Abstract:
The Rhodes residential area is part of the Moundville archaeological site (1TU500), a Mississippian civic and ceremonial mound center located on the Black Warrior River in present-day Tuscaloosa and Hale Counties of Alabama. It was excavated in the 1930s as two areas: the Rhodes site and the Upper Rhodes site. Because the Rhodes residential area was both a residential group and a cemetery, it is productive for examining area specific mortuary practices and how these practices compare to other residential group cemeteries at Moundville. Using mortuary analysis to further explore mortuary practices and social organization inform the research objectives that were set forth for this thesis. The major objectives of the project were as follows: 1) discern when in time the site was occupied and used as measured by ceramic samples; 2) interpret the social status and wealth of the people buried in the Rhodes residential area as measured by the quantity and diversity of artifacts in graves; and 3) compare the social status and wealth of the Rhodes residential area burial population to the social status of other residential burial populations at Moundville as measured by previous studies. The results demonstrate that a complex intertwining of ascribed and achieved status exists in Rhodes burials. More importantly, the results show that burial goods are not distributed the same way in every residential group. I conclude that access to wealth and status was specific to each residential kin group with a complex system of status based on birth and achievement. This research contributes to the ongoing evaluation of Mississippian and Moundville social organization and mortuary practices as well as ongoing studies of how social inequality was manifested in the past.
