# Mounds



## wthunter11 (Jun 6, 2015)

Joined some hunting land that buddy of mine has had for a while. He told me today that the forester told him there was a old mound in the place.  Forester is a avid artifact guy and said it was biggest one he'd seen. It's grown up very bad around it but it's there rises about 20 30 feet up from pretty flat ground. And there is a old creek that there is points found in. So did they use this to watch for game or other purposes. It's located in Russell county Alabama. Which I know is creek Indian territory. I'm going try and find my first point around the creek after a rain since we just plowed up some fields.


----------



## Bow Only (Jun 7, 2015)

Most likely a burial mound.


----------



## Kawaliga (Jun 7, 2015)

Is it flat on top, or conical in shape?


----------



## wthunter11 (Jun 7, 2015)

Kawaliga said:


> Is it flat on top, or conical in shape?



I didn't walk to the top it's very thick getting to it. Matt are you knowledgable on how the burials would be done. As far as would one be buried. Then later another. Or could this be were maybe a group died at once. I'm wanting to learn more about the natives Americans. I live in a area very rich in their history.


----------



## NCHillbilly (Jun 8, 2015)

Most mounds were built during the Woodland-Mississippian periods, probably for multiple reasons. Most had townhouses located on top of them, most contain burials, and most are located in flood plains along streams, which might serve a practical purpose of keeping the townhouse from flooding or washing away. Probably also just for some of the same reasons that other cultures built pyramids-civic pride, religious reasons, and because they could.


----------



## olcop (Jun 9, 2015)

Tread carefully around  doing any excavating on a mound, it is usually against the law to disturb any grave/burial site.
Would also suggest you don't spread any info around about it's location either, things like this are a magnet for vandals.
olcop


----------



## wthunter11 (Jun 9, 2015)

No I don't plan on digger it up. Seems disrespectful. But would like to check the areas around it near the creek. Thanks for all the input guys.


----------



## Bow Only (Jun 9, 2015)

I am familiar with the burial practices of the different cultures in NW FL.  I am not familiar with the variances between the NW FL cultures and their equivalent GA cultures.


----------



## Forest Grump (Jun 9, 2015)

Bow Only said:


> I am familiar with the burial practices of the different cultures in NW FL.  I am not familiar with the variances between the NW FL cultures and their equivalent GA cultures.



Do you really think they were that different? That close together? I would consider you an authority on SE woodland & Mississippian cultures. I don't think anyone here would disagree. Surely those folks were part of the same general cultural (& likely trading) complex, don't you think? By that point, aren't they more agricultural & sedentary? Agreed, the ones they traded with up the Mississippi into Ohio may have had cultural variance, but surely the ones in AL, SC, FL & GA would have been pretty consistent? Maybe like the difference in Baptists & Methodists?


----------



## Bow Only (Jun 10, 2015)

The cultures were certainly different and there were some differences between peoples of the same time period in different areas of the SE.  8Ja65 had burials that overlapped in a spiraling outward  pattern.  That was unusual for anywhere.  Some peoples interred all at once, others did not.  It appears to be area specific and group specific.


----------



## NCHillbilly (Jun 10, 2015)

Forest Grump said:


> Do you really think they were that different? That close together? I would consider you an authority on SE woodland & Mississippian cultures. I don't think anyone here would disagree. Surely those folks were part of the same general cultural (& likely trading) complex, don't you think? By that point, aren't they more agricultural & sedentary? Agreed, the ones they traded with up the Mississippi into Ohio may have had cultural variance, but surely the ones in AL, SC, FL & GA would have been pretty consistent? Maybe like the difference in Baptists & Methodists?



My understanding and thoughts/opinions, which may or may not be correct:

If you read accounts of early travelers through the southeast, like Debry, DeSoto's men, or John Lawson, for example, it's amazing how much variation of peoples existed in small areas. Traveling through what is now NC and SC in 1700, Lawson was encountering different tribes of people with different languages and customs sometimes just a day's travel on foot from each other. Just in what is now NC, there were at least three major cultural groups: the Algonquians, Iroquoians, and Siouans; all of which came from completely different stocks and root language groups and varied considerably in religious beliefs, types of housing, governmental structure, etc. Each of these was divided into several to many tribes: The Cherokee and Tuscarora were Iroquoian, the Catawba, Cheraw, Yuchi, Peedee, etc., were Siouan, The Pamlico, Pamunkey, etc. were Algonquian. There were probably hundreds of small individual tribes living in just this one state.

The Cherokee in the west lived in wattle-and-daub houses, and often used and made burials in the existing Mississippian mounds, for example, even though they may have come to the region after they were already built by someone else; while some of the other tribes lived in bark wigwams and buried their dead in large pottery vessels, and many of the Coastal tribes put their dead into charnal houses, cleaned the meat from the bones, and then stored the skeletal remains in a structure. That is just in what is now one state. 

