Hello everyone!
First things first, I must apologize for my long absence from the blog. As so many of us are learning this year… your first year in a tenure track position is tough going! But with this being the last week of classes and my students not yet having turned in their exams and papers… I have a few moments and I wanted to post something I’ve been working on!
In the process of teaching North American archaeology and giving a few public lectures around Philly… I’ve actually managed to get a few people excited about seeing mounds! In particular, one of my students this semester has requested that I make a google map of all the visitable mound site in the US. (This harkens back to Alice’s post Soliciting Archaeo-Roadtrip Advice!) This is something I had already started on my own, but I thought it might be fun to see how much bigger it could get if we collaborated. The link to my map is here: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z6LEBGc1NmhY.kX0Y2NEUJQ0c.
It should be editable by anyone with the link and the changes should save automatically. At this point, I have included both sites that are open to the public, with museums, etc., those that are in public parks without signage, and those that are privately owned but clearly visible from roads with historical markers, etc. When marking locations, please do think about whether we actually want the public visiting these sites! Unmarked sites on private land shouldn’t be included… but those that are already marked (like those on the Mississippi and Louisiana mound trails) or those in small local parks, etc. are perfect! This could end up being quite a cool resource for anyone’s future archaeo-roadtrips!
Congrats to everyone on finishing up this semester, and here’s to many more blog posts in 2015, as we all settle into our new lives!
Happy holidays!
Meg
seacunderground 
This is a great resource Meg! I look forward to adding to it/seeing what other folks add. In the meantime, I’d also point interested folks to Eric Bowne’s book Mound Sites of the Ancient South (http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/mound_sites/). As described by the publisher: “This heavily illustrated guide brings these settlements to life with maps, artists’ reconstructions, photos of artifacts, and historic and modern photos of sites, connecting our archaeological knowledge with what is visible when visiting the sites today. Anthropologist Eric E. Bowne discusses specific structures at each location and highlights noteworthy museums, artifacts, and cultural features.”
Turns out there are quite a few of these books for different parts of country (e.g., Archaeological Parks of the Upper Midwest, by Deborah Morse-Kahn, The Mounds of Koshkonong and Rock River, by Hugh Highsmith, Indian Mounds of Wisconsin, by Robert A. Birmingham and Leslie E. Eisenberg, Indian Mounds of the Middle Ohio Valley, by Susan L. Woodward and Jerry L. McDonald, etc. etc., etc.)! What fun!
With the help of these books and many procrastinating people, this map has really taken off! Just as a reminder, please add only sites that are open to the public (i.e., in parks, archaeological preserves, etc.) or are viewable from public land (i.e., privately owned sites with historical markers on the road). Non-publicly viewable sites should be removed. Photos, information about viewing the site, and other notes such as date, cultural associations, etc. may be added for each site. Most sites will be labeled red (the default color), but sites marked in blue have attached museums.
Yay for crowd-sourcing!
I have visited the Peter-Paul Mounds a few times too many during the course of my life. The ones containing double burials just under the top of the final accretion layer are particularly interesting and alluring for the archaeologist.
What about the remnants of a mound in someone’s front yard, viewable from the public street? There is one in Nacogdoches, TX (the Washington Square site).
John, thanks for asking before posting! Feel free to add it because it is visible from the street… but please make a note that it is on private property. Cheers, Meg
Hello,
Not sure if it is a function of my device, but we often use the mound site map and it seems it is no longer fully notated. If you find a similar issue, could you please restore the resource.
Many thanks
Hi Dave,
Thanks for getting in touch and I am so happy to hear you use the map! This is the problem with a crowd-sourced map… sadly, it appears someone deleted the layer with all of the placemarks in it leaving only a few sets of directions to and from specific sites. I am in the field right now and cannot do anything about it, but I did download the placemarks as a KML file, so I may be able to re-upload them when I get back.
Meg