Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jasrep Early platform mound communalism and co-option in the American Southeast: Implications of shallow geophysics at Garden Patch Mound 2, Florida, USA Neill J. Wallis a, ⁎ , Victor D. Thompson b a Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, 1659 Museum Road, Gainesville, FL 32611-7800, United States of America b Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, 355 South Jackson Street, Baldwin Hall Room 250, UGA, Athens, GA 30602, United States of America ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Earthen mounds Ritual Remote sensing Shell mounds Social differentiation ABSTRACT Flat-topped platform mounds of earth, shell, or both, were constructed for millennia in the American Southeast andbecamepervasiveduringtheMississippiperiod(ca.1000CEto1500)aselevatedsurfacesforbuildingsthat served as temples, council houses, and residences of the elite. The sub-structural functions of Mississippian platform mounds departed significantly from those of most platforms that preceded them, which lacked buildings or enclosures on summits and served primarily as stages for communal feasts and other ceremonial events. The transition between these alternative functions of platform mounds is critical to understanding the emergenceofsocialdifferentiationandhierarchicalpowerintheregion.Herewelooktothelastcenturiesofthe Middle Woodland period (ca. 200BCE to 600CE) as a key moment of change in Florida and the American Southeast,andpresentresultsofinvestigationsoftheplatformmoundatGardenPatch,acivic-ceremonialcenter on the northern Florida Gulf coast, as a prominent example. Ground-penetrating radar, magnetometry, re- sistivity, and limited test excavation indicate a series of construction stages reflecting communal feasting and ceremony as well as a summit structure that belies collective control. We argue that these features denote social tensions between communal and exclusive functions and rights of access to the platform mound and corre- sponding social, political, and spiritual powers in the context of the earliest aggregated villages of the region. 1. Introduction Flat-topped mounds are an enduring legacy of Native American constructed landscapes of the American Southeast. Once believed to be a distinctive hallmark of late pre-Columbian Mississippian societies (ca. 1000CE to 1500) (e.g., Ford and Willey, 1941), platform mound con- struction is now recognized as beginning several millennia earlier then fluorescing during the Middle Woodland period (ca. 1CE to 600) (e.g., Gibson and Shenkel, 1988:12; Jefferies, 1994; Kassabaum, 2018; Knight, 1990; Lindauer and Blitz, 1997; Pluckhahn, 1996). Generally, platform mounds are testament to significant amounts of coordinated human labor required to manually acquire and transport thousands, or in some cases hundreds of thousands, of cubic meters of earth or shell andcarefullyassembletheminspecificwaysthatwererituallyapposite and structurally viable, then maintain and care for these constructions over time. How labor forces were organized toward the construction of mounds, and how much labor was required, have been the subject of debate (e.g., Blitz and Livingood, 2004; Milner, 2004; Muller, 1997:272–274; Nassaney, 1996; Pauketat, 2007:98–99; Sherwood and Kidder, 2011), as have the cosmological and sociopolitical significance of the practice of mound building and the materialized monuments themselves (e.g., Alt, 2011; Blitz and Lorenz, 2006; Gibson and Carr, 2004; Kidder and Sherwood, 2018; Knight, 1989, 2001; Pauketat, 2008). Generally agreed upon is the notion that to some degree platform mounds are instantiations of mythic origins and ceremonial cycles of world renewal that reflect the cosmology of the builders. Ethnohistory is suggestive of a close linkage between quadrilateral platform mounds, in particular, and the widespread North American “earth island” con- cept of “the earth as a four-sided construction afloat in a primordial sea” (Knight, 2010:4; see also Knight, 1989, 1986). Moreover, the practice of mound building was central to the meaning of platform mounds, a truth demonstrated by the ritual cycles that characterized construction sequences. Numerous stages of building were typical, as was purification of old surfaces by decommissioning (e.g., dismantling and burning structures) and burial. Although the timing and tempo https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.01.022 Received 4 September 2018; Received in revised form 3 January 2019; Accepted 20 January 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: nwallis@flmnh.ufl.edu (N.J. Wallis). Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 24 (2019) 276–289 2352-409X/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T