People here built houses by digging holes in the ground and setting posts in them to form the corners and support the walls and roof. Long after houses fell or burned down, the posts left differently colored soil stains called postmolds. By mapping these postmolds, archaeologists can determine house size and spacing, and from house size, estimate how many people lived in each one. Based on the amount of trash left by the occupants and comparison with other Mississippian sites, archaeologists think four adults and several children lived in these houses at Chucalissa. These houses would have been very small for such families, so living space was likely expanded with shades and arbors. In summer, most household activities probably took place outside, while the house was used for storing food, tools, and ritual objects, and for sleeping on cool nights. Seven hundred years ago, the ridges around this plaza were filled with houses, and as many as one thousand people lived at Chucalissa in dozens of houses that extended onto the sides of the bluff. Although the exact appearance of these houses is unknown, archaeologists can reconstruct how they were built.
