Mound Builder

Monks Mound, built c. 950-1100 CE and located at the Cahokia Mounds UNESCO World Heritage Site near Collinsville, Illinois, is the largest Pre-Columbian earthwork in America north of Mesoamerica.

Grave Creek Mound, located in Moundsville, West Virginia, is one of the largest conical mounds in the United States. It was built by the Adena culture.

The varying cultures collectively called Mound Builders were prehistoric inhabitants of North America who, during a 5,000-year period, constructed various styles of earthen mounds for religious and ceremonial, burial, and elite residential purposes. These included the Pre-Columbian cultures of the Archaic period; Woodland period (Adena and Hopewell cultures); and Mississippian period; dating from roughly 3400 BCE to the 16th century CE, and living in regions of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River valley, and the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries.^[1] Beginning with the construction of Watson Brake about 3400 BCE in present-day Louisiana, nomadic indigenous peoples started building earthwork mounds in North America nearly 1000 years before the pyramids were constructed in Egypt.

Since the 19th century, the prevailing scholarly consensus has been that the mounds were constructed by Indigenous peoples of the Americas, early cultures distinctly separate from the historical Native American tribes extant at the time of European colonization of North America. The historical Native Americans were generally not knowledgeable about the civilizations that produced the mounds. Research and study of these cultures and peoples has been based on archaeology and anthropology.

Name and culture

Alligator Effigy Mound, built c. 950 CE, Ohio

At one time, the term "mound builder" was applied to the imaginary race believed to have constructed these earthworks. In the 16th-19th centuries, Europeans and Americans generally thought that a race other than one related to the historic Native Americans had built the mounds.

The namesake cultural trait of the mound builders was the building of mounds and other earthworks. These burial and ceremonial structures were typically flat-topped pyramids or platform mounds, flat-topped or rounded cones, elongated ridges, and sometimes a variety of other forms. They were generally built as part of complex villages that arose from more dense populations, with a specialization of skills and knowledge. The early earthworks built in Louisiana c. 3400 BCE are the only ones known to be built by a hunter-gatherer culture.

The best-known flat-topped pyramidal structure, which at over 100 feet (30 m) tall is the largest pre-Columbian earthwork north of Mexico, is Monks Mound at Cahokia Indian Mounds in present-day Collinsville, Illinois. At its peak about 1150 CE, Cahokia was an urban settlement with 20,000-30,000 people; this population was not exceeded by North American European settlements until after 1800.

Some effigy mounds were constructed in the shapes or outlines of culturally significant animals. The most famous effigy mound, Serpent Mound in southern Ohio, is 5 feet (1.5 m) tall, 20 feet (6 m) wide, over 1,330 feet (405 m) long, and shaped as an undulating serpent.

Many different tribal groups and chiefdoms, involving an array of beliefs and unique cultures over thousands of years, built mounds as expressions of their cultures. The general term, "mound builder," covered their shared architectural practice of earthwork mound construction. This practice, believed to be associated with a cosmology that had a cross-cultural appeal, may indicate common cultural antecedents. The first mound building was an early marker of political and social complexity among the cultures in the Eastern United States. Watson Brake in Louisiana, constructed about 3500 BCE during the Middle Archaic period, is the oldest dated mound complex in North America and the present-day United States. It is one of eleven mound complexes from this period found in the Lower Mississippi Valley.^[2]

Archaeological surveys

The most complete reference for these earthworks is Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, written by Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis. It was published in 1848 by the Smithsonian Institution. Since many of the features which the authors documented have since been destroyed or diminished by farming and development, their surveys, sketches, and descriptions are still used by modern archaeologists. All of the sites which they identified as located in Kentucky came from the manuscripts of C. S. Rafinesque.

A smaller regional study in 1931 by author and archaeologist Fred Dustin charted and examined the mounds and Ogemaw Earthworks near Saginaw, Michigan. Archaeological survey and recording of mounds is an ongoing scholarly task.

Reports of early European explorers

The Nodena Site, possibly the Province of Pacaha encountered by de Soto

The Kincaid Site, a Mississippian settlement in southern Illinois

Hernando de Soto, the Spanish conquistador who in 1540-42 traversed what became the southeast United States, encountered many different mound-builder peoples, perhaps descendants of the great Mississippian culture. The mound-building tradition was still alive in the southeast during the mid-sixteenth century. De Soto observed people living in fortified towns with lofty mounds and plazas, and surmised that many of the mounds served as foundations for priestly temples. Near present-day Augusta, Georgia, de Soto encountered a mound-building group ruled over by a queen, Cofitachequi. She told him that the mounds within her territory served as the burial places for nobles.

