Democratic cooperation is a particularly complex type of arrangement that requires attendant institutions to ensure that the problems inherent in collective action do not subvert the public good. It is perhaps due to this complexity that historians, political scientists, and others generally associate the birth of democracy with the emergence of so-called states and center it geographically in the “West,” where it then diffused to the rest of the world. We argue that the archaeological record of the American Southeast provides a case to examine the emergence of democratic institutions and to highlight the distinctive ways in which such long-lived institutions were—and continue to be—expressed by Native Americans. Our research at the Cold Springs site in northern Georgia, USA, provides important insight into the earliest documented council houses in the American Southeast. We present new radiocarbon dating of these structures along with dates for the associated early platform mounds that place their use as early as cal AD 500. This new dating makes the institution of the Muskogean council, whose active participants have always included both men and women, at least 1,500 years old, and therefore one of the most enduring and inclusive democratic institutions in world history.

民主合作是一种特别复杂的安排，需要相关机构确保集体行动中固有的问题不会破坏公共利益。或许正是由于这种复杂性，历史学家、政治学家和其他人通常将民主的诞生与所谓国家的出现联系起来，并将其在地理上以“西方”为中心，然后扩散到世界其他地方。我们认为，美国东南部的考古记录提供了一个案例来检验民主制度的出现，并强调这种长期存在的制度曾经——并将继续——由美洲原住民表达的独特方式。我们在美国佐治亚州北部冷泉基地的研究，提供了对美国东南部最早记录的议会大厦的重要见解。我们提出了这些结构的新放射性碳测年以及相关的早期平台土墩的日期，这些平台早在公元 500 年就已投入使用。这种新的测年使得马斯科吉安委员会的机构，其积极参与者始终包括男性和女性，至少有 1,500 年的历史，因此是世界历史上最持久、最具包容性的民主制度之一。