Mound Arrangement

Mound Arrangement. . At least 29 mounds were built and used as platforms for important structures at Moundville. Their rectangular arrangement, roughly aligned with the four directions around a central plaza, shows us that these people planned this site before they built it.

Around AD 1050, people moved into the vicinity, building houses along the riverbank and ravines. As clan nobles centralized and consolidated power, they fostered the loyalty and allegiance of commoners living in the Black Warrior River Valley. They also developed plans to build and use Moundville as a governmental and religious capital. Starting around AD 1200, commoners built the entire center, including the palisade, completing it by AD 1300.

Genealogies traced through the mother's family ranked Mississippians as either nobles or commoners by birth. People also divided themselves into family clans. These clans were ranked by degrees of importance or status. Each family clan was probably assigned at least one pair of mounds around the plaza. The clan chief's house topped the larger mound of the pair; the smaller mound having a clan temple, mortuary house or craft workshop built there. This pairing of larger and smaller mounds is most pronounced in the western row of mounds in front of you.

The highest-ranking clan's ruler used the northernmost mounds. This paramount chief lived atop Mound B, mounds C, D and V serving political, religious, mortuary or domestic roles. Moving southward down the eastern and western sides, each clan's status decreased, the lowest ranking clans occupying those mounds at the site's southern end.