Term paper for Prof. Kent Vickery's Archaeology of the Ohio Valley course, Dept. of Anthropology, Unversity of Cincinnati, Winter 1981. Cleaned up a bit and submitted with graduate school applications, 1986. Otherwise unmodified.

unpublished paper

FUNCTIONAL CONSIDERATIONS OF MISSISIPIAN FORT DESIGN

Andrew D. Todd

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FUNCTIONAL CONSIDERATIONS OF MISSISIPIAN FORT DESIGN

draft of 1/20/86

During the mississipian period, a type of large fortified settlement emerged. A question arises; what enemy did the builders propose to use these forts to defend against? There are three possibilities; the first being surviving Woodland populations, the second being other mississipian groups, and the third being people of lower status in the group that built the fort.

The first possibility is that of defense against Woodlander attacks. It would be suggested by the fact that mississipians were expanding at the expense of Woodland groups. But had the Woodlanders the capacity to wage war? Larson contends that because of their dispersion over the landscape, they could not<1>. However he assumes that geographical dispersion is the same thing as social fragmentation. Alliances between tribes might permit the formation of armies. Alternatively, the Woodland groups might have engaged in raiding as distinct from assualt or siege. While Larson assumes that the attackers wanted to reduce the forts that they attacked<2>, there are other, less Clausewitzian possibilities. If they merely wanted to steal something , abduct a few women, and so forth, then numbers would have been less of a problem than if they had wanted to capture a settlement. While a raiding party would be outnumbered by the men of the settlement, if they moved fast enough, they might be long gone before the superior force stood to arms- unless there were a wall to slow them down.

The second possibility is that the walls were there to prevent the conquest of the settlement by another settlement or even by another larger polity. Larson points out that there were only limited areas suitable for the hoe agriculture practiced by the missisipians<3> . This would have represented a circumscribed environment. The result would have been competition for this land. To seize the land , it would have been necessary to seize the fort that commanded it.<4>

The population pressure that might have led to external warfare might also have led to increased class conflict within a settlement. For example, the elite, holding what reserves of food there were, might have to defend those reserves against everyone else in time of famine. Hence we have the third possibility; a wall to protect the elite and their belongings from social disorder.

If, then, we equate the functions of all walls, then we are no wiser than before. Walls vary in type. These variations in type result in differences in the tactics which must be used to take them. These differences in tactics are linked to variation in the kinds of groups that could carry them out. For example. a fort so designed that it's defenders must be starved out may be presumed to have been built for repelling an enemy who could do everything else but play the waiting game of maintaining a siege. By analyzing the relation between fort design , tactics, and social organization, we can infer what kind of group the fort was meant to defend against.

A palisade has essentialy two functions, the first being to delay an attacker's charge enough for the firepower of the defenders to be effective, and the second being to permit the defenders to fire an unwieldy weapon without exposing themselves to the attacker's fire

An important fact is that the bows which were most probably in use in the area at the time had an absolute range of about a hundred yards<5>.However the effective range, that at which it could be expected to hit a man, would be somewhat less. Larson, acting on the assumption that bastions would be spaced two effective bowshots apart, gives a figure of fifty feet.<6> His assumption is suspect as it would be necessary for the occupants of each bastion to be able to shoot at the base of the adjoining bastions. If this were not the case, the attackers could simply concentrate on the bastions ,reaching a protected position under the wall of the bastion, where the defender above could not bring fire to bear without exposing himself dangerously. Therefore one may assume that the effective range of the bow is thirty or forty yards. How long would it have taken an attacker to traverse those thirty or forty yards? The authors of the RCAF fitness plan,<7> whose standards would probably be too low for missisipian or Woodland groups, being geared towards inhabitants of an industrialized nation, feel that a man in good condition should be able to run a six-and-a-half to eight-minute mile as a daily exercise. At this rate, which , over short distances would cause no stress to speak of, an attacker should be able to sprint from outside range up to the archer within eight to ten seconds. This is time to loose off perhaps two arrows, one or both of which, fired at a moving target might miss. In short, without a palisade, it would be possible for the attackers to rush the defenders, whose short self-bows<8> would not have the range to decimate them early enough.

It is not practical to shoot a bow in prone position. In order to use the weapon, one must stand up, or at least, kneel, thus presenting a target. But, if one has a palisade, one can provide a loophole to shoot out of. As the attacker would presumably also have a bow of comparable quality, in the absence of something providing cover for the defender , he could shoot back, thereby supressing the defenders fire.

