Theses and Dissertations

Keith A. Baca

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Rafferty, Janet

Date of Degree

5-3-2008

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Applied Anthroplogy

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work

Abstract

Distinctive Marksville-style pottery is characteristic of the Middle Woodland period (200 B.C. – A.D. 500) in the Lower Mississippi River Valley and adjacent regions. Marksville material is common in the Lower Mississippi Valley, and the scarcity of similar pottery in northeastern Mississippi and western Alabama has caused claims that Marksville pots were imported into those areas; however, they may have been locally made. To test these alternative possibilities, the elemental composition of some Marksville-style potsherds, other pottery, and clays from various archaeological sites spanning the above regions was characterized using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. The results show that the analyzed Marksville-style pottery shares similar elemental profiles with locally common wares and local clays in the sample, allowing the conclusion that all of these Marksville specimens were made in the regions where they were found.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/15017

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