A
volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series