The artist Jacques Le Moyne, who had accompanied French settlers to northeastern Florida in the 1560s, likewise noted many Native American groups using existing mounds and constructing others. He produced a series of watercolor paintings depicting scenes of native life. Although most of his paintings have been lost, some engravings were copied from the originals and published in 1591 by a Flemish company. Among these is a depiction of the burial of an aboriginal Floridian tribal chief, an occasion of great mourning and ceremony. The original caption reads:

Maturin Le Petit, a Jesuit priest (1619), and Le Page du Pratz (1758), a French explorer, both observed the Natchez in what was later Mississippi. The Natchez were devout worshippers of the sun. Having a population of some 4,000, they occupied at least nine villages and were presided over by a paramount chief, known as the Great Sun, who wielded absolute power. Both observers noted the high temple mounds which the Natchez had built so that the Great Sun could commune with God, the sun. His large residence was built atop the highest mound, from

^[3][4][5]

Later explorers to the same regions, only a few decades after mound-building settlements had been reported, found the regions largely depopulated, the residents vanished, and the mounds untended. Since there had been little violent conflict with Europeans during that period, the most plausible explanation is that new Eurasian infectious diseases, such as smallpox and influenza, had decimated most of the Native Americans who had comprised the last mound-builder civilization.^[6][7][8][9]

Mound building cultures

Map of Watson Brake site in Louisiana, 3400 BCE

The Poverty Point site in Louisiana, 1500 BCE

Archaic era

Radiocarbon dating has established the age of the earliest Archaic mound complex in southeastern Louisiana. One of the two Monte Sano Site mounds, excavated in 1967 before being destroyed during new construction at Baton Rouge, was dated at 6220 BP (plus or minus 140 years).^[10] Researchers at the time thought that such societies were not organizationally capable of this type construction.^[10] It has since been dated as about 6500 BP, or 4500 BCE,^[11] although not all agree.^[12]

Watson Brake is located in the floodplain of the Ouachita River near Monroe in northern Louisiana. Securely dated to about 5400 years ago (approx. 3500 BCE), in the Middle Archaic period, it consists of a formation of 11 mounds from three to 25 feet (1-8m) tall, connected by ridges to form an oval nearly 900 feet (270m) across.^[13] In the Americas, building of complex earthwork mounds started at an early date, well before the pyramids of Egypt were constructed. Watson Brake was under construction nearly 2,000 years before the better-known Poverty Point, and building went on for 500 years.^[14] Middle Archaic mound construction appeared to cease about 2800 BC, and scholars have not ascertained the reason, but it may have been because of changed in river patterns or other environmental factors.^[15]

With the 1990s dating of Watson Brake and similar complexes, scholars established that pre-agricultural, pre-ceramic American societies could organize to accomplish complex construction over extended periods of time, overturning scholars' understanding of traditional models of Archaic society.^[16] Watson Brake was built by a hunter-gatherer society whose people occupied the area on only a seasonal basis, but where successive generations organized to build the complex mounds over a 500-year period. Their food consisted mostly of fish and deer, as well as available plants.

Built about 1500 BC, Poverty Point in Louisiana is a prominent example of Late Archaic mound-builder construction (c. 2500 BCE - 1000 BCE). It is a striking complex of more than one square mile, where six earthwork crescent ridges were built in concentric arrangement, interrupted by radial aisles. Three mounds are also part of the main complex, and evidence of residences extends for about three miles along the bank of Bayou Maçon. It is the major site among 100 associated with the Poverty Point culture, and is one of the best-known early examples of earthwork monumental architecture. Unlike the localized societies during the Middle Archaic, this culture showed evidence of a wide trading network outside its area, which is one of its distinguishing characteristics.

Woodland period

Adena culture map

The Archaic period was followed by the Woodland period (c. 1000 BCE). Some well-understood examples are the Adena culture of Ohio and nearby states. The subsequent Hopewell culture built monuments from present-day Illinois to Ohio; it is renowned for its geometric earthworks. The Adena and Hopewell were not the only mound-building peoples during this time period. There were contemporaneous mound-building cultures throughout the Eastern United States. During this time period, in parts of present-day Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana, the Hopewellian Marksville culture declined and gave way to the Baytown culture.^[17]

Coles Creek culture

The Coles Creek culture is a Late Woodland culture (700-1200 CE) in the Lower Mississippi Valley in the southern United States that marks a significant change in the cultural history of the area. Population and cultural and political complexity increased, especially by the end of the Coles Creek period. Although many of the classic traits of chiefdom societies are not yet manifested, by 1000 CE the formation of simple elite polities had begun. Coles Creek sites are found in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Texas. The Coles Creek culture is considered ancestral to the Plaquemine culture.^[18][19]

Mississippian culture

Around 900–1450 CE, the Mississippian culture developed and spread through the Eastern United States, primarily along the river valleys.^[20] The largest regional center where the Mississippian culture is first clearly developed is located in Illinois, and is referred to today as Cahokia. It had several regional variants including the Middle Mississippian culture of Cahokia, the South Appalachian Mississippian variant at Moundville and Etowah, the Plaquemine Mississippian variant in south Louisiana and Mississippi,^[21] and the Caddoan Mississippian culture of northwestern Louisiana, eastern Texas, and southwestern Arkansas.^[22]

Fort Ancient

Fort Ancient is the name for a Native American culture that flourished from 1000-1650 C.E. among a people who predominantly inhabited land along the Ohio River in areas of southern modern-day Ohio, northern Kentucky and western West Virginia. Scholars once thought this was an expansion of the Mississippian cultures, but they now believe the Fort Ancient culture was an independently developed culture descended from the Hopewell culture.

