<P> By 400 CE in the eastern part of the state, the Late Woodland period had begun with the Baytown and Troyville cultures (named for the Troyville Earthworks in Jonesville, Louisiana), and later the Coles Creek culture . Archaeologists have traditionally viewed the Late Woodland as a time of cultural decline after the florescence of the Hopewell peoples . Late Woodland sites, with the exception of sites along the Florida Gulf Coast, tend to be small when compared with Middle Woodland sites . Although settlement size was small, there was an increase in the number of Late Woodland sites over Middle Woodland sites, indicating a population increase . These factors tend to mark the Late Woodland period as an expansive period, not one of a cultural collapse . Where the Baytown peoples began to build more dispersed settlements, the Troyville people instead continued building major earthwork centers . The type site for the culture, the Troyville Earthworks, once had the second tallest precolumbian mound in North America and the tallest in Louisiana at 82 feet (25 m) in height . </P> <P> The Coles Creek culture from 700 to 1200 CE marks a significant change in the cultural history of the area . Population increased dramatically, and there is strong evidence of a growing cultural and political complexity, especially by the end of the Coles Creek sequence . Although many of the classic traits of chiefdom societies are not yet manifested, by 1000 CE the formation of simple elite polities had begun . Coles Creek sites are found in present - day Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Texas . Many Coles Creek sites were erected over earlier Woodland period mortuary mounds, leading researchers to speculate that emerging elites were symbolically and physically appropriating dead ancestors to emphasize and project their own authority . </P> <P> The Mississippian period in Louisiana saw the emergence of the Plaquemine and Caddoan Mississippian cultures . This was the period when extensive maize agriculture was adopted . The Plaquemine culture in the lower Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana began in 1200 CE and continued until about 1600 CE . Good examples of this culture are the Medora Site (the type site for the culture and period), Fitzhugh Mounds, Transylvania Mounds, and Scott Place Mounds in Louisiana and the Anna, Emerald, Winterville and Holly Bluff sites located in Mississippi . Plaquemine culture was contemporaneous with the Middle Mississippian culture at the Cahokia site near St. Louis, Missouri . By 1000 CE in the northwestern part of the state the Fourche Maline culture had evolved into the Caddoan Mississippian culture . By 1400 CE Plaquemine had started to hybridize through contact with Middle Mississippian cultures to the north and became what archaeologist term Plaquemine Mississippian . These peoples are considered ancestral to historic groups encountered by the first Europeans in the area, the Natchez and Taensa peoples . The Caddoan Mississippians covered a large territory, including what is now eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas, northeast Texas, and northwest Louisiana . Archaeological evidence that the cultural continuity is unbroken from prehistory to the present, and that the direct ancestors of the Caddo and related Caddo language speakers in prehistoric times and at first European contact and the modern Caddo Nation of Oklahoma is unquestioned today . Significant Caddoan Mississippian archaeological sites in Louisiana include Belcher Mound Site in Caddo Parish and Gahagan Mounds Site in Red River Parish . </P> <P> The following groups are known to have inhabited the state's territory when the Europeans began colonization: </P>

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