After European settlement and the massive deaths from diseases and wars that came with it, many of the surviving small tribes banded together-if I understand correctly, the historic Creeks  and Seminoles were not large tribes so much as confederations of many smaller tribes. 

So, it's entirely possible that folks living in the same general area could have totally different burial customs. There may have been more cultural cohesion during the heyday of the Mississippian period before Europeans arrived, but by the 1500s-1600s, there were apparently lots of small, diverse tribes scattered all over the southeast.


----------



## NCHillbilly (Jun 10, 2015)

Bow Only said:


> The cultures were certainly different and there were some differences between peoples of the same time period in different areas of the SE.  8Ja65 had burials that overlapped in a spiraling outward  pattern.  That was unusual for anywhere.  Some peoples interred all at once, others did not.  It appears to be area specific and group specific.



Interesting info. You need to post more in here, I'm always wanting to learn more about the Southeastern cultures.


----------



## dpoole (Jun 11, 2015)

Good info


----------



## Bow Only (Jun 11, 2015)

My friend and mentor Calvin Jones died before he completed the excavation report on 8Ja65.  They gave me what he had completed and it's somewhere in my library.   The main burial in the mound (in the center) was wearing a headdress made of 5 conch shells.  They found an effigy statue in the main cave of a man with 5 shells on his headdress.  There is also a cemetery that was used late in the period where individuals were buried in ceramic pots with inverted pots as lids.


----------



## Son (Jun 18, 2015)

I once witnessed an archaeological survey in Collier Co. Fl, and in Lee Co Fl. where small dirt mounds were excavated. What they found was people had been piled up, covered with limerocks and sand. What the arch's told me was, European diseases were killing the indigenous people by the hundreds at the time. The living would pile up the dead, cover em up and move away. At the next village site, the same would happen again. Not very many survived the trend the arch's said. I was suppose to be deer and turkey hunting, but the dig held my interest. Was there for a couple weeks during the dig, so i saw most of it. No burial goods were found.


----------



## Son (Jun 18, 2015)

Witnessed another excavation of a sand mound in Florida. The first burials were below original ground level, late Woodland. Later burials were interred into the sides of the mound, 200-800 AD. Even later burials were added after European contact as there were a few glass trade beads found with those bundle burials. First burials were extended.


----------



## Son (Jun 18, 2015)

I'm not an expert on mounds or burials, what i've posted is merely what i've seen over the years. Also had an opportunity to watch excavations of Seminoles downtown Tampa Fl, when the old Bay View Hotel was removed and another building was to be built. Indian friend Lenard Thomas invited me in for a closeup view, even after the Archaeologist had denied my entry. It pays to be part Indian some times. Those burials were in wood boxes and were buried by soldiers from Fort Brook, Tampa.


----------



## antharper (Jun 20, 2015)

I grew up in south ga along the ocmulgee river and they were several mounds in the area along the river I always figured they were for high water


----------



## chefrific (Jun 30, 2015)

There is one on some property I hunted as a child right next to the little ocmulgee river.  
Back in the 70's a crew cut a firebreak around the sides of the 'mound'.  Those guys filled boxes with various points, tools and pottery fragments.  
I've always wondered what type of mound it was.  It is pretty flat on top and on the creek side around the base there is a line of small mini sized mounds.


----------



## runswithbeer (Jul 22, 2015)

alot of what people call mounds arent ceremonial or even burial mounds.  Many times  dirt piles from earlier construction, logging or ag practices have been labeled mounds.  Ive seen areas that included native sites that were manipulated with heavy equipment 30-40 years ago that appear to be small mounds now, people swear they are burial mounds but i know different...ive also seen sites that produced burial objects that were nothing more than natural mounds that the natives added to and used as ceremonial and burial...


----------



## brunofishing (Jul 22, 2015)

wthunter11 said:


> Joined some hunting land that buddy of mine has had for a while. He told me today that the forester told him there was a old mound in the place.  Forester is a avid artifact guy and said it was biggest one he'd seen. It's grown up very bad around it but it's there rises about 20 30 feet up from pretty flat ground. And there is a old creek that there is points found in. So did they use this to watch for game or other purposes. It's located in Russell county Alabama. Which I know is creek Indian territory. I'm going try and find my first point around the creek after a rain since we just plowed up some fields.




Be very careful about what you do around these area over there. It does not take much to get in trouble around those mounds..The local law keeps a very close eye on the mounds due to the fact there are a lot of theme over there. Don't think for a minute that there are not on here watching, they are. I have seen a few people on the river get hauled off to jail for digging around the river banks, Just be carful is all Im trying to tell ya.. I don't like to see people in trouble!


----------



## doublebarrel (Jul 24, 2015)

I was in a hunting club and there was a small mound in a bottom.I was looking around and found an indian head penny on side of mound! Guess someone left it for the Indians. BB


----------

