Coles Creek culture

The Coles Creek culture was a Late Woodland archaeological culture of the Lower Mississippi valley, in present-day Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, which followed the Troyville culture and is considered ancestral to the Plaquemine culture. Its population grew dramatically, and by 1000 CE simple elite polities had begun to form. From roughly 800 CE its people built flat-topped platform mounds, usually two or three around a central plaza, to carry temples and other civic buildings, often over earlier burial mounds. They lived on acorns and other wild plants and on hunting rather than maize, which only began to increase by 1000–1200 CE, and the bow and arrow came into use.