Plaquemine culture

The mound of the Great Sun, Grand Village of the Natchez, 1200 CE

This was an archaeological culture in the lower Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana. Good examples of this culture's constructions are found at the Medora Site in West Baton Rouge Parish, La; and the Anna, Emerald Mound, Winterville and Holly Bluff (Lake George) sites in Mississippi.^[23] Plaquemine culture was contemporaneous with the Middle Mississippian culture at the Cahokia site in Illinois. It is considered ancestral to the historic Natchez and Taensa peoples encountered by Europeans.^[24]

• 

  Hopewell traditions map

• 

  Mississippian culture map

• 

  Plaquemine culture map

Alternative explanations

Through the mid-nineteenth century, European Americans did not recognize that ancestors of the Native Americans had built the prehistoric mounds of the eastern U.S. They believed that the massive earthworks and large ceremonial complexes were built by a different people. The antiquarian author William Pidgeon epitomized this view; Pidgeon supported his conclusions by creating fraudulent surveys of mound groups that did not exist.^[25][26][27]

A key work in increasing public knowledge of the origins of the mounds was the 1894 report by Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology (now Smithsonian Institution). He concluded that the prehistoric earthworks of the eastern United States were the work of early cultures of Native Americans. A small number of people had earlier reached similar conclusions: Thomas Jefferson, for example, excavated a mound and from the artifacts and burial practices, noted similarities between mound-builder funeral practices and those of Native Americans in his time. In addition, Theodore Lewis in 1886 had refuted Pidgeon's fradulent claims of pre-Native American moundbuilders.^[28]

Writers and scholars have put forward numerous alternative origins for the mound builders:

Vikings

Benjamin Smith Barton proposed the theory that the mound builders were Vikings who came to North America and eventually disappeared.^{[citation needed]}

Ancient world immigrants

Other people believed that Greeks, Africans, Chinese or assorted Europeans built the mounds. Euro-americans who embraced a Biblical worldview sometimes thought the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel had built the mounds.^{[citation needed]}

Book of Mormon inhabitants

During the 1800s, a common folklore was that the Jews, particularly the Lost Ten Tribes, were the ancestors of Native Americans and the mound builders.^[29] The Book of Mormon (first published in 1830) provides an example of this belief, as its narrative describes two waves of immigration to the Americas from Mesopotamia: the Jaredites (ca. 3000 - 2000 BCE) and an Israelite group in 590 BCE (called Nephites, Lamanites and Mulekites). The Book of Mormon depicts these settlers' building magnificent cities, only to be later destroyed by warfare around 385 CE.

Some Mormon scholars have considered The Book of Mormon narrative a description of the mound-building cultures; other Mormon apologists argue for a Mesoamerican or South American setting.^[30] Theories about a Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon did not arise until after Latter-day Saints (LDS)(Mormons) were influenced by publicized findings about the Central American stone ruins. This occurred after the Book of Mormon was published.^[31]

Black civilizations

In the 20th century, certain sects affiliated with the Black nationalist Moorish Science philosophy theorized a connection with the mound builders. They argue that the mound builders were an ancient advanced Black civilization that developed the legendary continents of Atlantis and Mu, as well as ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica. These black groups, similar to European Americans in earlier periods, propose that the American Indians were too primitive to have developed the sophisticated societies and the technology believed necessary to build the mounds.^{[citation needed]}

Divine creation

The Reverend Landon West claimed that Serpent Mound in Ohio was built by God, or by man inspired by him. He believed that God built the mound and placed it as a symbol of the story of the Garden of Eden.^[32][33]

Mythical cultures

Some people attributed the mounds to mythical cultures: Lafcadio Hearn suggested that the mounds were built by people from the Lost Continent of Atlantis.^{[citation needed]}

Effects of alternative explanations

The mound builder explanations were often honest misinterpretations of real data from valid sources. Both scholars and laymen accepted some of these explanations. Reference to an alleged race appears in the poem "The Prairies" (1832) by William Cullen Bryant.^[34]

Assumption that construction was too complex for Indians

One belief was that American Indians were too unsophisticated to have constructed such complex earthworks and artifacts. The associated stone, metal, and clay artifacts were thought to be too complex for the Indians to have made. In the American Southeast, Northeast, and Midwest, numerous Indian cultures were sedentary and participated in agriculture. Numerous Indian towns had built surrounding stockades for defense. Capable of this type of construction, they and ancestors could have built mounds, but people who believed that the Indians did not build the earthworks did not analyze it in this way. They thought the Native American nomadic cultures would not organize to build such monuments, for failure to devote the time and effort to construct such time-consuming projects.^{[citation needed]}

When most Europeans first arrived in America, they never witnessed the American Indians' building mounds and they found that few Indians knew of their history when asked. Yet earlier Europeans, especially the Spanish, had written numerous accounts about the Indians' construction of mounds. These works were not translated into English for some time, so most Anglo-American scholars, who were working primarily in English and classical languages, could not use them. Inca Garcilaso de la Vega reported how the Indians built the mounds and placed temples on top of them. A few French expeditions reported staying with Indian societies who built mounds.

