ABSTRACT
Cultural evolution in the eastern United States reached its pinnacle with the emergence of Mississippian societies in the major river valleys of the Midwest and Southeast around A.D. 900. Mississippian societies represent the first true chiefdoms in eastern North America. Political power in prestige-good systems is based upon the control of objects needed by members of the society to pay social debts such as bridewealth, initiation and funerary fees, punitive fines, and the like. Prestige-good systems themselves have been well documented in the ethnographic literature, and can be described in some detail. Prestige-good systems appear to evolve out of lineage-based societies in situations where lineage elders are unable to control the means of production. Several major elements seem to characterize prestige-good systems: generalized exchange of prestige-goods; monopoly over prestige-goods at the highest political level; and the reproduction of basic kinship structures in the political structure.
