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<< Text Pages >> Louisiana State University Campus Mounds - Artificial Mound in United States in The South

Submitted by bat400 on Sunday, 03 October 2010  Page Views: 11269

Site WatchSite Name: Louisiana State University Campus Mounds Alternative Name: 16EBR6, LSU Campus Mounds, LSU Mounds
Country: United States
NOTE: This site is 6.562 km away from the location you searched for.

Region: The South Type: Artificial Mound
Nearest Town: Baton Rouge, LA
Latitude: 30.415100N  Longitude: 91.18217W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
3 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
5 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4

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Artificial Mound in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana.
Two conical mounds, the largest having a diameter of approximately 125 feet. Sample coring indicates the mounds were built over a burn site (possibly a cremation, feast site, or watch fire) and are over 5000 years old. Louisiana has some of the oldest mound sites in North America.

Lying on the Louisiana State University Campus, the mound have been periodically resurfaced with fill and sodded to fight erosion. They have been a feature of campus traditional gatherings, but crowds and dangerous actions (driving vehicles over the mounds) have led to efforts to restrict access on the mounds themselves.

National Register of Historic Places site.

Note: Football Fans Ignore Pleas to Protect Mounds; Children Trash Protection Signs While Parents Cite "Tradition". University Pleads for Cooperation and Re-States the Facts.
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"Louisiana State University Campus Mounds" | Login/Create an Account | 5 News and Comments
  
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Re: Louisiana State University Campus Mounds by davidmorgan on Monday, 06 August 2012
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Street View -
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Don't Tread on Me: University Takes Steps to Preserve LSU Mounds by Andy B on Sunday, 10 October 2010
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The LSU Mounds, which date back approximately 6,000 years to the Archaic period, are some of the oldest Native American mounds found in Louisiana, and have long been in danger due to their popularity and also from natural processes. To preserve them and minimize irrevocable damage, the LSU Mounds will have restricted access on heavy traffic days, namely home football games.

"This isn't meant to spoil anyone's fun or dampen traditions," said Rob Mann, southeast regional archaeologist for Louisiana, assistant professor-research of Geography and Anthropology and resident expert on the mounds. "The fact of the matter is that these are nationally significant archaeological resources that science still doesn't fully understand, and we need to preserve that history as part of Louisiana's legacy. One or two people don't cause the damage … It's the weight and presence of hundreds of people over the course of a game day that's the true threat to these valuable links to the past."

http://www.lsu.edu/departments/gold/2010/09/mounds.shtml
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University Leaders Agree (Again) to Try to Limit Crowds on 6000 year old site by bat400 on Monday, 04 October 2010
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Efforts to keep traffic off the LSU Mounds on game days got off to a difficult start, with barricades being pulled for safety reasons at the last game, allowing free access for people to walk up and slide down the mounds. But, because the mounds are so culturally and scientifically important, the university has come together and developed the “Save the Mounds” campaign to preserve LSU’s Mounds.

As such, visitors to campus on home football game days will see that the mounds have been fenced off in a safe but thorough manner to avoid crowds gathering there to slide or view the parade.

However, it is important to note that the mounds will be accessible at all other times. The only time access will be restricted is during game days, when potentially damaging crowds can gather on them.

We have only recently begun to study the mounds in detail, and this work has taught us precisely how endangered these mounds are.

“We need to stop the flow of traffic on games days because the mounds are collapsing outward. We didn’t know that years ago, but we do now,” said Brooks Ellwood, Robey H. Clark Distinguished Professor in Geology and Geophysics. Ellwood and his classes that now study the mounds recently discovered that the internal sediment, especially in Northern Mound A, liquefies when disturbed, much like sand along the shoreline on a beach liquefies when you tap your foot on it. “With the damage these mounds have incurred – both through the critical mass reached on game days and also as a result of natural processes – they are collapsing,” he said.

“As a state, we have a responsibility to protect this nationally registered historical site,” said Rob Mann, southeast regional archaeologist for Louisiana, assistant professor-research of geography and anthropology and resident expert on the mounds. “If it is damaged or destroyed, no one will be able to access it. Not the children who want to slide down the mounds, not the scientists who want to continue their research on the structures. It will be a disaster, which is why we’re aiming for a compromise now.”

“The issue right now isn’t simply one child sliding down the mounds once or twice. It’s the amount of people – children and adults alike – that gather on the mounds during a game day. That combined weight and activity can really be catastrophic, especially when we’re looking at a structural system that is already compromised,” said Rebecca Saunders, curator of anthropology at the LSU Museum of Natural Science. “It’s already to the point that you can see severe slump scars on the face of both mounds. How long before those scars turn into gaping holes? Everything beneath such a hole would be ruined; there will be no way to accurately study the structure or gain any knowledge about the people who built it.”

