Mississippi Administrative Code › Title 16 - History, Humanities and Arts › Part 3 - Historic Preservation Division › Chapter 12 - Mississippi Standards and Guidelines for Archaeological Investigations › Rule 16-3-12.5.3 - Historic Periods And Themes

Current through June 25, 2024
Agriculture (Farming)/Subsistence
This theme addresses the different strategies that cultures
				  develop to procure, process, and store food. Beyond the basic studies of site
				  function based on the analysis of a site location, the tool types from the
				  site, and the food remains recovered, this theme also explores the
				  reconstruction of past habitats from the perspective of their potential for
				  human exploitation, caloric studies on the procurement and processing of food,
				  and subsistence strategies over time within and between neighboring regions.
Agriculture specifically refers to the process and
				  technology of cultivating soil, producing crops, and raising livestock and
				  plants. Property types for the subsistence/agriculture theme include resources
				  related to food production such as prehistoric villages, small family
				  farmsteads (urban and rural), tenant and sharecropping sites; large plantations
				  with representative or important collections of farm and outbuildings (such as
				  slave quarters, kitchens, icehouses, etc.), and other agricultural complexes
				  such as agri-businesses; sites or properties associated with meat or fruit
				  processing; storage facilities; agricultural fields; animal hunting and kill
				  sites, stockyard, barn, chicken coop, hunting corral, hunting run, or apiary;
				  fishing facilities or sites; horticultural facilities; agricultural
				  outbuildings; and irrigation facilities.
Antebellum Mississippi
This period explores the decades leading up to the Civil
				  War, a time during which Mississippi witnessed a succession of profound, and
				  often wrenching, changes that remade the state. Through a combination of
				  assimilationist programs, debts accrued at federal trading houses, treaties,
				  and warfare, the United States had gained control of loose pieces of native
				  land, but many native nations-including the Choctaw and Chickasaw-remained
				  entrenched on their lands until the passage of the Indian Removal Act (1830),
				  allowed the national government to purchase the lands of native confederacies
				  and nations residing east of the Mississippi River and to relocate these people
				  to federal lands west of the river.
The years between 1832 and 1854 saw the largest population
				  growth in Mississippi's history, and more counties organized than at any other
				  time. Numerous railroads were chartered, sea-going steamboats came upriver to
				  Natchez, and many internal improvements to travel were made. New lands opening,
				  the rise of cotton as a major cash crop, and the means to transport goods
				  easily all led to growing prosperity for the state.
However, by 1840 the bubble burst and the state was in
				  financial straits. This "panic" did not last long, and by the 1850s the state
				  was again experiencing prosperity.
However, during this time there was growing strife between
				  the northern and southern parts of the state, mainly over the issue of slavery.
				  This mirrored a larger debate in the entire United States. The Mexican War in
				  1849 aided the pro-slavery party, but the admission of California as a free
				  state in 1850 put the abolitionists ahead in the national congress. When
				  Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the pro-slavery states began to move
				  towards succession from the Union, and in 1861 Mississippi voted to leave.
Cemetery/Funerary
This theme concerns the investigation of grave sites for
				  demographic data to study population composition, health, and mortality within
				  prehistoric and historic societies. Property types include cemeteries, burial
				  site(s)/ossuary; graves and burials such as a burial cache, burial mound, or
				  grave; and mortuaries such as a mortuary site, funeral home, cremation area, or
				  crematorium.
Civil Rights
This period explores the American Civil Rights Movement in
				  the late 1950s and 1960s represents a pivotal event in world history. The
				  positive changes it brought to voting and civil rights continue to be felt
				  throughout the United States and much of the world. Although this struggle for
				  black equality was fought on hundreds of different "battlefields" throughout
				  the United States, many observers at the time described the state of
				  Mississippi as the most racist and violent. Mississippi's lawmakers, law
				  enforcement officers, public officials, and private citizens worked long and
				  hard to maintain the segregated way of life that had dominated the state since
				  the end of the Civil War in 1865. In contrast, the larger Civil Rights Movement
				  can attribute its success to the tactic of nonviolence contrasting with the
				  exposure of violence-prone policemen, sheriffs, vigilante groups, and other
				  defenders of the status quo.
