Reverence for the Dead: Identifying and Interpreting Patterns in Mortuary Objects within the Hollywood Mound Site

Abstract

I will be exploring the origins and local use of foreign objects found at the Hollywood and Etowah Mound sites during the Mississippian period. Dedicatory offerings within these archaeological sites are known to have contained numerous ritual goods. Both of these sites will serve as points of comparison within this research. I will argue that a number of the artifacts at the Hollywood Mounds arrived from Etowah as a part of a larger trade network and that these items were subsequently used within ritualistic caches found in Mound B at Hollywood.