[...]... time at the University of North Carolina (and beyond) I also want to thank the reviewers, Barry Lewis and Lynne Sullivan, and the staff of The University of Alabama Press for all their excellent suggestions This is a greatly improved work thanks to the efforts of all these folks The research presented here received funding from several sources The Center for the Study of the American South at the University. .. Schematic map of possible Teal phase architectural elements Schematic map of the early Town Creek phase occupation Schematic map of the terminal early Town Creek phase occupation Histogram of burial density in early Town Creek phase structures Schematic map of the late Town Creek Leak phase occupation Histogram of late Town Creek- Leak phase structures by burial density Schematic map of the late Leak... hindered in many cases by the limited excavation of contemporaneous contexts within the same community In the research presented here, some of the community-level assumptions attributed to the appearance of Mississippian mounds are tested against the archaeological record of the Town Creek site the remains of a town located at the northeastern edge of the geographic extent of Mississippian sites (Figure... (1992) proposed a sequence of phases—Teal, Town Creek, and Leak—for the Mississippian period in the vicinity of Town Creek based on his excavations at the Leak and Teal sites The ceramic content of these phases has been refined based on seriations of 11 assemblages from the Leak, Payne, Teal, and Town Creek sites (Boudreaux 2005:55–59) The temporal spans of the Teal, Town Creek, and Leak phases as presented... Southeast Archie Smith and the staff at Town Creek Indian Mound State Historic Site have been helpful and encouraging throughout my research Steve Davis of the Research Laboratories of Archaeology at the University of North Carolina put an incredible amount of effort into organizing the materials from Town Creek, especially the photographs and the site map The occupational history of Town Creek could not have... in the Southeast PREV IOUS RESE ARCH AT TOW N CREEK Town Creek is located in the southern Piedmont of North Carolina, opposite a bend of the Little River near the town of Mt Gilead in Montgomery County (Figure 1.5) It has figured prominently in North Carolina archaeology since the late 1930s According to Ward and Davis (1999:131): The Town Creek site, like a powerful magnet, has drawn the attention of. .. into the North Carolina Piedmont and the subsequent displacement of indigenous groups According to Coe (1952:308): “One of the best archeological records of the movement of a people in the southeast is that of the Pee Dee Culture It moved into the upper Pee Dee River Valley with household and baggage about the middle of the Sixteenth Century, forcing the Uwharrie descendants into the hills of the Piedmont.”... used the materials from Town Creek to define the Pee Dee focus The interpretation that he offered then was that Town Creek represented a village occupied by a group of people who had moved into the area from the south during the mid-sixteenth century Pee Dee culture was so different from the others that had been identified in the area that Coe was convinced it represented the movement of people from the. .. buildings, Town Creek would have had at least four of these distinctive structures Another reason to think that the exterior patterns do not represent the walls of roofed structures is that the inner patterns are poor candidates for roof supports The postholes in the inner circular patterns at Town Creek are comparable to those of the outer patterns regarding their spacing and diameters In contrast, the postholes... present at Town Creek One consists of a single circular pattern of posts approximately 30 ft in diameter The other type consists of two concentric circular arrangements of posts that are approximately 30 ft and 60 ft in diameter One possible interpretation of the two concentric patterns is that the outer circle represents the wall of the structure and the inner the remains of an interior roof support . alt="" The Archaeology of Town Creek A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication The Archaeology of Town Creek EDMOND A. BOUDREAUX THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS Tuscaloosa Copyright © 2007 The University. against the archaeological record of the Town Creek site— the remains of a town located at the northeastern edge of the geographic extent of Mississippian sites (Figure 1.1). In particular, the. Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Caro- lina provided a grant that partially supported the production of a geographic information systems map of Town Creek. Grants