A Late Woodland archaeological culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley (Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi) that followed the Troyville culture; marked by flat-topped platform mounds built around central plazas for civic/temple use rather than mainly burial, and by growing political hierarchization even before classic chiefdom traits appeared.
Gradually transformed into the Plaquemine culture from around 1200 CE as Mississippian-influenced mound-and-plaza polities emerged in the Lower Mississippi Valley, with the Natchez and Taensa peoples as historic-period descendants of that later tradition.
Broad regional synthesis of Southeastern Woodland-period archaeology situating Coles Creek between Troyville and Plaquemine.