This is the first study of mounds, earthworks, and other earthen monuments in northern Michigan, an area somewhat outside of the more intense and better studied mound building areas of the Midwest and South. These constructions have often been considered to be isolated finds and not connected to the late prehistoric period of the indigenous tribes.
Archaeologist Meghan C.L. Howey of the University of New Hampshire has broken new ground in this survey and study of these mounds. She reviews old interpretations and presents new data to show that these mounds are part of a regional ritual landscape. She convincingly argues that these are monuments of an egalitarian society that flourished just prior to
European contact.
Rejecting colonial accounts as largely unreliable and biased against the existing tribes (the mound builders were said to almost anyone but Native Americans), Howey uses modern archeological methods to seek the facts. This is an important regional study into an important area of American archaeology that has often been ignored.
