ABSTRACT
Archaic mortuary sites have rarely been examined in a regional context. Only one such synthesis exists for the central Mississippi drainage. Cook (1976) has summarized published reports in an investigation of chronological change in Archaic resource utilization patterns. No studies have explicitly focused on the spatial distribution of Archaic mortuary sites and their contents as a means of developing a coherent interpretive framework for the region. This omission is especially pronounced given the insights that have been gained from the analysis of Woodland and Mississippian mortuary sites in the same area (e.g., Asch 1976; Braun 1979; Brown 1979, 1981; Buikstra 1976b ; Goldstein 1980, 1981; Kerber 1982; Tainter 1977a , 1977b). To fill this void, we have drawn on the information available from published and unpublished mortuary site descriptions and analyses, supplemented by data from a cemetery excavated by the authors, to develop a more comprehensive view of the Archaic as characterized by the mortuary data (see Figure 7.1 and Table 7.1).