Assumption construction older than Indians

People also claimed that the Indians were not the mound builders because the mounds and related artifacts were older than Indian cultures. Caleb Atwater's misunderstanding of stratigraphy led him to believe that the mound builders were a much older civilization than the Indians. In his book, Antiquities Discovered in the Western States (1820), Atwater claimed that Indian remains were always found right beneath the surface of the earth. Since the artifacts associated with the mound builders were found fairly deep in the ground, Atwater argued that they must be from a different group of people. The discovery of metal artifacts further convinced people that the mound builders were not Native Americans. The Indians encountered by the Europeans and Americans were not known to engage in metallurgy. This was another incorrect conclusion based on the false assumption that all Indian cultures were similar. Some artifacts that were found in relation to the mounds were inscribed with symbols. As the Europeans did not know of any Indian cultures that had a writing system, they assumed a different group had created them.^{[citation needed]}

Hoaxes

Several hoaxes were associated with the mound builder cultures.

Newark Holy Stones

In 1860, David Wyrick discovered the "Keystone tablet", containing Hebrew language inscriptions written on it in Newark, Ohio. Soon after, he found the "Newark Decalogue Stone" nearby, also claimed to be inscribed in Hebrew. The authenticity of the "Newark Holy Stones" and the circumstances of their discovery is disputed.^{[citation needed]}

Davenport tablets

Reverend Jacob Gass discovered what were called the Davenport tablets. These bore inscriptions that later were determined to be fake.^{[citation needed]}

Walam Olum hoax

The Walam Olum hoax had considerable influence on perceptions of the mound builders. In 1836 Constantine Samuel Rafinesque published his translation of a text he claimed had been written in pictographs on wooden tablets. This text explained that the Lenape Indians originated in Asia, told of their passage over the Bering Strait, and narrated their subsequent migration across the North American continent. This “Walam Olum” tells of battles with native peoples already in America before the Lenape arrived. People hearing of the account believed that the "original people" were the mound builders, and that the Lenape overthrew them and destroyed their culture. David Oestreicher later asserted that Rafinesque's account was a hoax. He argued that the Walam Olum glyphs were derived from Chinese, Egyptian, and Mayan alphabets. Meanwhile, the belief that the Native Americans destroyed the mound builder culture had gained widespread acceptance.^{[citation needed]}

Kinderhook Plates

The Kinderhook plates, "discovered" in 1843, were another hoax, consisting of material planted by a contemporary in Native American mounds. This hoax was intended to discredit the account of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith having translated an ancient book.^{[citation needed]}

See also

Panoramic view from within the Great Circle at the Newark Earthworks in Newark, Ohio (wall of which can be seen in the background)

• List of burial mounds in the United States
• Petroforms
• Serpent Mound
• Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
• Tumulus, Mounds (or barrows) of Europe and Asia

