Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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This page groups sacred sites by the story that first marks them as holy. Wikipedia notes that "as described in the Bible's Book of Exodus, Moses was instructed to remove his shoes before approaching the burning bush, as the ground was considered holy." Browsing this way lets a visitor see the founding story behind why a given site was set apart in the first place.

Facts
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
Platform-mound and plaza centres of the maize-farming societies of the North American Southeast and mid-continent, built between roughly 1000 and 1600 CE, in which the flat-topped mound, the open plaza and the ruler's residence formed one ceremonial and political arrangement. 2
Peoples and Traditions Covered
The descendants are living nations, among them the Muscogee (Creek), Chickasaw, Choctaw, Caddo, Osage and Quapaw. The emptying of the mound centres was a dispersal rather than a disappearance. 2
Origins
Whose Classification This Is
Mississippian is an archaeologists' label for a shared complex of maize agriculture, platform mounds and iconography. It is a period and a culture-type, not a people: the societies it covers spoke Muskogean, Siouan, Caddoan and other unrelated languages. 2
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Sacred Sites 1
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Mississippian Sacred Sites

This small group gathers a sacred site of the Mississippian culture, the mound-building societies of the North American Southeast and Midwest, whose great platform mounds and plazas, as at Cahokia, were the centres of a complex ceremonial and political order.

The browser will find the site the atlas classes here. The entry describes what is known of its religious and ceremonial role.

Originated In
Filter Results2 entries
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi
Timothy R. Pauketat, Viking, 2009on Mississippian towns and mounds
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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