Between about 500 B.C. and A.D. 500, Native Americans built thousands of mounds and earthworks in the Ohio River Valley. In what is now West Virginia, they built some 400 conical burial mounds, of which only a handful survive today. Most were built by the Adena culture and a few by the succeeding Hopewell culture during the Woodland period.
Most of these mounds were small, and contained a few burials and abundant grave goods of native copper, marine shell, and ceramics. But a few of these monuments were massive. The Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville was sixty-two-feet high and 240 feet in diameter. It had a parapet near its top and was surrounded by a moat. Archaeologists estimate it took three million basket loads of earth to construct. Excavated in the nineteenth century, it contained two tombs and huge quantities of artifacts.
West Virginia archaeologist Darla Spencer describes the Grave Creek Mound and fifteen others in this informative guide to ancient moundbuilding in the state. She also provides the reader with background information on the various cultures of the Ohio Valley over the more than 12,000 years of Native occupation. Woodland Mounds in West Virginia is an essential guide to the archaeology of the region.
