Authority, Autonomy, and the Archaeology of a Mississippian Community : University Press of Florida : 9781683404347 : 1683404343 : 06 Aug 2024 : A close look at a Mississippi archaeological site that sheds light on a major precolonial civilizationThis book is the first detailed investigation of the important archaeological site of Parchman Place in the Yazoo Basin, a defining area for understanding the Mississippian culture that spanned much of what is now the United States Southeast and Midwest before the mid-sixteenth century. Refining the widely accepted theory that this society was strongly hierarchical, Erin Nelson provides data that suggest communities navigated tensions between authority and autonomy in their placemaking and in their daily lives.Drawing on archaeological evidence from foodways, monumental and domestic architecture, and the organization of communal space at the site, Nelson argues that Mississippian people negotiated contradictory ideas about what it meant to bel