Woodland platform mounds made of feasts: an example from Mound II at Garden Patch, Florida Gulf Coast

Platform mounds in the Woodland Southeast were often associated with feasting, including prior to and during coordinated ritual construction events and in ceremonies on their elevated summits. We observe that while many inland platforms were made for feasts, some coastal platforms were made of feasts. We argue this detail is an underexplored basis for understanding Woodland platforms’ significance as monuments. To illustrate how platform mounds made of feasts can be identified and interpreted in shell-bearing coastal mounds, we present new results from Garden Patch Mound II. We interpret differences in the pottery and faunal assemblages between the mound and village midden and the chronology of their creation and deposition as indicating centuries-old feasting debris was chosen as construction material during a time of social transformation circa 700 CE. We argue that Mound II represents a closing event memorializing regional-scale feasts across many generations. This research illustrates distinctive signs of feasting in coastal contexts and emphasizes a cultural logic of engagement with places as repositories of relationships that informed the reuse of feasting remains as monumental construction material.