Given that the arrow would be fired from the level of the chin, only the head of the defender would be exposed through the loophole. at a rough estimate this is something like one tenth of the area of the target presented by the body of the unprotected attacker . It is of course possible that the attacker might have used a protective shield. However, if fifty yards is effective range for shooting at a man-sized target, then what must be the range for shooting at something as small as a head.? We must assume that to get hits at a target of that size would have required shooting at extremely close range. At that range an arrow might have considerable penetrating power. According to Pope,<9> obsidian pointed arrows fired from a thirty-five-pound bow at ten yards could penetrate two layers of tanned deerskin and four inches of meat, continuing for thirty inches or so. In view of this a leather shield would probably be inadequate , and a wooden one would be required . This would be a relatively heavy affair and not the sort of thing that could be run with.

Further the most important defenders, those covering the curtain walls from the bastions, would be even harder to hit. The thickness of the wall would block a line of sight from any shooting position except immediately under the wall , caught in a cross fire between the two bastions. Even if a protective shield for the attacker were possible under other conditions, what would be needed here would be something of the order of Leonardo Da Vinci's contraptions.

It would not be possible for the attacking archers to have taken up positions directly under the adjoining bastion, where they would be masked from one direction at least, because they would have needed to be closer to their target.

Thus an archery battle would have been extremely one-sided in favour of the defenders of the fort.

As may be seen from the limited performances of the bows likely to have been found in the eastern United States, an attacker would have to be killed immediately under the wall. Indeed,the best opportunity to get a decent shot at him would in all likelihood be when he was attempting to get a scaling- ladder in position or possibly to set the wall afire. It does not seem feasible that bows could have been shot at such an attacker from directly above without taking excessive risks, so one would expect that most if not all of the defenders' fire would come from the bastions. Therefore the size of the bastions (more particularly the length of that portion of the bastion running perpendicular to the curtain wall and thus best suited to accomodate loopholes pointing in the right direction) would be a measure of the number of archers mounted in it, would serve as a measure of the size of an attack which the builders intended to deal with.

We can determine by finding out whether the fortifications were growing more formidible, or, alternatively, growing less formidible or simply stagnating, whether conditions were worsening or improving. Now as both external warfare with other settlements and internal social conflict would increase over time as population increased this would have led to more rugged walls. On the other hand, the woodlander problem would have tended to decrease over time as the woodland groups were driven out or enslaved. This would have led possibly to progressively weaker fortifications, or more probably to the progressive decay of an initial wall, until it was torn down as a public nuisance and not replaced.

Moats have multiple functions which can be summed up as compelling a siege. While a moat does tend to delay an attacker and to hold him at such a distance that he is exposed to archers shooting from the curtain wall and to prevent the approach of siege engines<9a>, it also tends to saturate the ground beneath it with water. This makes tunnelling impossible, as the hole would promptly be flooded.For non-moated forts the classic method of breaching the wall is to tunnel under it, hollow out a suitable space, then set a fire to burn out the timbers, with which the attacker has shored up the roof , thus causing the ground under the wall to subside and the wall to collapse. Therefore against anyone with the time and patience to dig the necessary tunnel, a simple palisade is hardly impregnable. As the attacker probably has ,provided that this is a siege rather than a raid, access to an ample number of men (if his numbers were not ample the defender would have sought battle instead of retreating behind the wall) he can use this method. Given this, it is not surprising that Larson <10> finds that "there is strong evidence to suggest that moats were an almost regular accompaniment of the palisades)". This is to be expected in view of the fact that a palisade without a moat is only a delaying device, whereas one with a moat could hold out as long as the provisions lasted. As a good proportion of the diet would have consisted of corn and beans, which store well, it would have been simple enough to build up a reserve of food for such a case. If the defenders took the trouble to destroy whatever could not be brought inside the walls, they could compel the attacker to bring his suplies in from a distance. Thus, at the relevent place and time, the defender would probably have at least as much food.

CAHOKIA

I shall now analyze the palisade at Cahokia in view of the preceding.(11) There are three palisades deriving from different dates along the same line, as follows.

Anderson makes no reference to a moat.Therefore one must conclude that the palisades were not meant to stand off a full-scale siege.Anderson feels that this is merely an inner line defense,(12) and that there was an outer ring of fortifications. But an outer ring of fortifications, if built according to a typical Mississippian pattern, would be impregnable in the absence of widespread disaffection of the inhabitants. And this, perhaps, provides the explanation.Cahokia was a state-level society with a fair amount of class stratification.The sacrificed young women in the burial on Monk's Mound are indicative of the power of life or death, (13) as well as sufficient class stratification to have lower orders , who could safely be sacrificed without a revolution breaking out.Even so there would probably have been considerable tension and the elite might have wanted some protection against outbreaks of violence. These would have been limited in scope, of course,or no fortification would help much, as in a full-blown revolution,the masses could simply stop producing food for the elite.

