Chiefly power and food storage in southeastern North America

Recent research on late prehistoric and early historic Native American sites in southeastern North America reveals a series of changes in the nature of food storage activities. These alterations are related to changes in sociopolitical complexity and household organization, and shed light on the importance of storage in the emergence and collapse of complex, hierarchically-ranked societies in this region. It is argued that the ability of elites to control surplus foods and communal storage facilities played a major role in the emergence of chiefdoms in southeastern North America (c. AD 1000), and that the return of primary food storage to individual households during the Protohistoric and Historic periods (AD 1550-1750) played an important part in their collapse.