Depression Era
This period explores the collapse of the U.S. stock market
				  in 1929, signaling the onset of the Great Depression, a worldwide economic
				  calamity that would persist through the 1930s, forcing farm families deeper
				  into poverty, debt, illness, hunger and despair. Planters, tenants, and
				  sharecroppers watched helplessly as farm income dwindled from $191 million in
				  1929 to a mere $41 million in 1932. Moreover, any discussion of the farmer's
				  dilemma after 1930 must include crimes of nature: boll weevils; the floods of
				  1927, 1932, and 1936; and the great southern drought of 1930-31.
The state's tiny manufacturing sector also suffered. Between
				  1929 and 1932, 1,165 small plants, more than 800 of them sawmills, ceased
				  operations. The number of jobs in lumbering, fishing, manufacturing, and
				  railroading dropped from 52,000 in 1929 to 28,000 in 1932, and payrolls dropped
				  from $42 million to $14 million. In turn, the lack of consumer purchasing power
				  devastated the state's retail business. With agriculture, manufacturing, and
				  retail sales languishing, the banking system-never one of the nation's
				  strongest-began to buckle. Property values shrank to their lowest level since
				  1850, payrolls dropped, and savings deposits fell by 50 percent from 1930 to
				  1933. Bank failures began in 1930, when fifty-nine banks went under, followed
				  by fifty-six in 1931 and twelve in 1932.
Unemployment figures fluctuated throughout the decade. Some
				  indication of the serious nature of unemployment emerges from the fact that by
				  June 1943, when the New Deal's Works Progress Administration was liquidated,
				  $117 million had been allocated for the state, mostly for wages. Significant
				  recovery did not begin until 1936, when Gov. Hugh L. White's Balance
				  Agriculture with Industry initiatives joined the massive injection of federal
				  money into Mississippi by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal ($450 million
				  from 1933 to 1939). The onset of World War II brought robust economic growth
				  and a modicum of social reform that neither Mississippi's political leaders nor
				  New Deal largesse could achieve.
Education
This theme relates to the process of conveying or acquiring
				  knowledge or skills through systematic instruction, training, or study, whether
				  through public or private efforts. Potential site types include schools (single
				  or multiple structures, trade or technical facilities), academies, research
				  facilities, colleges (universities, community, junior colleges), libraries,
				  education-related resources (dormitory, housing, boarding school, etc.). In
				  general, little archaeological material is found related to educational
				  activities at typical domestic assemblages. On school sites in particular, many
				  objects associated with school life (notebooks, paper, etc.) are not likely to
				  have survived while other objects such as lunchboxes, backpacks, books, etc.
				  were taken to and from school and will most likely not be found within the
				  archaeological record. Typical finds include items pencils and erasers,
				  inkwells, desk frames, chalk and slate, fountain ink pen that when combined
				  with archaeological excavation, oral histories and documentary sources provide
				  insights into access to and extent of instructional and/or vocational training.
Ethnicity/Immigration
This theme explores the material manifestations of ethnic
				  diversity and the movement and interaction of people of different ethnic
				  heritages through time and space in Mississippi. While all property types may
				  be associated with this theme, properties that exemplify the ethos of immigrant
				  or ethnic groups, the distinctive cultural traditions of peoples that migrated
				  and/or were transplanted to Mississippi (i.e. Asian-American, African-American,
				  French, German, Spanish, etc.), or the dominant aspirations of an ethnic group
				  are of particular interest (i.e. Blues). Also related to this theme are sites
				  associated with persons of distinctive ethnic heritage who made a significant
				  contribution to our history and culture in any field of human endeavor.
Historic Indian
This theme addresses and recognizes American Indian tribal
				  groups with historic associations with Mississippi, the most recognizable
				  amongst them being the Natchez, Choctaw, and Chickasaw. With the arrival of
				  Spanish, French, and English settlers in the New World, native societies in the
				  region connected with the Atlantic market economy, a source for guns, blankets,
				  and many other trade items. Europeans offered these trade materials in exchange
				  for Indian slaves and deerskins, currencies that radically altered the
				  relationships between tribal groups. Smallpox and other diseases followed along
				  the trading paths. Colonial competition between the French and English helped
				  spark the Natchez rebellion, the Chickasaw-French wars, the Choctaw civil war,
				  and a half-century of client warfare between the Choctaws and Chickasaws. The
				  Treaty of Paris in 1763 forced Mississippi's pro-French tribes to move west of
				  the Mississippi River. The Diaspora included the Tunicas, Houmas, Pascagoulas,
				  Biloxis, and a portion of the Choctaw confederacy. In the early nineteenth
				  century, Mississippi's remaining Choctaws and Chickasaws faced a series of
				  treaties with the United States government that ended in destitution and
				  removal. Despite the intense pressures of European invasion and U.S. duplicity,
				  the Mississippi tribes survived by adapting and contributing to their rapidly
				  evolving world.
