Short URL

About Community Life

 

Other Ancient Moundbuilders of Arkansas areas:

Loading, please wait...

A mural in the exhibit gallery of Parkin State Park depicts life at Parkin in the 1500s.
(Courtesy Arkansas Department of Parks & Tourism).

 

When the Plum Bayou people of the Toltec site, and other groups in the Mississippi Valley, combined the domesticated plants of the eastern agricultural complex of North America with corn and beans from Mexico, they laid the foundation for the Mississippian way of life, a way of life based solidly on agriculture, rather than on gathering wild plant foods.

From A.D. 900 on, more places like Toltec began to appear in the Mississippi Valley, from Memphis north to St. Louis, and Toltec itself was soon overshadowed. Between A.D. 900 and A.D. 1200, the people of this area, whom archeologists call the Mississippians, went from being part-time gardeners who still depended on the old reliable wild foods such as nuts, seeds, meat and fish, to being almost full-time farmers. This greatly expanded the population.Since the Mississippians were primarily farmers, they were far more dependent on their fields of corn, beans and squash than any people previously.

 

 

This image was taken from Henry Clyde
Shetrone's book The Mound-Builders,
copyright 1930. The life-size figure depicted
here was executed for the Ohio State Museum
and is the first known attempt to portray the builders
of the ancient mounds as they appeared in life.