Subsistence and Social Change in the Lower Mississippi Valley: The Reno Brake and Osceola Sites, Louisiana

There are few systematic analyses of late prehistoric subsistence practices in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Nonetheless, traditional scenarios attribute the advent of large-scale social and political complexity during the Coles Creek (ca. A.C. 700-1200) and early Mississippi (ca. A.C. 1200-1500) periods to maize agriculture and a consequent food surplus. Subsistence studies, however, do not substantiate claims for intensive maize cultivation prior to A. C. 1000. The goal of the Osceola Project is to characterize subsistence practices and changes through time and to relate these patterns to innovations in social and political organization during the nearly 1500 years leading up to and including the Mississippi period. Information from several sites in the Tensas Basin of Louisiana points to a late Middle Woodland and early Late Woodland pattern of reliance on wild local foods, possibly supplemented by limited plant food production. Corn is found first in Late Coles Creek period contexts (ca. A.C. 1000-1200) but was not necessarily an important dietary staple. Data from the Osceola Project suggest that the initial construction of planned sites with large earthen mounds during the Coles Creek period predates the appearance of an intensified food production economy by at least several hundred years.