Industrial/Commercial
This theme explores the technology and process of managing
				  materials, labor, and equipment to produce and trade goods, services, and
				  commodities. Included in this theme are activities related to the extraction,
				  production, and processing of materials such as quarrying, mining,
				  manufacturing, lumbering, technology, electronics, pottery, textiles, food
				  processing, distilling, fuel, building materials, tools, transportation,
				  seafood, and many other industries. Industrial site types include quarries,
				  mills (grist, carding, textile, and woodworking), factories, distilleries,
				  shipyards, mines, forges and furnaces, kilns, laboratories, power plants, dams,
				  tanneries, village shops, and other small crafts and industrial sites.
				  Commercial site types include businesses, professional, organizational, and
				  financial institutions, and specialty stores; and department stores,
				  restaurants, warehouses, and trade sites.
Landscape/Landscape Features
This theme explores the historic, cultural, scenic, visual,
				  and design qualities of cultural landscapes, emphasizing the reciprocal
				  relationships affecting the natural and the human-built environment.
				  Investigations include studies into spatial organizational patterns, land use,
				  response to natural features, circulation networks, boundaries, vegetation,
				  clustered arrangements of buildings, fences, and paths, structures, and
				  small-scale landscape elements. Associated property types include not only
				  deliberately designed or maintained landscapes such as parking lots, parks,
				  plazas, gardens, street furniture, and objects, conservation areas, and rural
				  historic districts but also unoccupied land, underwater sites, and natural
				  features such as a mountain, valley, promontory, tree, river, island, pond, or
				  lake.
Military
This theme relates to the system of defending the territory
				  and sovereignty of a people and encompasses all military activities, battles,
				  strategic locations, and events important in military history. It includes
				  property types related to arms production and storage (i.e. magazine, gun
				  manufactory, or armory); fortifications (prehistoric [palisaded village] and
				  historic [batteries, bunkers]); military facilities; battle sites
				  (battlefield); coast guard facilities (lighthouse, coast guard station, pier,
				  dock, etc.); naval facilities; air facilities (landing strips, hangers, etc.);
				  and prisoner of war camps/locales.
Included within this theme are Civil War resources. Given
				  Mississippi's location along the strategic Mississippi River made the state a
				  scene of a number of major battles inside its boundaries or nearby. The names
				  Vicksburg, Jackson, Raymond, Port Gibson, Corinth, Iuka, and Meridian resonate
				  in Civil War historical writing as do nearby Shiloh, New Orleans, Memphis, and
				  Port Hudson.
Post Reconstruction
This period explores the political and social climate
				  immediately following the end Reconstruction in 1875 through the turn of the
				  twentieth century. Due to a number of factors, including the physical
				  devastation of the various military campaigns across the state, the freeing of
				  the slaves, and the political corruption of the Reconstruction era,
				  Mississippi's economy was in ruins by the 1870s. Poverty was rampant across the
				  state and affected all social classes, particularly newly freed blacks, and
				  many farmers went bankrupt. The practices of tenant farming and sharecropping
				  became widespread and entrenched in the state, further degrading the economy
				  and increasing the level of individual poverty.
The loss of the slave labor force throughout the South,
				  combined with severe financial setbacks suffered by Southern states as the
				  defeated party, necessitated changes in the overall economic system, giving
				  rise to the development and growth of the tenant farming/sharecropping. The
				  reorganization that occurred was primarily based on changes in the relationship
				  between management and labor, and resulted in the broad dispersion of smaller,
				  individual farmsteads (share-croppers and tenant farmers) within the former
				  boundaries of the plantation. Former slaves and non-landholding whites
				  ultimately became a part of this new system wherein farmland was rented for
				  cash or a share of the seasonal yield. Shifts in settlement related to
				  plantation reorganization apparently occurred throughout the state.
