Miamisburg Mound
Miamisburg Mound is one of the two largest conical mounds in eastern North America. The other is West Virginia's Grave Creek Mound. It is a burial mound built by the people that archaeologists have called the Adena culture (800 B.C. to 100 A.D.). Adena was the name Governor Thomas Worthington called his estate in Chillicothe, Ohio. It was at that estate that the first mound of this group of prehistoric Native Americans was excavated in 1901.
The Miamisburg Mound is 65 feet tall and 800 feet in circumference. It contains 54,000 cubic yards of earth, which corresponds to the contents of more than 3,400 dump trucks.
Excavations conducted in 1869 revealed details of construction suggesting the Adena culture built the mound in several stages. The excavators found a layer of flat stones, overlapping like shingles on a roof, at a depth of 24 feet below the surface. At one point in its history, the mound had a stone facing. Monuments like Miamisburg Mound served as cemeteries for several generations of ancient Ohioans. They also may have marked the boundaries of tribal territories.
Miamisburg Mound is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is located in the City of Miamisburg in Montgomery County, Ohio.
Miamisburg Mound is one of the largest Adena burial mounds in North America.
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References and Suggested Reading
- Dragoo, Don W. Mounds for the Dead: An Analysis of the Adena Culture. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 1989.
- Hothem, Lar. Treasures of the Mound Builders: Adena & Hopewell Artifacts of Ohio. Lancaster, OH: Hothem House Books, 1989.
- Korp, Maureen. The Sacred Geography of the American Mound Builders. Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1990. - Available from Amazon.com
- O'Donnell, James H., III. Ohio's First Peoples. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004. - Available from Amazon.com
- Ricky, Donald B., ed. Encyclopedia of Ohio Indians. St. Clair Shores, MI: Somerset Publishers, Inc., 1998. - Available from Amazon.com
- Webb, William S., and Charles E. Snow, eds. The Adena People. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1974. - Available from Amazon.com
- Woodward, Susan L., and Jerry N. McDonald. Indian Mounds of the Middle Ohio Valley: A Guide to Mounds and Earthworks of the Adena, Hopewell, Cole, and Fort Ancient People. Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 2002. - Available from Amazon.com
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Citation
"Miamisburg Mound", Ohio History Central, July 1, 2005, http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=2220
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