For more than 8,000 years, Native Americans have been building earthen mounds in what is now the Eastern United States. The mounds come in all sizes, from minute to massive, and in all shapes. In general there are four distinct types of mounds—burial mounds that are primarily used for the dead, effigy mounds built in the shape of animals, geometric mounds, (circles, squares, etc.), and platform mounds.
This outstanding study deals with platform mounds that originate about 5,500 B.C. They are found from Florida to Oklahoma, and the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, and are defined as a form of monumental architecture featuring a flat summit on which elite residences and religious temples were built, or ceremonial activities such as dancing took place. They range in size from a few feet high and few feet in diameter to Monk’s Mound at Cahokia, near St. Louis, which is 100 feet high and has twenty-six million cubic feet of earth that cover some thirteen acres.
Platform mounds have three fundamental characteristics: 1) they were made of earth although other materials like shell and wood were also used; 2) they were four-sided, although some were conical as well as other shapes; 3) they were usually built in stages with sequential summits. Their presence spanned successive cultures and places, but they were built continuously over this long period, and a few are even being built today. Author Megan Kassabaum, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania who does research in Mississippi, shows how platform mounds functioned and how their meaning changed over time and geography, while always playing a dynamic role in Native societies. She synthesizes data from 149 mound sites out of the thousands that existed at the time of European contact to give us a vivid picture of this ancient tradition.
Sadly, the vast majority of ancient mounds have been destroyed by looters, modern agriculture, and urban development, thus making those that remain even more valuable for scientific research. Kassabaum has produced a very readable study that corrects many aspects of the history of platform mound building. It is an essential addition to the literature of eastern Native American development and lifestyle.
