Chiefly warfare cult

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The Chiefly Warfare Cult or Southern Cult was a socio-religious organization characterized by sacred artifacts. It existed in south and southeast North America, near the Mississippi River, 900 - 1700s A.D. These people farmed along riverine floodplains.

The social organization was based on warfare, which can be identified by exotic motifs and symbols and by costly raw materials such as sea shell or imported copper. Such objects occur in elite burials, together with war axes, maces, and other weapons. These warrior symbols occur alongside other artifacts which bear exotic cosmic imagery, depicting animals, humans, and mythic beasts. This symbolic imagery bound together warfare, cosmology, and nobility into a coherent whole. Some of these categories of artifacts were used as markers of chiefly office, which varied from one location to another. The term Southern Cult is probably somewhat outdated, for it reflects a complex, highly variable set of religious mechanisms that supported the authority of local chieftains, which defy precise definition.