The Hedgepeth Mounds site, one of seven sites of ancient mounds in Lincoln Parish, has revealed a few secrets to Joe Saunders and his team since they refocused their attention there last December.
The two main mounds, structures believed older than the pyramids of Egypt, have [four] companions. Saunders said that shows a strong relationship to the site at Watson Brake and a larger system of organization in the culture that built them.
Saunders, northeast regional archaeologist at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, is wrapping up work to determine whether the structures, revealed by recent three-dimensional images of the site, are in fact man-made. On Tuesday, Saunders, amateur archaeologist Reca Jones and soil scientist Thurman Allen were out at the Lincoln Parish site drilling core samples, surveying and gathering more data on the structures. "Not all mounds are big mounds," Allen said. "When we take a core sample and the top soil is covered, we can be pretty sure it's a man-made mound."
Allen was referring to the "A-horizon," or the point where the original top soil was covered over by "loading material" brought by the middle-archaic period culture that constructed the mounds. "Middle archaic" means the culture existed between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago.
The team uses a technique pioneered by Allen — taking core samples out of mounds with a hydraulic device. Samples are logged and preserved in PVC pipe for later analysis.
"This mound is probably about 5,000 years old based on the change in the soil. It's one of the best examples, one you hope to find."
Taking the more newly discovered structures into account, Hedgepeth Mounds is also generally shaped much like Watson Brake, a mound site Saunders said is a few hundred years older than Hedgepeth. The mound structures at both sites form an arc shape.
"Hedgepeth has given us only one piece of pre-ceramic pottery," Saunders said. "It's a little younger than Watson Brake, but shows so much less of the evidence we found in every core sample at Watson Brake, where it would have like 200 artifacts."
Confirmation that some of the new structures are indeed mounds means that the 10-acre site, donated to The Archeological Conservancy in 2004, needs to be expanded to contain the newly discovered areas, Saunders said.
For more, including a planned pamphlet to promote Louisiana mound sites, see the Shreveport Times article.
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