Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (443 page)

Late Woodland Stage chiefdom-based farming cultures living in the southeastern parts of North America in the period
c.
ad 700–1500. The origins of the tradition are a matter of some debate, there being evidence of continuity from the Hopewellian Culture as well as some evidence for the diffusion or adoption of cultural traits from Mexico and Mesoamerica.
The standard plan of Mississippian settlements comprises platform mounds supporting temples and residences for the elite arranged around an open plaza and surrounded by numerous dwellings. Most settlements were situated on the floodplains of major rivers, but there were also some shifting farmsteads in adjacent uplands. Mississippian communities used shell-tempered pottery, including painted and effigy bowls, and a bow with arrows tipped by triangular chipped stone points. Maize and squash were cultivated in river valleys, and after ad 1200 beans were grown too. Hunting and fishing were also sources of food, as was the harvesting of wild food such as nuts.
Their religious system appears to have been devoted to maintaining the fertility of the land, centring on a god with solar attributes and associated with fire. Ceremonies at the mound-top temples were connected with the supernatural, expressions of ancestral obligation, success in food production, and burial rites for social leaders. Society was stratified and local chiefs appear to have been rulers of autonomous groups. Thus the Mississippian embraces a wide range of essentially localized groups: the Middle Mississippian, Fort Ancient, South Appalachian Mississippian, Plaquemine Mississippian, Caddoan Mississippian, and the Oneota. In the later phases, increasing competition for land seems to have provoked an increasing warfare, the fortification of settlements, and the practice of beheading and scalping.

 
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A tax or duty exacted from citizens of the Inca empire by the state, payable in the form of labour.

 
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A short-lived
HURRIAN
kingdom of the mid 2nd millennium
bc
in the uplands between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The capital of Wassukkanni has not yet been identified, but Mitanni traded on near equal terms with Egypt and the Hittite empire for more than a century. The kingdom was overthrown by the Hittites in
c.
1370 bc.

 
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A temple dedicated to the god
MITHRAS
.

 
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A Near Eastern god found in the Persian world and Asia Minor who also assumed considerable importance in the Roman world, especially amongst soldiers and in military circles. Mithras is portrayed as a young man wearing a Phrygian cap, usually crouched on the back of a bull which he is killing by a thrust to the neck with a short sword. David Ulansey has convincingly identified Mithras with Perseus and shown how the tauroctony embodies cosmic symbolism relating to a secret knowledge of the precession of the heavens and Mithras himself as the ruler of the cosmos (
kosmokrator). Mithraism was a mystery cult that flourished alongside early Christianity and showed many similarities to it. As in all mystery cults the rites were kept secret such that the truth and benefits came only to initiated believers who had to pass through a series of seven grades of initiation. The disciple also underwent baptism, took part in the re-enactment of a sacred meal, and bore the seal of his discipleship on his body.

 
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The programme of works developed to conserve, protect, record, and/or investigate archaeological structures and deposits that are threatened by wholesale or partial destruction through some kind of construction work, quarrying, or natural erosion. Such proposals may, for example, include the use of particular foundation designs to minimize the impact of construction on buried deposits, or the use of open space to allow the in situ preservation of significant remains. Equally, a mitigation strategy may comprise rescue excavation and site-recording operations in advance of destruction.