Plaquemine Culture - Plaquemine Mississippian

Plaquemine Mississippian

Beginning during the Terminal Coles Creek period (1150 to 1250 CE), Mississippian cultures far upstream from the Plaquemine area began expanding their reach southward. Excavations in the Yazoo Basin area of Mississippi have shown a Cahokia Horizon as extraregional exotic goods such as Cahokian pottery and other artifacts began to be deposited in Coles Creek-Plaquemine culture sites. Through repeated contacts groups in Mississippi and then Louisiana began adopting Mississippian techniques for making Mississippian culture pottery, as well as ceremonial objects and possibly social structuring. The Plaquemine peoples became more and more Mississippianized and the area the culture covered begins to shrink after 1350 CE. Eventually the last enclave of purely Plaquemine culture was the Natchez Bluffs area, while the Yazoo Basin and Louisiana areas had became a hybrid Plaquemine Mississippian culture. Historic groups in the area during first European contact bear out this division. Historic groups in the Natchez Bluffs, the Taensa and Natchez had held out against full Mississippianization and continued to use the same sites as their ancestors and carry on in the Plaquemine culture. Those that may have descended from the Mississippianized groups are those who at the time of Europoean contact spoke the Tunican, Chitimachan, and Muskogean languages.