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.”
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