The bloody Civil War battle of Shiloh of 1862 took place on and around a major archaeological site on the bluff overlooking the Tennessee River. Dating between A.D. 1000 and 1450, the Mississippians, native farmers of the Mississippi Valley, lived here and built at least eight mounds and nearly 100 houses enclosed by a 3,000-foot long palisade on some 45 acres. Since the area has never been plowed, many of the ruins are clearly visible. They are now protected by virtue of being part of Shiloh National Military Park. But the ruins aren’t protected from the forces of nature, however, and the site is eroding into the river.
In 1998, the National Park Service commission Paul Welch, a Mississippian archaeologist at Southern Illinois University, to prepare an extensive report on the site. After four years of work, Welch produced his technical report, and this volume is a summary for the archaeological community and the general public. Well written and lavishly illustrated, it tells the story a community that flourished just before the arrival of Europeans. Because the state of preservation is so good (most all Mississippian sites have at least been plowed), the archaeology is more complete than at most any other comparable site. Welch does an outstanding job of assembling the data from 100 years of excavations and graphically demonstrates the importance of the Shiloh Mounds to the archaeology of the Mississippi Valley.
