Ca. 900 to 1500

The Etowah village site is occupied.

In what is now northwestern Georgia near the present-day city of Rome, Etowah grows into one of the largest Mississippian ceremonial centers (see entry for CA. 750 TO 1550). The village covers 52 acres and features two large plazas surrounded by seven mounds, three of which are topped with buildings serving as temples or houses for Etowah’s leaders. Smaller mounds containing artifacts associated with the religious beliefs of the Southern Cult (see entry for CA. 1100 TO 1300) are used as burial sites for elite villagers. The village is surrounded by a palisade and a moat. At its height, Etowah is the center of a chiefdom that controls a large area, including what is now northern Georgia and Alabama, eastern Tennessee, and western North and South Carolina. Its decline before the historic period is probably due to warfare, perhaps with the Mississippian chief-dom centered at the Moundville site in present-day Alabama.

Tion is the umiak, a large, open skin boat that can carry teams of hunters on whaling expeditions. The Thule also create sophisticated harpoons and spears, which they use to hunt whales, walruses, seals, caribou, polar bears, and smaller mammals. They live in snow houses heated with whale oil lamps in the winter, and in skin tents in the summer. As transportation, they use sleds drawn by packs of domesticated dogs. Thule artisans also make many different types of implements and ornaments from stone, bone, ivory, sinew, and copper. Although Thule culture will fade in the 15th century, many elements of the tradition will survive in the modern Inuit way of life.