The nucleated form of settlement found on antebellum
				  plantations continued to predominate until freedmen acquired (1) freedom from
				  direct control and continuous supervision; (2) their own homes in proximity to
				  cropland at least functionally, if not nominally under their control; and (3)
				  use and control of mules. As these aspects of freedom were slowly realized,
				  freed blacks were able to move away from the planation village complex and
				  occupy outlying tracts within the planter's holdings. As the industrial
				  revolution continued, European demand for American cotton grew. The South
				  responded to this demand, producing about 10,000,000 more bales of cotton in
				  the four years preceding 1881 than it had during the 15 years immediately
				  preceding the Civil War. Apparently the tenant farm system was more efficient
				  at producing cotton than was the slave labor system. However, a persistent
				  problem with tenancy was its creation of impoverished white and black farmers,
				  forced to mortgage future crops for present needs. In years when crops failed,
				  these farmers went deeper into debt. Not until World War II (1939-1945), when
				  widespread mechanization of cotton production made sharecropping unprofitable,
				  did the economy begin to improve and the system of share-cropping begin to
				  disappear.
Pre-World War II Mississippi (1900-1941)
This period explores the first four decades of the twentieth
				  century and the rapid social and economic changes that preceded World War II.
				  Shortly after the turn of the century, growing agitation and dissatisfaction
				  among small farmers led to the growth of the Populist Movement and the
				  temporary ousting of the Democrats from power. The success of the combined
				  Populist/Republican party was short-lived, however. With the adoption of
				  popular primary elections, Democrats won back the legislature and governorship
				  of the state by promising new reforms, espousing racist rhetoric, and ranting
				  against the control of the economy by Northern banks, railroads, and other
				  corporate interests. Several reforms, including larger budgets for education,
				  lighter tax burdens on small farmers, state regulation of railroads, banks, and
				  other corporate enterprises, and reform of the state penal system, were enacted
				  during the initial decades of the twentieth century.
Mississippi's economy had only started to recover by the
				  onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s. To counteract the rapid decline of
				  the economy, federal farm programs associated with President Franklin
				  Roosevelt's New Deal and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) encouraged
				  better soil conservation 38 practices and greater crop diversification. The
				  state government focused on industrial growth, creating the Balance Agriculture
				  With Industry (BAWI) program in 1936, which enabled state and local governments
				  to issue bonds for the construction of industrial plants to be leased to
				  private industries. The addition of tax incentives for some industries resulted
				  in a moderate increase in the industrial section by 1940. During World War II,
				  the state's mild climate attracted the Army and Air Force, which constructed a
				  number of camps and bases such as Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg and Keesler Air
				  Force Base in Biloxi. Ingalls Shipbuilding at Pascagoula helped create a
				  wartime economic boom on the Gulf Coast; the availability of jobs with good
				  wages brought former sharecroppers into the towns.
Agricultural production to support the war effort and to
				  help U.S. allies also helped improve the profitability of both large and small
				  farming operations such that, when the war ended, most farmers had surplus
				  funds that could be used for mechanization.
Post World War II Mississippi (1942-present)
This period explores the elements that shaped modern
				  Mississippi (excluding Civil Rights, which is its own period of emphasis).
				  After World War II, federal crop subsidies and high commodity prices added to
				  the farmers' surpluses, and mechanization of Mississippi's farms began in
				  earnest. Tractors, mechanical cotton pickers, and combines drastically reduced
				  the need for field labor, resulting in the dispossession of tenants and the
				  gradual centralization of small farms under single owners. By 1990, the typical
				  farm in Mississippi consisted of hundreds of acres maintained by a small
				  workforce, with the percentage of the population engaged in farming
				  representing only 2.7 percent compared to 75 percent in 1900.
The introduction of herbicides, defoliants, and pesticides
				  increased the yield and health of most crops, and allowed for greater
				  diversification. Cotton, although still an important crop in the state, no
				  longer dominated the agricultural economy. Soybeans, rice, poultry, and catfish
				  together produced more than twice as much income. Faced with the challenge of
				  employing the work force formerly employed on the state's farms, every governor
				  since World War II has encouraged industrialization to bring more industrial
				  jobs to the state. In 1951, 40 new plants providing 5,200 new jobs located in
				  Mississippi and, by 1965, industrial employment passed agricultural employment
				  for the first time. By 1990, almost 23 percent of the work force worked in
				  factories, while approximately 32 percent worked in the trade and service
				  industries. The largest employers were manufacturers of clothing, food
				  products, furniture, and lumber and wood products; and processors of
				  agricultural products (poultry and catfish) and wood products (paper and pulp
				  mills, furniture). Centers of heavy industry have arisen along the Gulf Coast
				  and in cities along the Mississippi River like Natchez, Vicksburg, and
				  Greenville.
