So in my research of the Town Creek group - hopefully the early Mississippian group will be my thesis people - I come across this picture of one of the Siouan burials on the site. The Siouans were a different culture group (made up of different tribes) that moved into Town Creek after the Mississippian inhabitants had left. You can tell this from a number of things - one of them is through burial practices. The Mississippian group buried their dead in a slightly flexed (usually the lower limbs were folded or bent) or completely extended position along cardinal directions (some angle of N-S) with their heads angled East or West.
The Siouans buried their dead in the fetal position, completely flexed. While a lot of Southeastern US groups buried their dead in this position, the interesting thing about this picture is the clay cover that retained the impression of the skeleton. The really interesting thing is that another blogger (http://gulahiyi.blogspot.com/2008/11/clay-sepulchres-along-cullasaja.html) posted some historical documents of Western Carolina settlers finding burials with clay lids. I had originally thought that those reports were anomalies, now it looks like, for the Siouan groups, it was a common practice.
(Picture is from the master's thesis of Martha Graham)
2 comments:
I know at Warren Wilson and Garden Creek they were burried flexed and mainly facing west. Warren Wilson had them burried under the house and somewhere on a "Pisgah" site one was burried under the hearth. I wonder if it was a branch of a larger tribe. Yamasee, maybe? Just a guess.
That is I wonder about Town Creek being a branch of the Yamasee.
I think maybe the Warren Wilson moved to the Lower Towns or went and joined the Middle Towns...But then it occurs to me they may have went to the over hill towns.
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