Etowah Indian Mounds

Etowah Mounds
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
Mound B, seen from Mound A
Nearest city:	Cartersville, GA
Coordinates:	34°7′30.47″N 84°48′27.59″W / 34.1251306°N 84.8076639°W / 34.1251306; -84.8076639
Governing body:	State
Added to NRHP:	October 15, 1966[1]
Designated NHL:	July 19, 1964[2]
NRHP Reference#:	66000272

Etowah Indian Mounds is an archaeological site in Bartow County, Georgia south of Cartersville, Georgia in the United States. The site sits on the north shore of the Etowah River. Etowah Indian Mounds Historic Site is a designated National Historic Landmark, managed by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Late 20th-century studies showed the mounds were built and occupied by the Mississippian culture, peoples unquestionably related to the Muskogean-speaking Creek. The Cherokee did not arrive in this part of Georgia until the late 1700s.

Site description

There are three main mounds at the site and three lesser mounds. The community was inhabited from about 1000-1550 A.D. by Native Americans of the Mississippian culture. The town was occupied in three distinct archaeological phases: c. 1000-1200 AD, c. 1250-1375 AD, and c. 1375-1550 AD.

Older pottery found on the site suggest that there was an earlier village (c. 200 BC-600 AD) associated with the Swift Creek culture. This earlier middle Woodland period occupation at Etowah may have been related to the major Swift Creek center of Leake Mounds, approximately two miles downstream (west) of Etowah.

Repoussé copper plate design of a falcon dancer found at Etowah Indian Mounds

The town was protected by a sophisticated semi-circular fortification system. An outer band formed by nut tree orchards prevented enemy armies from shooting masses of flaming arrows into the town. A deep moat blocked direct contact by the enemy with the palisaded walls. The moat also functioned as a drainage system during major floods. (These were common on the Etowah River until the Allatoona Dam was built upstream in 1947.) The timber palisade was formed by setting tree trunks into a ditch approximately 12 inches on center and then back-filling around the timbers to form a levee. Guard towers for archers were spaced approximately 80 feet apart.

Artifacts discovered in burials within the Etowah site indicate that its residents developed an artistically and technically advanced culture. Numerous copper tools, weapons and ornamental plates accompanied these burials. Where proximity to copper protected the fibers from degeneration, archaeologists also found brightly colored cloth with ornate patterns. These were the remnants of the clothing of social elites. Numerous stone and clay figurines have been found through the years in the vicinity of Etowah. Many are paired statues, which portray a man sitting cross-legged and a woman kneeling. Both figures are wearing turbans and ornate, patterned cloth. Individual statues of young women also show them kneeling and ornately clothed, but with a variety of hair styles.

Archaeological research on the subject is not conclusive, but the Etowah site may be the same as a village of a similar name visited by Spanish conquistador Hernando deSoto in 1540. However, the chroniclers of the de Soto Expedition make no mention of any large mounds when visiting a town named Itaba. Itaba means "boundary" or trail crossing in the Alabama language. The origin of the English name for the mounds, Etowah, is an archaic Muskogee place name, Etalwa. Etalwa probably referred to the "solar cross" symbol originally, but in Modern Muskogee means a "mother town."

Stone effigies found at the Etowah Site

Until studies of the late 20th century, Etowah was assumed by most Georgians to have been built by the Iroquoian-speaking Cherokees. The mound complex was been demonstrated to have unquestionably been built and occupied by peoples more closely related to the Muskogean-speaking Creeks. Both the Oklahoma and Eastern Creeks consider Etalwa to be their most important ancestral town. Related to this, the official title of the Oklahoma Principal Chief is Etalwa Mikko, from this source and the Creek word for chief is miko. A new, large-scale model of Etalwa is on permanent display in the rotunda of the Muskogee (Creek) Capitol in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Cherokees did not arrive in that part of Georgia until the late 1700s, long after the mound's construction.

The Etowah Site

Although Cyrus Thomas and John P. Rogan tested the site for the Smithsonian Institution in 1883, the first well-documented archaeological inquiry at the site was conducted by Warren K. Moorehead, beginning in the winter of 1925. His excavations into Mound C at the site revealed a rich array of Mississippian culture burial goods. These artifacts, along with the collections from Cahokia, Moundville, Lake Jackson (Florida), and Spiro Mounds, would later become the majority of the materials used to define the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. The professional excavation of this enormous burial mound contributed a major research impetus to the study of Mississippian artifacts and peoples, and greatly increased the understanding of pre-Contact Native Americans artwork.

The Etowah site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

The site's museum includes artifacts found at the site, including stone effigies, jewelry and other objects.

See also

• Mississippian culture
• Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
• List of Mississippian sites
• List of burial mounds in the United States

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Etowah Indian Mounds

• Etowah Indian Mounds Historic Site - official site
• Etowah Mounds near Cartersville, Georgia
• LostWorlds.org | Etowah Mounds
• Mississippian culture in the New Georgia Encyclopedia
• Archaeology magazine article on remote sensing at Etowah

References

• Warren King Moorehead, Ed. Explorations of the Etowah Site in Georgia: The Etowah Papers, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1932.
• Charles Hudson; Marvin Smith; David Hally; Richard Polhemus; Chester DePratter (1985), "Coosa: A Chiefdom in the Sixteenth-Century Southeastern United States". American Antiquity, Vol. 50, No. 4., pp. 723–737.

• Richard L. Thornton (2007), Ancient Roots I: The Indigenous People of the Southern Highlands. Morris, NC: AIA Lulu Publishing Co.

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