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Title
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Lubbub Creek
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Date
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2025
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Bibliographic Citation
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Thompson, Ian. 2025. Lubbub Creek Summary. Indigneous Alabama - Choctaw.
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annotates
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The Lubbub Creek archaeological complex (1PI33 and 1PI85) is located in Pickens County, AL, on the Tombigbee River. This spot was periodically occupied since Clovis times. During the late Woodland period, it was a summer village where inhabitants cooperatively tended their crops before heading into higher country for the fall/winter hunt. Unlike many of the settlements farther west in the Choctaw homeland, Lubbub Creek was not vacated when corn agriculture became prominent. Instead, perhaps as early as AD 1100, individual households moved out of the old village and built hamlets in the surrounding area to take advantage of good soils for corn, with the old settlement becoming a community center.
The site's single earth mound was constructed in the late 1300s. Twice, later in its history, fortifications were built around the town center. Around AD 1425 the material culture made by the people at Lubbub Creek shifted, showing growing influence and
probably a movement of people from Moundville, the Alabama River and Mobile Bay. The site was burned and abandoned around 1650.
The Lubbb Creek site draws its name from the Choctaw name for the creek it is located on, Bok Lahba (Warm Stream). It is located within the Choctaw Ahepvt District and on Choctaw treaty land. The site's archaeology evidences a number of continuities with Choctaw culture documented by the French upon their arrival in the region 50 years after the site became uninhabited. The Lubbub Creek site was revisited by Choctaw people into the 1800s.
Below is a list of publications generated from the archaeological excavations and subsequent analyses.
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**Jenkins, Ned J. 1978. Archaeological Testing at Site 1PI85: The Summerville Mound. Office of Archaeological Research, University of Alabama, Moundville.**
· Historical references by C. B. Moore (1901) and local informants indicated the presence of a mound at the site, which 1955 and 1966 aerial photographs helped relocate as it had been partially bulldozed in the mid-20th century.
· The report contextualizes 1PI85 within a larger cultural landscape of closely spaced Mississippian sites in the same bend of Lubbub Creek, including 1PI11, 1PI12, 1PI13, and especially 1PI33. Site 1PI33 has ancestral interments. The entire river bend is presented as a unified, complex settlement.
· While the report does not directly reference the Choctaw, it documents one of the central archaeological sites within the Lubbub Creek area, recognized by the CNO as an important ancestral site. The “Summerville phase” occupation of 1PI85 and nearby sites corresponds temporally and spatially with the ancestral Okla Ihulahta Choctaw moiety. The presence of grog-tempered ceramics suggests continuity from the Late Woodland to the “proto-historic” period, reflecting deep cultural affiliations that were carried forward into the Choctaw identity and culture.
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**Peebles, Christopher S. (editor). 1983. Excavations in the Lubbub Creek Archaeological Locality: Volume I of Prehistoric Agricultural Communities in West Central Alabama. Prepared for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Mobile District, and the Heritage, Conservation and Recreation Service, Interagency Archeological Services, Atlanta. Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.** (Includes all three volumes)
· Systematic excavations at the site, in keeping with CNO protocols, links to the first two volumes are not included due to the depictions and discussion of ancestral remains.
· The three volumes of the Lubbub Creek report present the results of one of the most extensive and methodologically intensive archaeological excavations in the Southeast, covering nearly 25,000 m². Conducted by the University of Michigan between 1978 and 1983 as part of mitigation for the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, the project focused on a large Mississippian settlement centered around the Mound (1PI85), palisade, and surrounding habitation.
· Fieldwork was carried out in four phases: survey and testing, preservation planning, full-scale excavation, and laboratory analysis. Nearly one million artifacts were processed. Excavations identified three major occupations (Summerville I, II–III, and IV), each representing a distinct community phase from A.D. 950 to 1650. Volume II presents detailed typological, technological, and functional assessments and concludes with discussions of community patterning, site organization, and the implications of Lubbub Creek’s occupation for understanding Mississippian cultural trajectories in the Tombigbee River Valley. Volume III presents raw data and supporting inventories.
· Chahta and Ancestral Continuity: Lubbub Creek is recognized as part of a cultural and geographical region central to ancestral Choctaw history by the CNO. The ceramic sequence, long-term settlement, and persistence through the postcontact period provide archaeological correlates for ancestral Chahta lifeways, particularly through the later Mississippian phases (Summerville IV).
· Volume II contributes directly to understanding the long-term development of Chahta identity and material culture in west-central Alabama. Although not named as such in Volume II, the Summerville complex at Lubbub Creek represents a critical ancestral Chahta (Choctaw) settlement zone. The continuity of occupation across multiple Mississippian phases, the presence of grog and shell tempered ceramic traditions, and settlement organization all reflect cultural practices that persisted among the Choctaw. Volume III’s ceramic and structural data contribute to broader assessments of continuity between Mississippian and Chahta culture.
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Peebles 1983 Volume I Download
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Peebles 1983 Volume II Download
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Peebles 1983 Volume III Download
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Blitz, John H. 1980. Variation in Mississippian Structures at Lubbub Creek. Southeastern Archaeological Conference Bulletin 23:11–14.
· Blitz concludes that changes in structure type at Lubbub Creek were not merely functional but reflected changes in social organization, settlement complexity, and local expressions of Mississippian lifeways, with single-post construction rooted in Woodland traditions.
