ABSTRACT
This chapter considers evidence about hierarchy and heterarchy in Native American landscape and society in the Yazoo Basin of northwestern Mississippi and the Mississippi River Delta of southeastern Louisiana. It suggests that within the Mississippi River Delta, moundbuilding was an act of place-making that promoted community resilience in an environment in which water was abundant and dry land was scarce. Prehistoric Native American population density in the Yazoo Basin was higher than most other areas of the continent, with the possible exceptions of some areas in coastal California, and areas within the Central Mississippi Valley such as southeastern Missouri and eastern Arkansas. The name of the Yazoo River derives from the Native American group living at its confluence with the Mississippi during the late seventeenth century. Developments leading to the collapse of Mississippian chiefdoms in this and other areas of the Southeast during the mid-to-late sixteenth century are complex.
