Writers and scholars have proposed many alternative origins for the Mound Builders: In 1787, Benjamin Smith Barton proposed the theory that the Mound Builders were Vikings who came to North America and eventually disappeared. It is located just west of Chillicothe. It is believed that another mound once stood about where the intersection of Mound and S. High Street. Yet, sadly, so many of the artifacts originally recovered during Ohio's early development, were claimed by European expeditions to Ohio, and then later by museums from around the country. Gordon M. Sayre, "The Mound Builders and the Imagination of American Antiquity in Jefferson, Bartram, and Chateaubriand". Above: Old Circleville map. Ohio is known for the preservation of many of its Mound Builder sites. The discovery of metal artifacts further convinced people that the Mound Builders were not Native Americans. 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. Near the southern edge of the new city stood a large conical mound. The four-lobed burial mound that is the centerpiece of the park, as long as a football field and more than 30 feet high, is not original. The general term, "mound builder", covered their shared architectural practice of earthwork mound construction. We also find these same burial practices all along the Mississippi River and its tributaries.
Some well-understood examples are the Adena culture of Ohio, West Virginia, and parts of nearby states. The original caption reads: Sometimes the deceased king of this province is buried with great solemnity, and his great cup from which he was accustomed to drink is placed on a tumulus with many arrows set about it. First, are the burial mounds.
They had a culture with strong cultural practices and they populated the state in ways that are hard to imagine today. In the early 19th Century a singular conical mound was excavated. The early earthworks built in Louisiana around 3500 BCE are the only ones known to have been built by a hunter-gatherer culture. The most complete reference for these earthworks is Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, written by Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis. [38][39][40][41][42][43] Some nineteenth-century archaeological finds (e.g., earth and timber fortifications and towns,[44] the use of a plaster-like cement,[45] ancient roads,[46] metal points and implements,[47] copper breastplates,[48] head-plates,[49] textiles,[50] pearls,[51] native North American inscriptions, North American elephant remains etc.) [36], When British colonists first arrived in America, they did not witness the Native Americans building mounds and these colonists reported that few Native Americans (specifically referring to those Native Americans living in this area newly colonized by England) on the Atlantic coast - knew of their own (ancient ?) There seems to have been some common design elements used in these earthworks which was primarily a very large circular structure attached to an even larger rectangular embankment. 1-350 a.d. There was also evidence to suggest that the Hopewell Culture carried on extensive trading with other people across North America. These were the first people that gained sustenance off the land.
[32][33][34], A major factor in increasing public knowledge of the origins of the mounds was the 1894 report by Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology.
Contemporary archeologists have divided this group into 3 distinct cultures. One notable exception are a group of earthworks and mounds near Newark, Ohio. Length 19.9 cm from the Mann site, Posey County, Indiana, Allison/Copena culture, Middle Woodland period, AD 100-400. However, at the time of this study, the land had changed hands and was then owned by Mordecai Cloud Hopewell. A small number of people had earlier made 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. The Hopewell Culture also expanded the farming practices the Adena Culture had begun to develop. It is believed that the late Adena Culture was most likely responsible for constructing the Great Serpent Mound in southern Ohio. Credit: Marcia K Moore / Ciamar Studio. The artist Jacques le Moyne, who had accompanied French settlers to northeastern Florida during the 1560s, likewise noted many Native American groups using existing mounds and constructing others.
This practice, believed to be associated with a cosmology that had a cross-cultural appeal, may indicate common cultural antecedents.
After the last ice age, small groups of people with little organization other than what might be expected in a family structure appeared across Ohio. Birmingham, Robert A. and Leslie E. Eisenberg (2000), Lewis, Theodore H. (1886) "The 'Monumental Tortoise' Mounds of 'Dee-Coo-Dah'", harvnb error: no target: CITEREFSilverberg1969 (, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFKennedy1994 (. [26] As more Mississippian culture influences were absorbed, the Plaquemine area as a distinct culture began to shrink after CE 1350. 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. During these early investigations it was found that there are basically two types of earthworks used by the Mound Builders. They believed that the massive earthworks and large ceremonial complexes were built by a different people. Mound A was a burial mound that dated to 3400 BCE, making it the oldest known burial mound in North America. [36], People also claimed that Native Americans were not the Mound Builders because the mounds and related artifacts were older than Native American cultures known by European Americans at that time.
Today we refer to them generally as the Mound Builders. Many of these singular burial mounds can still be seen. For example, today we have presidential burial sites with magnificent enclosures, compared to a mausoleum where a great number of individuals that were of sufficient stature to afford a stone enclosure, and compared to the more common grave sites familiar to most cemeteries.
The various cultures collectively termed "Mound Builders" were inhabitants of North America who, during a 5,000-year period, constructed various styles of earthen mounds for religious, ceremonial, burial, and elite residential purposes. Some artifacts that were found in relation to the mounds were inscribed with symbols. Today a few of the artifacts recovered from a few of these sites are on display particularly at the Ohio History Connection in Columbus. Hence, the name Hopewell was given to this cultural group. [17][better source needed]. 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,[22] and the Caddoan Mississippian culture of northwestern Louisiana, eastern Texas, and southwestern Arkansas. For most part burial mounds found in the south were the same as those found in the north. As the Europeans did not know of any Native American cultures that had a writing system, they assumed a different group had created them.[36]. Artist’s representation of the “Adena Giant”, Prehistoric Mound Builders.
2012 excavations and dating by Thompson and Pluckhahn show that work began around 2600 BCE, seven centuries before the mound-builders in Ohio. The Pipe was found by Henry Mann in 1916. Since little violent conflict with Europeans had occurred in that area during that period, the most plausible explanation is that infectious diseases from the Old World, such as smallpox and influenza, had decimated most of the Native Americans who had comprised the last mound-builder civilization.
