woodland period moundbuilders of the bluegrass - Kentucky ...

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MOUNDBUILDERS, RELIEF CREWS, AND ARCHAEOLOGISTSIn the Bluegrass region, people have recorded and studied Adenamounds and earthworks for over 200 years. Our understanding of Adenaculture, however, has depended on an assortment of events, discoveries,and characters.The Moundbuilder MythDuring the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries, Adenamounds and earthworks stirred the imagination of European explorers,pioneers, and travelers heading west of the Appalachian Mountains.A few were moved to action. Constantine Rafinesque, a naturalist andprofessor at Transylvania University, made detailed drawings anddescribed several central Kentucky examples.They all wondered: “Who built these mounds?” Historians andscholars hotly debated this question throughout the nineteenth century. Itmay seem strange to us today, but many seriously credited the Egyptians,Mongols, or Welsh.Others thought a vanished race, the Moundbuilders, had built them.They believed that the ancestors of living American Indian peoples hadbeen brutal savages. In their minds, these people could not possibly havebuilt mounds - they drove off or killed the ‘real’ Mound builders. It alsodid not help that nineteenth-century native peoples with historic links tothe Ohio Valley lacked direct recollections or stories, myths, and legendsof moundbuilding.The crew (and dog!) pause for a photograph during work at a Montgomery County mound.
As people debated the Moundbuilders’ identity, the moundsthemselves were disappearing at an alarming rate. Farmers were clearingthe land and planting crops. America’s cities and towns were growing.Relic hunters were looting the largest mounds for the objects insidethem. Wealthy, well-meaning individuals, doing what they thoughtwas increasing scientific knowledge, were actually destroying moreinformation than they recovered.Map of a Montgomery County Adena mound and earthwork complex.Based on a Rafinesque survey, it was published by Squier and Davis.Two surveyors, Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis, were an exceptionto the wealthy antiquarians. They accurately recorded many Ohio Valleyprehistoric mounds and earthworks, including several examples in theBluegrass region. The Smithsonian Institution published their researchin 1848. Locally, Robert Peter, a distinguished Lexington physician,investigated the mounds and earthworks on his farm near Elkhorn Creek.Geologist J. B. Hoeing also carefully marked the locations of earthenburial mounds on his maps as he surveyed Bluegrass bedrock formations.As the nineteenth century ended, research funded by the federalgovernment finally laid the Moundbuilder myth to rest. Teams of mensurveyed and excavated many mounds in the Midwest and Southeast,including several in the Ohio Valley. Their work, analyzed and publishedby Cyrus Thomas in 1894, showed through artifacts and soil stratigraphythat the ancestors of the American Indians built the mounds.7
Page 5 and 6: Over time, these people will return
Page 7: However, Adena people kept no writt
Page 11 and 12: archaeologists supervised the excav
Page 13 and 14: DAILY LIFEAdena lifeways were firml
Page 15 and 16: Adena peoples were mobile hunter-ga
Page 17 and 18: Preparing a garden space took sever
Page 19 and 20: Focus On Adena GardeningAdena peopl
Page 21 and 22: Focus On Adena FabricsThere is no q
Page 23 and 24: Health and DiseaseAlthough Depressi
Page 25 and 26: a cone-shaped MontgomeryCounty moun
Page 27 and 28: Based on the materials found inside
Page 29 and 30: does not accurately reflect the num
Page 31 and 32: extend nearly 8 feet below thegroun
Page 33 and 34: Adena groups probablyworked-out mor
Page 35 and 36: What we do know of Adena burial pra
Page 37 and 38: separate, or mixed with the remains
Page 39 and 40: a necklace of disk-shaped shell bea
Page 41 and 42: The keys to that discovery are vari
Page 43 and 44: Focus On Adena Engraved TabletsAden
Page 45 and 46: Focus On An Adena ShamanIn 1950, be
Page 47 and 48: county, or state law enforcement of
Page 49 and 50: The KENTUCKY ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY

woodland period moundbuilders of the bluegrass - Kentucky ...

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