· The persistence of circular winter and summer house forms, the presence of interior food storage pits, and references to ethnographic Choctaw architecture from Swanton (1931) are strong cultural continuity indicators. These architectural patterns align with historically documented Chahta house forms, reinforcing Lubbub Creek’s significance for understanding Chahta cultural development.
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Blitz 1980 Download
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**Powell, Mary Lucas. 1981. Post-Mississippian Mortuary Variability in the Gainesville Reservoir, West Central Alabama. Southeastern Archaeological Conference Bulletin 24:12–15.**
· The paper explicitly frames the Summerville IV mortuary practices as “proto-Choctaw,” and bases its interpretation on documented Choctaw funerary practices. Powell makes a direct argument for cultural continuity between the Lubbub Creek population and the Chahta (Choctaw), supported by archaeological, demographic, and behavioral parallels. This is one of the earliest reports in the Lubbub Creek corpus to explicitly invoke Choctaw identity in the interpretation of material remains.
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Powell 1981 Download
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Seckinger, Ernest W., Jr. 1984. Preservation of Archaeological Sites within the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, Alabama and Mississippi. Paper presented at the 41st Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Pensacola.
· Seckinger highlights preservation decisions made for multiple sites, including rerouting, bioengineering, and active erosion control. Among these, the Lubbub Creek locality, specifically 1PI33, is described as a case where avoidance measures were implemented during construction, followed by continued erosion monitoring and planned stabilization.
· While Choctaw identity is not explicitly discussed, the deliberate avoidance of a known mortuary area reflects the enduring cultural significance of this site. This preservation allowed ancestral contexts and their associated features to remain undisturbed, and preserved engagement with descendant communities.
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Peacock, Evan. 1986. PP/K or Hafted Knives in Miller III. Mississippi Archaeology 21(1):27–43.
· The study of Miller III lithic technology directly informs interpretations of technological and functional continuity in the cultural sequence of the region.
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Ensor, H. Blaine. 1991. The Lubbub Creek Microlith Industry. Southeastern Archaeology 10(1):18–39.
· These include microblade cores, blades, preforms, microdrills, and “microgravers.”
· Usewear analysis (20 specimens) and technological comparisons suggest the microdrills were used primarily for shell bead production, resembling similar industries at the Cahokia, Moundville, and Zebree sites.
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Blitz, John H. 1993. Big Pots for Big Shots: Feasting and Storage in a Mississippian Community. American Antiquity 58(1):80–96.
· Lubbub Creek’s landscape of Mississippian-phase occupation, ceremonial infrastructure, and evidence of food-based social organization provide important context for understanding the foundations of historical Choctaw sociopolitical structures. The persistence of ceremonial feasting, centralized storage, and ritual architecture aligns with later documented practices in Choctaw society, making this study relevant for tracing cultural continuity.
· Blitz’s analysis provides one of the clearest material correlates for institutionalized communal feasting in southeastern archaeology. It establishes Lubbub Creek as a ceremonial center with implications for broader Mississippian and Choctaw cultural developments.
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Blitz 1993 Download
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Holland, Laura R. 1995. Pots on the Periphery: Ceramic Analysis of Rim Sherds from Two Single Mound Sites in the Vicinity of Moundville, Alabama. Undergraduate thesis, New College of the University of South Florida, Sarasota.
· Holland’s comparison of Lubbub to “Moundville outliers” reinforces the distinctiveness of the Lubbub community within ancestral Muskogean cultural landscape. The evidence for autonomous ritual practice and broader ceramic diversity reflect cultural continuity with later Choctaw traditions, particularly in non-centralized sociopolitical organization and material production.
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Holland 1995 Download
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Jackson, H. Edwin, and Susan L. Scott. 1995. The Faunal Record of the Southeastern Elite: The Implications of Economy, Social Relations, and Ideology. Southeastern Archaeology 14(2):103–119.
· This article analyzes faunal data from the site, providing evidence of ritual practice, feasting, and symbolic use of animals within a complex Mississippian community.
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Jackson and Scott 1995 Download
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Steponaitis, Vincas P., M. James Blackman, and Hector Neff. 1996. Large-Scale Patterns in the Chemical Composition of Mississippian Pottery. American Antiquity 61(3):555–572.
· The finding that Lubbub ceramics form a chemically distinct group from Moundville or Mississippi Valley ceramic assemblages supports interpretations of cultural autonomy and provides a compositional foundation for tracking ceramics.
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Steponaitis et al. 1996 Download
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Jackson, H. Edwin, and Susan L. Scott. 2002. Woodland Faunal Exploitation in the Midsouth. In The Woodland Southeast, edited by David G. Anderson and Robert C. Mainfort, pp. 461–482. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
· Their documentation of shifting Woodland-to-Mississippian subsistence patterns, the identification of intensification, seasonal specialization, and early maize adoption offers critical data for interpreting long-term cultural developments.
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Jackson, H. Edwin, Melissa L. Higgins, and Robert E. Reams. 2002. Woodland Cultural and Chronological Trends on the Southern Gulf Coastal Plain: Recent Research in the Pine Hills of southeastern Mississippi. In The Woodland Southeast, edited by David G. Anderson and Robert C. Mainfort, pp. 171–194. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
· The chapter addresses regions near the Mississippi–Alabama border and acknowledges that Choctaw sites have been recorded north of their specific study area. The discussion of population and farmstead distributions in the Late Woodland period resonates with Choctaw land use patterns. The demonstration that dispersed, low-density populations persisted in the postcontact era provides archaeological correlates for Choctaw settlement strategies in adjacent areas.
