The Moundville site, occupied from around A.D. 1000 until A.D. 1450, is a large settlement of Mississippian culture on the Black Warrior River in central Alabama. At the time of Moundville's heaviest residential population, the community took the form of a three hundred-acre village built on a bluff overlooking the river. The plan of the town was roughly square and protected on three sides by a bastioned wooden palisade. Within the enclosure, surrounding a central plaza, were twenty-six earthen mounds, the larger ones apparently supporting noble's residences alternating with small ones that supported buildings used for mortuary and other purposes.
