At least 29 mounds at Moundville were built and used as platforms for important structures, and their rectangular arrangement around a central plaza, roughly aligned with the four directions, shows that the site was planned before construction began. Around AD 1050, people moved into the vicinity and built houses along the riverbank and ravines. As clan nobles centralized and consolidated power, they fostered the loyalty and allegiance of commoners in the Black Warrior River Valley and developed plans to use Moundville as a governmental and religious capital. Starting around AD 1200, commoners built the entire center, including the palisade, and completed it by AD 1300. Genealogies traced through the mother's family ranked Mississippians as nobles or commoners by birth, and people were also divided into family clans ranked by status. Each family clan was probably assigned at least one pair of mounds around the plaza, with the clan chief's house on the larger mound and a clan temple, mortuary house, or craft workshop on the smaller one. This pairing is most pronounced in the western row of mounds. The highest-ranking clan's ruler used the northernmost mounds, with the paramount chief living atop Mound B while mounds C, D, and V served political, religious, mortuary, or domestic roles. Moving southward down the eastern and western sides, each clan's status decreased, and the lowest-ranking clans occupied the mounds at the site's southern end.