It seems possible, however, that the society might have been held together by giving some of the masses power to tyranize over others.This graded pecking order is fairly widely used. If this were the case, the bulk of the populace might have had some grudge against the rebels, which would lead them to crush the rebellion. In this case all that would be required of the fortifications would be that they hold off the mob until help arrived. Given this purpose of the palisade and given the increasing size and strength of the bastions, it would appear that class conflict was growing worse.

If there were a citadel proper against an outside attacker, one would either expect it to have a moat or expect it to be formed by puting palisades on the slopes of the mounds,in the manner of the Norman castle.

An alternate possibility is that the palisade was for defense against woodland invaders. If this was the case , then we would expect to find that the wall was so laid out as to enclose the entire settlement. As the Woodland raiders would be depending on speed and stealth, there would not be time to retreat behind the wall before they did whatever they had in mind to do.While it would probably not be feasable to enclose the fields, every effort would probably be made to enclose all houses and storage buildings. However, what in fact seems to be the case is that the pallisade encloses only a minor portion of the site.(14) This would be utterly useless against raiders, as they would simply channel their depredations towards the protected parts of the site.

There is evidence that houses were demolished to make room for the wall. (15) If the purpose of the wall was to protect against Woodland raids, it would have been routed close enough to the edge of the settlement to go out and around houses. The demolition of houses implies that the wall went through a relatively high density area. Now a relatively high density area would be one of the least likely to be outside the walls.

At Cahokia , the pallisade sequence is, on the whole, from weaker to stronger. This would seem to rule out the possibility that the palisades were built to prevent raiding by Woodland groups. When this is added to the unsuitabilty of the walls for repelling another town's bid for land and power, one is forced to the conclusion that the walls were built to cope with social disorder. This social disorder was apparently getting worse, as stronger and stronger fortifications were needed to contain it.

If Cahokia was expanding outward, this might have led to an increase in the social stratification, with a resulting increase in inter-class tensions. This may have led to the decline of Cahokia. An instructive parallel with Rome may be cited.Rome fell not so much because of the external attacks, but because social tensions had risen to such heights as to preclude the working of societal functions such as mobilizing for self-defense.

While it has been suggested that Cahokia was swamped by peoples displaced by the expansion of the Iroquois, this presents problems. As what seems to have been the only state in North America , Cahokia should have had the advantage over any other group, on logistic grounds alone. That it could not defend itself seems likely to have been a result of the tension between social classes who were unwilling to combine against the common enemy. In fact, it is possible that not all saw the 'common enemy' as a common enemy.

Thus it may be demonstrated that, given the details, of the design of a fortification, one can, through the principles of fortification design, reconstruct the tactics and thus the social organization of the groups concerned.

NOTES

1 . Larson,Lewis H , "Functional Considerations of Warfare in the Southeast During

the Mississippi Period," 1972, Am.Antiq-37 (3): pp. 383-392, p.390

2. Ibid. p.389.

3. Ibid. p.389.

4. Ibid. p.389.

5. Based on a rough estimate of the figures given by: Pope, Saxton T. : _Bows and Arrows_, 1962, U. of Calf. Press

6. Larson op.cit. p. 387

7. _Royal Canadian Air Force Exercise Plans for Physical Fitness_, crown copyright, Pocket Books,1972 pp. 150, 156,162

8. A bow made from a single wooden stave

9. Pope,op.cit. p. 55

9a. Ian Hogg, _The History of Forts and Castles_, Crescent Books, New York, 1985 p35. Hogg is referring to dry ditches in this case but it applies equally to moats( or wet ditches as he calls them)

10 Larson, op.cit. p. 384

11. Anderson, James: "A Cahokia Palisade Sequence", in: _Explorations into Cahokia Archaeology_, Bulletin 7, Illinois Archaeological Survey, ed. Melvin Fowler, pp. 89-99

12. Anderson, op.cit. p99.

13. Fowler, Melvin L.; _Cahokia; Ancient Capital of the Midwest_  1974, Addison-Wesley Module in Anthropology,#48, p.22

14. Anderson, op.cit. p.98

15. ibid. p.97-98.