Sun Circle
On a hard-packed clay floor within one of the Wickliffe houses, archaeologists documented a red and white painted symbol within charcoal black outlines: a cross ("+") on a white background enclosed within a red ochre circle - known as the cross-and-circle or Sun Circle.
The Sun Circle is a widespread symbol in Mississippian and Southeastern US Native American art. Its meaning combines the four cardinal directions, the circle of the earth, the sacred fire, the sun, and perhaps other symbolism. The cross-and-circle also appears on pottery, and shell and stone objects.
As noted by the late Kit Wesler, this symbol "...has many meanings, undoubtedly more varied and more profound to the Native Americans who painted it than archaeologists can guess. In one meaning, its shape symbolizes the roundness of the world: not the planet, literally, but the world's spirit; an ideal that all things are related in a great circle of life, that each person and each community is part of a greater harmony, that humans are part of the roundness and must take responsibility for their effects on the whole."