Conical Mounds
~Miamisburg,
Ohio~
| 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. |
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)
Click Here to read an excerpt from "Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley" by Squier and Davis in 1847 concerning this type of conical
"sepulchral" mound.
Here are some
videos from my latest visit to the mound in September 2006:
1.) Driving up to the Miamisburg Mound
2.) A view from the parking lot
3.) Reading one of the markers at the mound
4.) A view from the top
5.) Climbing to the top of the mound
Types of Man-Made Mounds
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.
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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.
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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.
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| 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:
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