Our first day here was a chance to catch up with work. David spent our first day working remotely and Leslie caught up on chores since we had decent water pressure in this park. Strong thunderstorms came in after dark with tornadoes passing near to our location but we did not see any damage. Our second day, we ran down to Moundville Archaeology State Park. It’s another large Indian Mound site, but these were built between 800 and 1400 AD by the Mississippian Indians, the fore fathers of modern-day Muscogee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Southeastern Indians. The gap between mound building societies between 1100BC and 800AD has not been explained by scientists. In its day (800-1450AD), the Moundville site was the second largest mound city in North America. The largest Mississippian mound site was Cahokia in Illinois but had fallen in decline when the Moundville site was reaching its zenith. The Moundville site was home to up to 10,000 people with 30 mounds between 5 and 60 feet tall (only 21 survive today). The purpose of the mounds is not fully known. They believe having a home on top of a mound was a status symbol. Some mounds might have been for religious ceremonies. The sides of the mounds are aligned with the four cardinal directions. There are over 200,000 Indian mounds across the eastern United states. Most of these mounds are on private land. There was an intricate trading network from the great lakes to the gulf coast. They showed off their wealth with copper jewelry, carved sea shells, stone tools, furs, feathers, and bead work.
Moundville Archeological Park 
Park map 
View from top of Mound B 
Exhibit in the Museum of a bridal cerimony 
View of the mounds across a lake in what was a borrow pit 
View from the top of Mound P behind the museum.
No comments:
Post a Comment