Which culture is described as the last major prehistoric Native American culture in Georgia, known for large-scale farming and mound builders and extensive trade?

• A. Woodland Indians
• B. Hopewell
• C. Mississippian Indians (800 C.E. to 1600 C.E.)
• D. Archaic

Answer: (C)

Mississippian Indians represent the last major prehistoric culture in Georgia, known for large-scale farming, mound building, and extensive trade networks. Starting around 800 C.E. and lasting until about 1600 C.E., they organized communities around agriculture—maize, beans, and squash—supporting bigger populations and more complex social structures. In Georgia, mound centers like Etowah and Ocmulgee illustrate how these communities placed leaders and ceremonial spaces on raised platforms, showing both religious and political organization. Their broad trade connected distant resources, from shells and copper to pottery, underscoring a connected Southeastern culture.

Archaic peoples were earlier hunter-gatherers, and Woodland groups came before the Mississippian period, with mound-building to varying degrees but not the large-scale, regional farming and centralized chiefdoms typical of the Mississippians. Hopewell is a mound-building culture centered in the Ohio Valley rather than Georgia, so it doesn’t fit the late prehistoric Georgia context.