Foregrounding town histories beyond the Soto event in Ichisi (9BI2, Lamar) and the Ocmulgee River Basin, Georgia

We report on our excavation and radiocarbon dating program at the Lamar Mound and Village in the Ocmulgee River Basin of central Georgia. Based on its ceramic assemblage, Lamar has long thought to have been occupied intensively during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and it is one of the regions that the De Soto entrada came through in 1540 as it made its way through what is now Georgia. Excavations in the 1930s revealed several houses and two mounds—one a pyramidal platform mound (Mound A) and the other a spiral mound (Mound B) with a flat summit—all of which were surrounded by a palisade wall. Subsequent work by Williams in 1996 provided further information on the construction history of Mound A and the spatial layout of the village. Our new radiocarbon dating program and Bayesian analysis of dates not only provides a more precise chronology, but also allows us to link events in the village with mound building and use of Mound A at what is likely the capital of the province of Ichisi.