Spiro is a large Mississippian archaeological site in eastern Oklahoma, near the town of the same name, and belongs to the Caddoan archaeological tradition. The site, covering about fifty acres, contains a circle of six low mounds, two large, pyramidal platform mounds, and a large pyramidal charnel mound. The low mounds originally served as the bases for communal charnel houses, and the large charnel mound served the same purpose for the elite, who were buried alongside large quantities of finely crafted grave goods. The two platform mounds originally served as the bases for large public structures. The site also contains residential areas and cemeteries.
People occupied Spiro between a.d. 700 and a.d. 1450, and the site reached its peak between a.d. 1200 and a.d. 1400. During this time, Spiro was the capital of a large theocratic chiefdom centered on the Arkansas River. Unlike many Mississippian capitals, Spiro served primarily as a ceremonial center and supported a relatively small resident population. The chiefdom also contained ten subordinate district capitals.
The people of Spiro and its chiefdom relied primarily on farming, supplementing their diet by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants. They also engaged in an extensive trade that brought them copper, mica, greenstone, and marine shells from as far away as the Appalachian Mountains and the Gulf Coast. Spiro's geographic location probably allowed it to control trade between the Southwest and the southern plains and other Mississippian chiefdoms in the southeastern woodlands.
Though it experienced no contact with early Spanish explorers, Spiro was probably similar to the Caddoan-speaking chiefdoms of western Arkansas encountered by the de Soto expedition in the early sixteenth century. By the time the first Europeans arrived in northeastern Oklahoma, the site had been abandoned.
See also
Mississippians.