“We’d like to urge LSU fans and the community to look at the facts and then give this idea some serious consideration,” said Patrick Hesp, chair of the LSU Department of Geography & Anthropology. “Everyone loves the mounds, but the fact is that crowds sliding down them can create a hazardous situation for these very old and distinctive structures. If we work together, the mounds will be around for future generations to enjoy as they come to campus.”

“Change is never easy, especially when it involves something that’s been considered a tradition for years and years,” said Chancellor Michael Martin. “But tradition doesn’t offset danger and potentially calamitous situations, and that’s what we’re facing here. Those mounds aren’t hills of dirt – they’re treasures, archaeological mysteries housed right here on LSU’s campus. We’re asking the entire LSU community – students, faculty, staff, fans and friends – to join forces and help us to save the LSU Mounds.”

For more see LSU Media Relations' Ashley Berthelot's Read the rest of this post...
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LSU Football fans Ignore Mound Protection Efforts by bat400 on Monday, 04 October 2010
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Dated 28 Sept 2010:
The battle for the LSU Mounds has been won by football fans for now.

Children used ‘Please do not slide on the mounds’ signs as makeshift sleds on the LSU Mounds prior to the LSU-West Virginia football game on Saturday.

LSU administrators opted to remove the ropes and poles barricading the historic mounds early Saturday for safety reasons, LSU associate vice chancellor for communications Herb Vincent said. Fans and children had overcome the barriers the week before the first home football game, he said.

The decision came less than two weeks after LSU announced plans to block off what are commonly known as the “Indian Mounds” for preservation purposes on high-traffic football game days.

LSU archeologists and anthropologists who were out protecting the mounds and handing out literature said they felt abandoned by the LSU administration. Rebecca Saunders, archaeology professor and associate curator of the LSU Museum of Natural Science, said the preservationists were “dumbfounded” the barricades were removed by the university without their knowledge. “It certainly never occurred to us we’d meet this kind of resistance.”

The mounds, which are more than 6,000 years old, were made by prehistoric American Indian tribes and are older than the Egyptian pyramids. The mounds are believed to have been used for ceremonial and marking-point purposes

Saunders said the concept of sledding down the sacred mounds is akin to climbing up and down a historic church.

Rob Mann, southeast regional archaeologist in LSU’s geography and anthropology department, said he regularly gets calls from private citizens who want help protecting American Indian mounds on their property.

“It puts me in a bad light if my own university won’t take steps to properly preserve them,” Mann said.

Mann said the repeated trouncing, sledding and biking on the mounds, especially on tailgating weekends, is tearing them down.

“These mounds are in danger of coming apart,” Mann said. “The preservation and protection of these mounds is something we need to be proactive in.”

Mann said many people obeyed the barricades initially, but that, by the afternoon, a combination of alcohol consumption and growing crowds created a “critical mass” that resulted in people ignoring the ropes.

“Change is not easy,” Mann said of traditions of tailgating and children playing by the mounds. “It would be nice if people would not just think of the mounds as big piles of dirt.”

For more, see http://www.2theadvocate.com.
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Protect LSU's Mounds and the stories they tell by bat400 on Monday, 04 October 2010
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Submitted by coldrum --

According to the administration, ropes intended to block access to the LSU Mounds during LSU home games were removed because, when ignored, they were dangerous. This is not the first time that access has been an issue. In 1984, a coed was killed on top of one mound when she was run over by a pickup truck. Her death prompted the brickwork that now blocks vehicle access to the mounds.

But the LSU Mounds have also been central to a passionate scientific debate about the antiquity of mounds. In the 1980s, archaeologists believed that mounds appeared in the Southeast no earlier than 100 B.C. because mounds could only be built by inegalitarian societies fueled by maize agriculture. Before 100 B.C., folks in the Southeast were egalitarian hunter-gatherers; ergo, they did not build mounds.

There were a few holdouts to this model. One was Robert Neuman, former curator of anthropology at the Museum of Natural Science at LSU. In conjunction with archaeological excavations around the flanks of the mounds where the brickwork would go, Neuman took soil cores through the mounds. Soils from the base of the mound were radiocarbon dated to about 5,000 years old! These results were not received well by most of the archaeological community; some of the published discussion was quite acrimonious.

It has taken over 20 years, but most archaeologists now accept that hunters and gatherers built mounds thousands of years ago. In fact, now that it's accepted, 5,000-year-old mounds are popping up all over the place. Indeed, recent coring of the LSU Mounds extends the date of one mound to 6,200 years ago.

Let's keep 'em around a little more.

Source: The Opinion page of http://www.theadvertiser.com.
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