Cherokee words for mounds refer to earthen surfaces and sacred fires kept on those surfaces, including fires kept inside the hearths of public structures known as townhouses. One important term for mounds, from the Muskogean languages spoken in historic Creek towns of Alabama and Georgia, translates as “earth sitting,” which Miller interprets as evidence that Mississippian mounds were monuments that were designed and built for “holding steady in place.” There is widespread agreement by Southeastern archaeologists that Mississippian platform mounds-dating to the period just before European contact-were indeed world symbols, or “earth icons,” as well as material symbols of community identity and the power of chiefly elites.Ĭhapter 3 discusses the diverse environments of the American South, the linguistic diversity of Native American groups that were associated with the Mississippian cultural tradition in the Southeast, early contacts with Spanish conquistadors, and the significance of earthen mounds located in the Choctaw homeland of Mississippi and Cherokee town areas in the southern Appalachians. On the other, they are hubs of activity, cultural memory, and spiritual power. Miller considers archaeological and ethnographic evidence about the significance of color in mound-building, practices of clearing and cleansing ground surfaces before mounds were built, and the importance of fire and smoke in the lives of mounds, including sacred fires kept in the hearths of temples or townhouses, and fires associated with burning old structures to create surfaces on which to build new structures and mound stages. Some comparative discussion reaches outside the Southeast, including consideration of mounds in southern Ontario, the Effigy Mound tradition of Iowa and Wisconsin, and Hohokam platform mounds in Arizona. Jay Miller sees earthen mounds as symbols and sources of spiritual vitality and stability to native peoples, and the first chapter of this book, focusing on the Southeast but also drawing upon comparative examples from other areas of Native America, characterizes mounds as an adaptation to a volatile and a periodically dangerous world.Ĭhapter 2 discusses the history of archaeological interest in North American earthworks Archaic-period mounds (including sites such as Poverty Point and Watson Brake), Woodland-period mounds (associated with Adena and Hopewell burial mounds and ceremonialism), and Mississippian mounds (including platform mounds on which temples, elite residences, and public structures were built) and Native American perspectives on mound-building.

Native American earthworks are widespread in the American South and the Midwest.