Notes

1. ^ See Squier p. 1
2. ^ Robert W. Preucel, Stephen A. Mrozowski, Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: The New Pragmatism, John Wiley & Sons, 2010, p. 177
3. ^ Mallory O'Connor, Lost Cities of the Ancient Southeast (University Press of Florida, 1995)
4. ^ Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. 1. Washington DC, 1848)
5. ^ Biloine Young and Melvin Fowler, Cahokia: The Great Native American Metropolis (University of Illinois Press, 2000)
6. ^ Davis Brose and N'omi Greber (eds.), Hopewell Archaeology (Kent State UP, 1979)
7. ^ Roger Kennedy, Hidden Cities: The Discovery and Loss of Ancient North American Civilization (Free Press, 1994)
8. ^ Robert Silverberg, "...And the Mound-Builders Vanished from the Earth", originally in the 1969 edition of American Heritage, collected in the anthology A Sense of History [Houghton-Mifflin, 1985]; available online here.
9. ^ Gordon M. Sayre, "The Mound Builders and the Imagination of American Antiquity in Jefferson, Bartram, and Chateaubriand", Early American Literature 33 (1998): 225-249.
10. ^ ^{a b} Rebecca Saunders, "The Case for Archaic Period Mounds in Southeastern Louisiana", Southeastern Archaeology, Vol. 13, No. 2, Winter 1994, accessed 4 November 2011
11. ^ "Important new findings in Louisiana". Archaeo News. Stone Pages. http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/000363.html. Retrieved 5 September 2011. 
12. ^ Joe W. Saunders, "Middle Archaic and Watson Brake", in Archaeology of Louisiana, edited by Mark A. Rees, Ian W. (FRW) Brown, LSU Press, 2010, p. 67
13. ^ Saunders, in Rees and Brown (2010), Archaeology of Louisiana, pp. 69-76
14. ^ Saunders, in Rees and Brown (2010), Archaeology of Louisiana, pp. 69-76
15. ^ Saunders, in Rees and Brown (2010), Archaeology of Louisiana, pp. 73-74
16. ^ Saunders, in Rees and Brown (2010), Archaeology of Louisiana, p. 63
17. ^ "Southeastern Prehistory-Late Woodland Period". http://www.nps.gov/seac/outline/04-woodland/index-3.htm. Retrieved 2008-09-23. 
18. ^ Kidder, Tristram (1998). R. Barry Lewis, Charles Stout. ed. Mississippian Towns and Sacred Spaces. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-0947-0. 
19. ^ "Troyville-Coles Creek". Louisiana prehistory. 2010-07-01. http://www.crt.state.la.us/archaeology/virtualbooks/LAPREHIS/marca.htm. 
20. ^ Adam King (2002). "Mississippian Period: Overview". New Georgia Encyclopedia. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-707. Retrieved 2010-07-01. 
21. ^ "Mississippian and Late Prehistoric Period". http://www.nps.gov/seac/outline/05-mississippian/index.htm. Retrieved 2010-07-01. 
22. ^ Peter N. Peregrine (1995). Archaeology of the Mississippian culture: a research guide. Garland Publishing. p. 165. ISBN 978-0-8153-0336-7. 
23. ^ "Mississippian and Late Prehistoric Period". http://www.nps.gov/seac/outline/05-mississippian/index.htm. Retrieved 2008-09-08. 
24. ^ "The Plaquemine Culture, A.D 1000". http://bcn.boulder.co.us/environment/cacv/cacvbrvl.htm. Retrieved 2008-09-08. 
25. ^ Pidgeon, William (1858) Traditions of Dee-Coo-Dah and Antiquarian Researches. Horace Thayer, New York.
26. ^ Finney, Fred (2008) William Pidgeon and T.H. Lewis. Minnesota Archaeologist 67: 89-105
27. ^ Birmingham, Robert A. and Leslie E. Eisenberg (2000) Indian Mounds of Wisconsin. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, pp 24-27.
28. ^ Lewis, Theodore H. (1886) "The 'Monumental Tortoise' Mounds of 'Dee-Coo-Dah'" The American Journal of Archaeology 2(1):65-69.
29. ^ Jefferson Chapman. "Prehistoric American Indians in Tennessee". University of Tennessee, Knoxville. http://mcclungmuseum.utk.edu/research/renotes/rn-27txt.htm. Retrieved 2012-02-08. 
30. ^ Jon Daniels. "The Book of Mormon and Mesoamerican Archeology". Stanford University. http://www.stanford.edu/~jsdaniel/BoM_Meso.html. Retrieved 2012-02-08. 
31. ^ See the anonymous newspaper article titled "ZARAHEMLA", Mormon Times and Seasons, October 1842, excerpts from John Lloyd Stephens, Incident of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan (1841). Stephens’ conclusion that the Central American stone ruins were not of any great antiquity was overlooked by excited LDS readers.
32. ^ Ohio Historical Society. "Ohio history, Volume 10". http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA225&lpg=PA225&dq=Landon%20West%20reverend&sig=xH3okSLAZOI_7kCKV7_lyMgaiwc&ei=TDEtTs3WD-2msAKqnd2GCw&ct=result&id=SbYBG7ynKZAC&ots=zdG1YgwLtn&output=text. Retrieved 2011-07-25. "The Garden of Eden, it seems, is now definitely located. The site is in Ohio, "Adams" county, to be more precise...The Rev. Landon West of Pleasant Hill, O., a prominent and widely known minister of the Baptist church... arrives at the conclusion that this great work was created either by God himself or by man inspired by Him to make an everlasting object lesson of man's disobedience, Satan's perfidy and the results of sin and death. In support of this startling claim the Rev. Mr. West quotes Scripture and refers to Job 16:13: "By His spirit. He hath garnished the heavens; His hand hath formed the crooked serpent."" 
33. ^ BROOK WILENSKY-LANFORD (May 23rd, 2011). "ADAM AND EVE--AND REVEREND WEST--IN OHIO". The Common. http://www.thecommononline.org/features/adam-and-eve-and-reverend-west-ohio. "The Eden I found in a 1909 pamphlet by Reverend Landon West—the Serpent Mound earthwork that is now an Ohio state park—was still preserved for all to see, so I went...Details that fell outside of West’s lifetime were hard to fit into the book: his son Daniel became the founder of the Heifer Project charity, and his accomplishments no doubt helped preserve the memory of his father’s Garden of Eden." 
34. ^ Bryant, William Cullen, "The Prairies" (1832)

References

• Abrams, Elliot M.; Freter, AnnCorinne (eds.). (2005). The Emergence of the Moundbuilders: The Archaeology of Tribal Societies in Southeastern Ohio. Athens: Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780821416099. 
• Thomas, Cyrus. Report on the mound explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology. Pp. 3–730. Twelfth annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1890–91, by J. W. Powell, Director. XLVIII+742 pp., 42 pls., 344 figs. 1894.
• Feder, Kenneth L.. Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology’’. 5th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2006.
• Squier, A.M., E.G.; Davis M.D., E.H. (1847). Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution. 

