Straightforward site reports, framed within research designs and encompassing detailed cataloging and analyses of data, are always welcome additions to the archaeological literature of the southeastern United States and the Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV). This is particularly true for sites that have been known for some time, but for which very little detailed information is widely available. The Mazique site, located on Second Creek some 16 km south of Natchez, Mississippi, is just such a locale. Although the first map of Mazique was produced in 1852 by Benjamin L. C. Wailes, and although professional archaeologists have visited the site since the 1930s, it was not until the efforts of Daniel LaDu and other archaeologists affiliated with the University of Alabama's Gulf Coast Survey (GCS) in 2012 and 2013 that the true nature of the site was revealed. This publication is a revised version of LaDu's 2016 PhD dissertation at the University of Alabama, and it is based on those GCS investigations.
Mazique once consisted of three mounds situated around a central plaza ringed by a circular living/activity area. The site was known to contain both a Coles Creek culture occupation of the Coles Creek period (AD 750–1200) and a later Plaquemine culture occupation of the Mississippi period (AD 1200–1700). It has long been unclear, however, which of the two cultural manifestations was more prevalent at the site, what the precise dates of those occupations are, and whether or not there is evidence of a direct transition from Coles Creek culture to Plaquemine culture. Such a transition had been postulated previously due either to influences of southward-spreading Mississippian culture on resident Coles Creek populations (the “External Stimulus Model”) or to gradual localized development, with Plaquemine culture representing the “logical outgrowth” of Coles Creek culture (the “Internal Development Model”; pp. 10–11). Consequently, recent GCS investigations were designed to not only learn about Mazique proper but also attempt to determine if either of those two models applied to Mazique and to other Coles Creek and Plaquemine sites in the surrounding Natchez Bluffs area of southwestern Mississippi.
LaDu and the GCS excavated shovel tests across the entire site, and they placed 1 × 2 m and 2 × 2 m excavation units and trenches in and near Mounds A and B. These excavations produced 8,932 plain and 935 decorated potsherds, plus a very small number of diagnostic stone tools (six arrowheads and one dart point). The vast majority of the pottery, both decorated and plain, indicated a major occupation of the Balmoral phase of the late Coles Creek period (AD 1000–1100). Excavations demonstrated that both extant mounds as well as a low terrace north of Mound A were built entirely during the Balmoral phase. As noted by LaDu, “Mazique's engineers seem to have had a clear vision in mind regarding what a proper Coles Creek mound and plaza complex should look like and they adhered to this architectural vision implicitly” (p. 209). These findings also indicate that there was no architectural input from those few people who may have lived at the site during the succeeding Gordon phase (terminal Coles Creek) and Anna phase (early Plaquemine) occupations.
As it turns out, Mazique was not the place to resolve questions about the Coles Creek–Plaquemine transition, given that its main occupation was too early and its later occupations only marginally represented. LaDu therefore examined other sites in the Natchez Bluffs area, mainly Smith Creek (22WK526) and Feltus (22JE500), as well as additional locales in the Yazoo Basin of Mississippi and the Tensas Basin of Louisiana. LaDu concludes that the transition was the result of both internal change and external influences. In the Lower Yazoo Basin and the Upper Tensas Basin, there is evidence of direct contact with Mississippian culture during late Coles Creek times. In the Lower Tensas Basin and the Natchez Bluffs, such evidence is lacking. Accordingly, “Neither the External Stimulus nor the Internal Development model offers a unifying explanation of Plaquemine origins at Mazique, in the Natchez Bluffs region, or within the LMV as a whole . . . I [LaDu] believe External Stimulus and Internal Development actually denote complementary forces at work within a broader network of contact and communication” (p. 213). This reviewer agrees with the dual explanation for the development of Plaquemine culture but would add that external stimulus is clearly reflected at sites in nearby southeastern Louisiana and along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, having derived from the Mobile Bay region and Mississippian settlements such as Bottle Creek (1BA2), the major Pensacola-culture mound center in southern Alabama (Ian W. Brown, ed., Bottle Creek, University of Alabama Press, 2003).
If this reviewer has any concern about the report's interpretations, it is LaDu's argument that Mazique could be considered a “single-component Balmoral phase mound and plaza complex” (p. 214) with only very minor evidence of a subsequent Gordon phase occupation. Although there is no doubt that Mazique had a major Balmoral component, three of the six chipped stone arrowheads and potentially some of the pottery found during recent GCS excavations at the site, as well as one radiocarbon date from Mound A, suggest a slightly more substantial Gordon phase occupation (AD 1100–1200). Additionally, although most of the report's illustrations are of excellent quality, it is extremely difficult to read the lettering on the profile illustrations. Larger lettering would have served the publication well.
Overall, this important study should be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the prehistory of Mississippi and Louisiana, and it is a welcome contribution to LMV archaeology.
