Out
of all of the mounds I have seen to date, Miamisburg surprised me
the most. I guess that is because it is really HUGE
first, and that it still is mostly in tact from thousands of years
ago second.
Conical
mounds are the oldest form of the so called Mound Builder Mounds and
are said to be from the "Adena" culture.
The Adena were one of the earliest of
the Mound Builder cultures that flourished in the northeast. The
Adena lived in Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, and parts of
Pennsylvania and New York. The Adena culture eventually underwent
cultural change, with the new cultural traditions being called the
Hopewell culture.
The Adena (conical) mounds were built using hundreds of thousands of
basketfuls of specially selected and graded earth, requiring members
of the community to spare much time from hunting, gathering, and
other everyday pursuits. These Adena mounds were often built over
the remains of their chiefs, shamans, priests, and other honored
dead.
According to archaeological
investigations, Adena conical mounds were usually built as part of burial
ritual, in which the earth of the mound was piled immediately atop a
burned mortuary building.
The mortuary buildings were intended to keep and maintain the dead until
their final burial was performed.
How to use the gallery below:
1.)Click arrows to
see next set of images
2.) Click on any
image to enlarge.
Before the construction of the
mounds, some grave goods would be placed on the floor of the structure,
which was then burned with the honored dead inside the mound. The mound
would be built on top of that, and often a new mortuary structure would
be placed atop the new mound. After a series of repetitions of this
mortuary then earth and so on, a quite prominent earthwork would remain.
In the later Adena period, circular ridges of unknown function were
sometimes constructed around the burial mounds. Chances are they were
used for water which was believed no spirits could cross, thus making a
barrier between the spirits within the mound and the living on the other
side.
When the first white settlers came into the Miamisburg area, they were
inspired to preserve the Miamisburg Mound which is the largest conical
mound in Ohio. Originally it was 68 feet high with a diameter of three
hundred feet. One excavating attempt in 1869 reduced the height to
it's present 65 feet. The mound was then partially investigated by means
of a vertical shaft which extended from the top to the base and
connected with two horizontal tunnels. The exploration revealed one
burial eight feet from the top containing a bark covered skeleton and a
vault 28 feet lower that was surrounded by logs but without a burial.
Along the sides of the vertical shaft were found various layers of ashes
and stones, implying that the mound was built in several stages. The
entire construction however has never been systematically excavated.
One thing that I noticed both times I visited the mound in Miamisburg is
that it is set atop a high plateau-like area, giving the view from the
top no other formations to block it's view to any side for as far as the
eye can see. (see images in the gallery above)
Man-made mounds are mounds that were made from the ground up and fall into four basic shapes or categories. Conical mounds, Effigy mounds, Temple Mounds and Geometric (usually linear) mounds.
Conical Mounds- look like pyramids except that they are rounded. They, just as the great pyramids, were built in honor of some special shaman or king, and are in fact burial sites for them as well.
Effigy Mounds - are shaped like animals and or spirits, and were believed to have ceremonial, navigational and calendar-like purposes. It is known that many of these align with the stars and could have been used to predict solstices, and even eclipses.
Temple Mounds - were mounds that either were man-made or "truncated" natural hills. Structures (many times temples) were placed upon the flattened top and were considered to be "living spaces" for shamans or their leaders and their families.
Geometric-Shaped Mounds - were usually circular, square, or linear in shape, and were thought to have alot of the same uses as the effigy mounds, but sometimes (like the Newark site above) were believed to be created together to build ceremonial & observatory inside large complexes.
To learn more about the people who built the mounds, use the following links:
