The Site

The Feltus site is an early civic-ceremonial center dating to the Coles Creek period (AD 700—1100). Located in the bluffs approximately 12 miles north of the modern city of Natchez, Mississippi, the site originally had four platform mounds surrounding an open plaza. Previous UNC field school excavations in the plaza and under the mounds indicate that the site was a location of ritual feasting before the mounds were constructed. Moreover, excavations into the three extant mounds have helped us to determine when and how the mounds were built.

This summer’s field school will likely focus on the summit of Mound B. We expect to uncover a portion of a burned, mound-top building as well as associated pottery, stone and food remains. Understanding how the mound summits were used will allow us to make important interpretations about the sociopolitical structure of the group that gathered Feltus as well as the type of rituals that may have taken place there.