Further reading

• Gale, George (1867). Upper Mississippi: or, Historical Sketches of the Mound-builders, the Indian tribes and the Progress of Civilization in the North-west, from A.D. 1600 to the Present Time. Chicago: Clarke. http://www.archive.org/stream/uppermississippi00galerich#page/n7/mode/2up. 

External links

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Mound-builders.

• Lost Race Myth
• LenaweeHistory.com | Mound Builders section, The Western Historical Society 1909, reprint.
• Artist Hideout, Art of the Ancients
• Ancient Monuments Placemarks
• The Mound Builders at Project Gutenberg
• With Climate Swing, a Culture Bloomed in Americas (mound builders in Peru)
• Science 19 September 1997 (A Mound Complex in Louisiana at 5400-5000 Years Before the Present)

v d e    Pre-Columbian North America Archaeological cultures North American pre-Columbian chronology – Adena – Alachua – Ancient Pueblo (Anasazi) – Baytown – Belle Glade – Buttermilk Creek Complex – Caborn-Welborn – Calf Creek – Caloosahatchee – Clovis – Coles Creek – Deptford – Folsom – Fort Ancient – Fort Walton – Fremont – Glades – Glacial Kame – Hopewell (List of Hopewell sites) – Hohokam – Leon-Jefferson – Mississippian (List of Mississippian sites) – Mogollon – Monongahela – Old Cordilleran – Oneota – Paleo-Arctic – Paleo-Indians – Patayan – Plano – Plaquemine – Poverty Point – Prehistoric Southwest – Red Ocher – Santa Rosa-Swift Creek – St. Johns – Steed-Kisker – Tchefuncte – Tocobaga – Troyville Archaeological sites Angel Mounds – Bandelier National Monument – The Bluff Point Stoneworks – Cahokia – Chaco Canyon – Casa Grande – Coso Rock Art District – Eaker – Effigy Mounds National Monument – Etowah Indian Mounds – Eva – Folsom Site – Fort Ancient – Fort Center – Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument – Holly Bluff Site – Hopewell Culture National Historical Park – Kincaid Mounds – Kolomoki – Manitou Cliff Dwellings – Marksville – Meadowcroft Rockshelter – Mesa Verde – Moorehead Circle – Moundville – Mummy Cave – Nodena Site – Ocmulgee National Monument – Old Stone Fort – Parkin Park – Pinson Mounds – Portsmouth Earthworks – Poverty Point – Pueblo Bonito – Rock Eagle – Rock Hawk – Salmon Ruins – Serpent Mound – Spiro Mounds – SunWatch – Taos Pueblo – Toltec Mounds – Town Creek Indian Mound – Winterville Miscellaneous Ballgame – Black drink – Buhl woman – Calumet – Chunkey – Clovis point – Container Revolution – Eastern Agricultural Complex – Eden point – Effigy mound – Falcon dancer – Folsom point – Green Corn Ceremony – Horned Serpent – Kennewick man – Kiva – Metallurgy – Mi'kmaq hieroglyphic writing – Medicine wheel – Mound builders – N.A.G.P.R.A. – Norse colonization of the Americas – Piasa – Pueblo dwellings – Southeastern Ceremonial Complex – Three Sisters agriculture – Thunderbird – Underwater panther Related: Genetic history · Indigenous Portal of North America · Pre-Columbian era

v d e Adena Culture List of Adena culture sites Woodland period Mound builder (people) List of archaeological periods (North America) Ohio Sites Adena Mound Austin Brown Mound Arledge Mounds I and II Beam Farm Clemmons Mound Conrad Mound Archeological Site Coon Hunters Mound George Deffenbaugh Mound Enon Mound Fortner Mounds Great Mound Highbanks Metropolitan Park Mounds I and II Hillside Haven Mound Hodgen's Cemetery Mound Horn Mound Hurley Mound Jackson Mound Karshner Mound Kinzer Mound Luthor List Mound Miamisburg Mound Odd Fellows' Cemetery Mound Old Maid's Orchard Mound Orators Mound Carl Potter Mound Reeves Mound D.S. Rose Mound Ross Trails Adena Circle Short Woods Park Mound Snead Mound Spruce Run Earthworks David Stitt Mound Story Mound (Cincinnati) Story Mound (Chillicothe) Wolf Plains Group Zaleski Mound Group Kentucky Sites Biggs Site Gaitskill Mound Mount Horeb Earthworks Complex Round Hill Mound West Virginia Sites Criel Mound Grave Creek Mound Indiana Sites Mounds State Park Related topics Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley burial mound Eastern Agricultural Complex Hopewell tradition

