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Forum: Stones Forum
Moderated by : Andy B , TimPrevett , coldrum , Klingon , MickM , TheCaptain , bat400 , davidmorgan , Runemage , SolarMegalith , sem
Respond to: Richard Thornton -Examiner.com: Why and how did Native Americans build mounds?
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bat400
Joined:
10-04-2006
Messages: 1335
from South Central Indiana, US
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|  New Message Posted!2010-03-22 05:26
You can find more on Richard Thornton and see his other articles at his Bio on Examiner.com
Of particular interest are his architectural drawings of these ancient sites, in their prime, based on the archaeological evidence. I have not read his book, but I'm certainly going to buy it now.
I'm unsure why the one article on "Indian Mounds" has a few fairly obvious errors in names. Thornton studied Meso-American architecture and seems to follow the view that there is a fairly direct connection between the architecture of building topped Mississippian platform mounds and stone and plaster pyramids of Mexico and Central America. (This connection is by no means a consensus view among archaeologists, however.)
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bat400
Joined:
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Messages: 1335
from South Central Indiana, US
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| New Message Posted!2010-03-22 05:17
Richard Thornton is the author of Ancient Roots I: The Indigenous People and Architecture of the Southern Highlands, 2007. His examination of pre-historic sites in the south eastern United States comes from his occupation as a practicing architect and his background in city planning and historic preservation. He has written multiple short articles on Examiner.com about Indigenous American towns and ceremonial sites, some of which were abandoned prior to European contact and others that were populated into the post contact historic era.
Coldrum submits a general article on North American Indian Mounds, written by Richard Thornton on Examiner.com. It is excerpted below:
When English and Scottish settlers first arrived in what was to become the United States, they encountered literally thousands of abandoned earthen and shell mounds that seemed not to be associated with occupied Indian villages. Typically, the new arrivals assumed that the “savages” were intellectually incapable of carrying out major public works. Therefore, they speculated that Europeans or advanced societies from the Middle East had once lived in the New World until they were exterminated by the Indians. It would not be for another 200 years that the public would become generally aware that about 90-95% of the societies who built those mounds had died of diseases or had been enslaved in the decades following Spanish exploration of the region.
Some tribes in the Lower Mississippi Valley were still occupying mounds when French settlers arrived, so there was no French speculation about the origin of abandoned mounds. The best known of these last mound builders were the Natchez. They also stopped building mounds after the 1720s.
“Indian mound” is the common name for a variety of solid structures erected by some of the indigenous peoples of the United States. Most Native American tribes did not build mounds. The majority were constructed in the Lower Southeast, Ohio River Valley, Tennessee River Valley and the Mississippi River Valley. Some shell mounds can be found along the entire length of the United States’ Atlantic Coast.
Construction Materials
Mounds could be built out of topsoil, packed clay, detritus from the cleaning of plazas, sea shells, freshwater mussel shells or fieldstones. All of the largest mounds were built out of packed clay.
Construction Method
All of the mounds were built with individual human labor. Native Americans had no beasts of burden or excavation machinery. Soil, clay, or stones were carried in baskets on the backs of laborers to the top or flanks of the mound and then dumped. Hundreds of thousands of man-hours of work were required to build each of the larger mounds. It is likely that the shells in shell mounds were thrown there after large community feasts.
Between 900 AD and 1600 AD most mounds in the Lower Southeast were plastered with bands of brightly colored clays. The more advanced societies of the Lower Southeast and Mississippi Basin had professional architects, who laid out the structures in advance, then directed the work crews. It is believed that mound construction in the Ohio Valley and Lower Southeast during the period between 200 BC and 600 AD was supervised by religious leaders.
Uses of Mounds
The earliest mounds seem to have functioned both as public landmarks for seasonal gatherings and platforms for villages. Many of the shell mounds within the interior of the Southeast seem merely to have been piles of discarded freshwater mussel shells that marked the location of annual harvests and feasts. Burial mounds were built in the Southeast throughout several cultural periods. The massive geometric earthworks of the Hopewell Culture apparently defined locations of major regional trade festivals and religious gatherings. On the other hand, the pyramidal mounds of the Southeast, western Tennessee and Louisiana either were the bases of temples or the locations of important rituals. Some pyramidal mounds, built between 300 AD and 750 AD were the bases of mortuary temples, where human remains were applied special rituals and then cremated. Beginning around 700 AD in southern Florida, 900 AD farther north and 1000 AD in the middle Mississippi Basin, both pyramidal and conical mounds were the bases of conventional temples or the houses of important leaders. This architectural tradition continued until the 1600s, when most mound construction stopped in the Southeast.
Since most Indian mounds in the United States have been abandoned since 1600 AD or earlier, erosion, cultivation and exploratory excavations have radically changed their appearance from when they were in use. Visitors to historic sites, where mounds have been preserved, do not realize that they were once earthen buildings with brightly colored decorative motifs on the side. Most mounds also had large ceremonial ramps or at least wooden steps leading to the top. As a result, laymen often view the remnants of these huge structures as something akin to landscaping, rather than true forms of public architecture.
For more, see http://www.examiner.com/x-40598-Architecture--Design-Examiner~y2010m3d7-Why-and-how-did-Native-Americans-build-mounds
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