One of North America’s oldest historic sites keeps the archaeology community hypothesizing on campus. Geology graduate and undergraduate students recently worked on a geophysical survey project to obtain more information about the on-campus Indian Mounds. Under geology professor Brooks Ellwood’s direction, students taking Geology 4019 – aerial photo interpretation of cultural features – took sediment core samples from the mounds. This project furthered the research of Jeffrey Homburg’s 1991 thesis – Archaeological Investigations at the LSU Campus Mounds. In his thesis, Homburg said the mounds are dated to 5,000 B.C. Mound A – the mound closer to Dalrymple Drive – was built before Mound B. The date suggests the mounds were constructed during the Archaic period – between 8,000 B.C.E. and 1,000 B.C.E. The dates suggest Mound A is “one of the earliest dated mound sites in North America,” according to Homburg’s thesis. Amanda Evans, geography doctoral student, said the mounds are comparable in age with the earliest Egyptian pyramids. “We applied sedimentary analysis and geophysical techniques to add to the work that Homburg and others have previously learned about the mounds,” Evans said. University students worked at the mounds in the past two months setting up survey grids, taking sediment cores and conducting geophysical surveys. Rebecca Saunders, associate curator of anthropology, said the mounds may have been “axis mundi” – Latin for “central place” – for extended families to gather for religious ceremonies, information exchange and mate selection. But archaeologist may never know exactly why the mounds were constructed. “Because all our explanations are colored by our current experience, it probably is impossible for us to really know what the mounds meant to people 5,000 years ago,” Saunders said. “Mounds probably meant different things to different people.” Ellwood said some think the mounds represent an “effigy of an animal.” “Some mounds were used for meetings where the head person spoke to the masses,” Ellwood said. “Some were used as burial mounds and other possibilities exist.” Evans said the students hoped the data accumulated would help them discover if the mounds were used as a burial or cremation spot. “The magnetometer recorded low intensity anomalies along both mounds,” Evans said. “But in very different patterns.” The data collected by student projects aided Homburg’s conclusion that the mounds are composed of different materials. Homburg hypothesized that Mound B was constructed using some of the remaining material from Mound A, but the materials were clearly different. Evans said people assume the mounds are identical and were always intended to be a pair, but that may not be the case. “Like any archaeological investigation, this leads to more questions – if the mounds were constructed separately, why did they feel the need to construct the second mound?” Evans said. “Did they always intend to build two mounds and simply ran out of material for [Mound] B?” Evans said other early mound sites have been destroyed, but she hopes the mounds will continue to be protected by the University community. Some experts said the mounds could erode away, but archaeologist will preserve these “important symbols of the past.” “It would certainly help if people quit doing things that disturbed the surface of the mounds,” Saunders said. “Children rolling down them is one thing, but folks at football games sliding down them in milk crates, so that a huge furrow is dug into the surface, is quite another.” Saunders said sliding down the mounds in milk crates happened five years ago, and the damage can still be seen on the mound that faces student housing. Ellwood said in geologic time, the mounds will erode away. But in students’ lifetimes, the mounds will remain a historic symbol of the past.
—- Contact Emily Stuart at [email protected]