v d e    Hopewellian peoples Woodland period · List of Hopewell sites · Mound builder (people) · List of archaeological periods (North America) Ohio Hopewell Beam Farm · Benham Mound · Cary Village Site · Cedar-Bank Works · Dunns Pond Mound · Ellis Mounds · Ety Enclosure · Ety Habitation Site · Fort Ancient · Fortified Hill Works · Great Hopewell Road · High Banks Works · Hopeton Earthworks · Hopewell Culture National Historical Park · Indian Mound Cemetery · Keiter Mound · Marietta Earthworks · Moorehead Circle · Mound of Pipes · Nettle Lake Mound Group · Newark Earthworks · Oak Mounds · Perin Village Site · Portsmouth Earthworks · Seip Earthworks and Dill Mounds District · Shawnee Lookout · Tremper Mound and Works · Williamson Mound Archeological District Crab Orchard culture Mann Site · O'byams Fort site · Rockwell Mound Goodall Focus Goodall Site · Norton Mound Group Havana Hopewell culture Albany Mounds State Historic Site · Dickson Mounds · Mound House site · Naples Mound 8 · Rockwell Mound · Sinnissippi Mounds · Toolesboro Mound Group Kansas City Hopewell Cloverdale archaeological site · Renner Village Archeological Site · Trowbridge Archeological Site Marksville culture Crooks Mound · Grand Gulf Mound · Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site · Mott Archaeological Preserve Miller culture Bynum Mound and Village Site · Ingomar Mound · Miller Site · Pharr Mounds · Pinson Mounds Point Peninsula Complex Lewiston Mound · Serpent Mounds Park · LeVescounte Mounds Swift Creek culture Etowah Indian Mounds · Leake Mounds · Kolomoki Mounds Historic Park · Miner's Creek site, · Nacoochee Mound · Swift Creek mound site · Yearwood site Other Hopewellian peoples Armstrong culture · Copena culture · Fourche Maline culture · Laurel Complex · Saugeen Complex · Old Stone Fort (Tennessee) Exotic trade items Copper · Galena · Mica · Fresh water pearls · Obsidian · Pipestone · Sea shells Related topics · Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley · Black drink · burial mound · Calumet (pipe) · Effigy mound · Hopewell pottery · Horned Serpent · Eastern Agricultural Complex · Underwater panther

v d e    Late Woodland cultures Mound builder (people) · List of archaeological periods (North America) Sites Baytown Site · Beattie Park Mound Group · Book Site · Bowen Site (12 MA 61) · Brinsfield I Site · Brokaw Site · Clampitt Site (12-LR-329) · Fisher Site · Hoye Site · Little Maquoketa River Mounds State Preserve · Memorial Park Site · Mott Mounds · Nottingham Site · Ormond Mound · Sommerheim Park · Troyville Earthworks · University of Tennessee Agriculture Farm Mound · Cultures Alachua culture · Baytown culture · Clemson Island culture · Coles Creek culture · Manahoac · Monongahela culture · Oliver Phase · Plum Bayou culture · Springwells Phase · Troyville culture · Weeden Island culture · Related topics  · Steuben point · Belle Glade culture · Extreme weather events of 535–536 · Fort Ancient culture · Mississippian culture · Oneota · St. Johns culture ·

v d e    Coles Creek and Plum Bayou cultures Late Woodland period · List of archaeological periods (North America) Coles Creek sites Aden Site · Balmoral Mounds · Churupa Plantation Mound · Coles Creek Site · Crippen Point site · Cypress Grove Mound · DePrato Mounds · Greenhouse Site · Filhiol Mound Site · Fisher Site · Flowery Mound · Frogmore Mound Site · Ghost Site Mounds · Greenhouse Site · Insley Mounds · Kings Crossing Site · Lamarque Landing Mound · Marsden Mounds · Mazique Archeological Site · Mott Mounds · Mound Plantation · Peck Mounds · Raffman Site · Scott Place Mounds · Shackleford Church Mounds · Sundown Mounds · Transylvania Mounds · Troyville Earthworks · Venable Mound · Wade Landing Mound · Coastal Coles Creek sites Atchafalaya Basin Mounds (16SMY10) · Bayou Black Mound (16TR78) · Bayou Cypremont (16SMY7) · Bayou Grande Cheniere Mounds · Bayou L’Ours Site · Bayou Portage Mounds · Bayou Sorrel Mounds (16IV4) · Clovelly Site (16LF64) · Cypress Point Site (16VM112) · Eagle Point Site (16IB123) · Gibson Mounds (16TR5) · Greenwood Cemetery Site (16SMY10) · Kleinpeter Mounds · Little Cheniere Site (16CM22) · Little Pecan Island Site (16CM43) · Jerry Haas Site (16SJ51) · Machias Lake (16SB2) · Morgan Mounds (16VM9) · Pecan Mounds (16SM37) · Pennison Mounds (16AS16) · Portage Mounds (16SM5) · Richeau Field Site (16TR82) · Schwing Place Mound (16IV13) · Southwest of Cut Off Lagoon (16SB50) · St. Gabriel Mounds (16IV128) · Temple Mounds Site (16LF4) · Plum Bayou sites Chandler Landing Site · Coy Site (3LN20) · Dogtown Site · Hayes Site (35CS196) · Maberry Site · Roland Site (3AR30) · Toltec Mounds · Related topics  · Eastern Agricultural Complex · Fourche Maline culture · Mississippian culture · Natchez · Plaquemine culture · Platform mound · Taensa · Troyville culture ·

