Spiro Mounds on the Arkansas River in eastern Oklahoma is, or was, one of the most impressive Mississippian mound complexes in the nation. At least 11 mounds surround a great plaza that supported a large population in A.D. 1200.
Between 1933 and 1941, Spiro Mounds was all but destroyed – first by a group of organized looters, and then by a government work program. Looting Spiro Mounds tells the story of this destruction and how it influenced archaeological policy in America for years to come. To many preservationists, the looting of Spiro Mounds is one of the greatest tragedies of the American archaeological experience. In 1933 six men organized as the Pocola Mining Company leased the looting rights to a large part of the site for $300. By 1935, they were finding and removing vast quantities of some of the most spectacular artifacts ever discovered in North America, which were sold around the world. In a front-page story, the Kansas City Star compared Spiro Mounds to King Tut’s tomb.
In 1936, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) began large-scale excavations of Spiro with up to 70 unskilled laborers at a time. The WPA competed with Pocola Mining for leases, and many of the artifacts recovered during the WPA project were stolen by the workers and looters.
Today, Spiro Mounds has been reconstructed as a state park, but the artifacts are scattered far and wide and often appear on Ebay. Most of the information about the people who lived there is lost forever. University of North Carolina, Greenville historian David La Vere has produced a riveting account of one of the sorriest episodes in the history of American archaeology.
