As the focus in southeastern archaeology shifts away from large scale hierarchical analyses in favor of agency based approaches, our understanding of Mississippian settlements has changed. This research is an attempt to fill the “fuzzy gap” in Mississippian archaeological literature left by decades of research premised on Neo-evolutionary models and theories. In this thesis, I present my case study on Riverfront Village, a small Mississippian “hamlet” located in the Savannah River Valley. Through an analysis of subterranean pit features, I present a new feature classification scheme open to variability, and address how variations within the practice of subterranean storage relate to social complexity.

Research focusing on the political economy of Mississippian mound centers in the middle Savannah River valley has prompted a reevaluation of current interpretations regarding societal complexity. I conclude the clearest expression of classic Mississippian riverine-adaptation is evident at centers immediately below the Fall Line with their political ties to chiefdom centers in the Piedmont, and especially Etowah. By contrast, those centers on the interior Coastal Plain were politically autonomous with minimal signatures in social ranking. The scale of appropriated labor and resulting level of surplus production, necessitated by upland settlement on the Aiken Plateau, fostered social contradictions making communally-oriented and decentralized societies more sustainable than hierarchical forms.