v d e    Mississippian and related cultures List of Mississippian sites · Mound builder (people) · Timeline of Mississippi valley Middle Mississippian Adams Site · Angel Mounds · Angel Phase · Aztalan State Park · Beasley Mounds Site · Big Eddy Site · Boyd Mounds Site · Brentwood Library Site · Brick Church Mound and Village Site · Cahokia · Castalian Springs · Chucalissa · Cloverdale archaeological site · Dickson Mounds · Dunbar Cave · Fewkes Group Archaeological Site · John Roy Site · Kincaid Mounds · Kuhn Station Site · Marshall Site · Millstone Bluff · Mitchell Site · Monks Mound · Mound Bottom · Murphy Mound Archeological Site · Obion Mounds · Old Town Archaeological Site · Orendorf Site · Prather Site · Rowlandton Mound Site · Sellars Indian Mound · Shiloh Indian Mounds Site · Steed-Kisker culture · Sugarloaf Mound · Swallow Bluff Island Mounds · Tolu Site · Towosahgy · Turk Site · Twin Mounds Site · Wickliffe Mounds South Appalachian Mississippian Bottle Creek Indian Mounds · Citico · Dauphin Island · Etowah · Fort Walton Culture · Fort Walton Mound · Garden Creek site · Hickory Ridge Cemetery · Hoojah Branch Site · Jere Shine Site · Lake Jackson Mounds · Leon-Jefferson Culture · Letchworth Mounds · Liddell Archeological Site · Little Egypt (archaeological site) · Moccasin Bend · Moundville · Muscogee (Creek) · Nacoochee Mound · Ocmulgee · Pisgah Phase · Roods Landing · Town Creek Indian Mound · Velda Mound · Waddells Mill Pond Site Plaquemine Mississippian Anna Site · Emerald Mound Site · Fitzhugh Mounds · Flowery Mound · Foster's Mound · Ghost Site Mounds · Grand Village of the Natchez · Holly Bluff Site · Jaketown Site · Julice Mound · Mangum Mound Site · Mazique Archeological Site · Medora Site · Mott Mounds · Pocahontas Mounds · Routh Mounds · Scott Place Mounds · Transylvania Mounds · Venable Mound · Winterville Site · Caddoan Mississippian Battle Mound Site · Belcher Mound Site · Bluffton Mound · Caddoan Mounds · Gahagan Mounds · Ka-Do-Ha Indian Village · Spiro Mounds Upper Mississippian cultures Alligator Effigy Mound · Beattie Park Mound Group · Blood Run Site · Clover Site · Dodge Site · Fort Ancient culture · Hartley Fort State Preserve · Leo Petroglyph · Oneota · Roche-a-Cri Petroglyphs · Serpent Mound · SunWatch Indian Village Late Mississippian / Protohistoric Anhaica · Apalachee Province · Belle Meade Phase · Bussell Island · Caddo  · Caborn-Welborn culture · Campbell Site · Chiaha · Citico · Coosa chiefdom · Dallas Phase · de Soto Expedition · Eaker Site · Hovey Lake · Joara · Jordan Mounds · Lamar Phase · Mabila · Menard-Hodges Site · Natchez · Nodena Phase · Parkin Site · Slack Farm · Taensa · Tipton Phase · Toqua (Tennessee) · Tunica · Walls Phase Languages Caddoan languages · Central Algonquian languages · Cherokee language · Mobilian Jargon · Muskogean languages · Natchez language · Siouan languages · Timucua language · Tunica language · Yuchi language Religion Ballgame · Black drink · Calumet (pipe) · Chunkey · Earth/fertility cult · Green Corn Ceremony · Horned Serpent · Long-nosed god maskette · Mississippian stone statuary · Platform mound · Shell gorget · Southeastern Ceremonial Complex · Thunderbird · Underwater panther Related topics  · American Bottom · Chevron bead · Clarksdale bell · Maize · Mississippian culture pottery · Mill Creek chert · Stone box grave

v d e    Fort Ancient culture List of archaeological periods (North America) · Mound builder (people) Anderson Focus Fort Ancient Site · Hine Site · Kemp Site · State Line Site · SunWatch Indian Village Baum Focus Alligator Effigy Mound · Baldwin Site · Baum Site · Gartner Site · Serpent Mound Feurt Focus Buffalo Indian Village Site · Feurt Mounds and Village Site · Hardin Village Site · Leo Petroglyph · Hobson Site Madisonville Focus Buckner Site · Clay Mound · Cleek-McCabe Site · Clover Site · Fox Farm Site · Hahns Field Site · Larkin Site · Lower Shawneetown · Madisonville Site · Ronald Watson Gravel Site · Sand Ridge Site · Turpin Site Related topics  · Bone Stone Graves · Bone Mound II · Cole culture · Mississippian culture · Monongahela culture · Oliver Phase · Oneota · Owasco culture · Springwells Phase ·