Protohistoric Period
The protohistoric period, where the late prehistoric period
				  and the early historic one overlap in a limbo that in the Southeast covers the
				  hiatus between earliest exploration and first permanent settlement by
				  Europeans. Before and during the protohistoric period Mississippian chiefdoms
				  collapsed, whether from internal causes or from introduced European disease.
				  The social disruption that resulted from such collapse led to population
				  movements and consolidations in a search for a renewal of stability. New
				  mechanisms for exercising power arose among the native population, mechanisms
				  directly connected to the exploitation of the new European element.
The context of the protohistoric period, then, is an ideal
				  one for the study of rapid--even drastic--culture change, and an explanation of
				  what happened to Indian groups during this period is crucial to an
				  understanding of why their successors differed so radically from the
				  populations of the prehistoric Mississippian period. There has been a tendency
				  to explain this radical difference simply by the effects of European contact,
				  but considerable evidence is beginning to suggest that the older notion of a
				  "Mississippian Decline," a natural exhaustion of Mississippian culture, may not
				  be entirely incorrect, and that some Mississippian groups had begun to
				  reorganize before contact.
Reconstruction
This period explores the time period relating to the
				  reconstruction and recovery process Mississippi experienced following the Civil
				  War. As part of a plan to restore the Union, in 1865, President Andrew Johnson
				  appointed William L. Sharkey as provisional governor of Mississippi. Under
				  Sharkey's direction, a new state constitution abolishing slavery was drafted. A
				  new state government, composed largely of former Confederates, was elected in
				  October of that year, and promptly enacted the Black Code that reimposed many
				  of the restrictions on freed blacks, including disenfranchisement.
In response, the Radical wing of the Republican Party in
				  Congress wrested control of the Reconstruction process from Johnson and, in
				  1867, imposed military rule across the South. Republican politicians, many
				  relocated from the North, took control of the state government. Readmission to
				  the Union was made conditional on the adoption of new constitutions that
				  removed the restrictions on freed blacks and gave them the right to vote and
				  old public office. After several tries, a state constitution acceptable to
				  Congress was finally approved by the electorate in 1869. Mississippi was
				  formally readmitted to the Union on February 23, 1870. In the 1870s, as former
				  Confederates began to receive federal pardons that allowed them to once again
				  hold public office, the Democratic Party began to take back control of the
				  state government from the Republicans.
The relatively rapid rise to power of the Democrats during
				  this period was in part attributed to the hatred of the electorate for what
				  they saw as outsiders and exploiters and in part to the intimidation of blacks
				  and Republicans by terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. In the
				  elections of 1875, Democrats gained control of the state legislature, and in
				  1876, replaced the Republican Governor and Lieutenant Governor with Democrats.
				  The Democratic Party remained in power throughout most of the next century.
Technology/Engineering Theme
While the technological aspects of a culture form the
				  primary basis of interpretation of all themes, this theme relates primarily to
				  the utilization of and evolutionary changes in material culture as a society
				  adapts to its physical, biological, and cultural environments. Research
				  questions here range from artifact studies on the identification of changing
				  tool types, their various functions, and how they were manufactured to more
				  general issues related to the organization of labor and presence/absence of
				  craft or occupational specialization. All site types may contribute to the
				  understanding of this theme. This theme also involves the practical application
				  of scientific principles to design, construct, and operate equipment,
				  machinery, and structures to serve human needs. Property types include wood,
				  metal, and concrete bridges, highways, dams, canals, railroads, airtransport,
				  and other transportation-related works, and various industrial structures,
				  engines, and machinery.
Transportation/Communication Theme
This theme relates to the process and technology of
				  conveying passengers, materials, and information. Studies focus on
				  transportation and communication networks involving roads, water, canals,
				  railroads, and air as well as on the various structures, vehicles, equipment,
				  and technology associated with each mode. Property types may be generally
				  classified as either rail-related, air-related, water-related, road-related, or
				  pedestrian-related. Examples include railroads, stations, depots, engine
				  houses, and trains; airports, airplanes, landing fields, and space vehicles;
				  and research facilities associated with transportation systems; boats and other
				  watercraft, piers, and wharves, ferries, lighthouses; canals and associated
				  structures, locks, boats; roads and turnpikes, tollhouses, automobiles and
				  other vehicles such as streetcars; and boardwalks, walkways, and trails.
36 CFR
				  61.4(b)(1)