Etowah Indian Mounds

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Etowah Mounds
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
Mound B, seen from Mound A
Nearest city:	Cartersville, GA
Coordinates:	34°7′30.47″N 84°48′27.59″W / 34.1251306°N 84.8076639°W / 34.1251306; -84.8076639
Governing body:	State
Added to NRHP:	October 15, 1966[1]
Designated NHL:	July 19, 1964[2]
NRHP Reference#:	66000272

Etowah Indian Mounds is a fifty-four acre archaeological site in Bartow County, Georgia south of Cartersville, Georgia in the United States. Built and occupied in three phases, from 1000-1550 AD, the site is located on the north shore of the Etowah River. Etowah Indian Mounds Historic Site is a designated National Historic Landmark, managed by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Late 20th-century studies showed the mounds were built and occupied by people of the Mississippian culture, who were unquestionably related to the historical Muskogean-speaking Muscogee or Creek people. Although many had earlier assumed the Cherokee were the builders, they did not arrive in this part of Georgia until the late 1700s.

[edit] Site description

The community was inhabited from about 1000-1550 A.D. by Native Americans of the Mississippian culture. The town was occupied in three distinct archaeological phases: c. 1000-1200 AD, c. 1250-1375 AD, and c. 1375-1550 AD.

Older pottery found on the site suggest that there was an earlier village (c. 200 BC-600 AD) associated with the Swift Creek culture. This earlier middle Woodland period occupation at Etowah may have been related to the major Swift Creek center of Leake Mounds, approximately two miles downstream (west) of Etowah.

Temple Mound (Mound A)

Repoussé copper plate design of a falcon dancer found at Etowah Indian Mounds

Etowah has three main mounds and three lesser mounds. The Temple Mound, Mound A, is 63 ft. high and three-acres at its base; Mound B is 25 ft. high; Mound C, which rises 10 ft., is the only one that has been completely excavated. Magnetometers have allowed archaeologists to determine the location of temples of log and thatch that were built atop the mounds. Adjacent to the mounds is a raised ceremonial plaza, which was used for ceremonies, stickball and chunkey games, and as a bazaar for trade goods.

War was commonplace; many archaeologists believe Etowah battled for hegemony over the Alabama river basin with Moundville, a Mississippian site in present-day Alabama. The town was protected by a sophisticated semi-circular fortification system. An outer band formed by nut tree orchards prevented enemy armies from shooting masses of flaming arrows into the town. A 9-to-10-foot-deep moat blocked direct contact by the enemy with the palisaded walls, and functioned as a drainage system during major floods, which were common on the Etowah River until the Allatoona Dam was built upstream in 1947. The palisade was formed by setting upright 12-foot high logs into a ditch approximately 12 inches on center and then back-filling around the timbers to form a levee. Guard towers for archers were spaced approximately 80 feet apart.

Artifacts discovered in burials within the Etowah site indicate that its residents developed an artistically and technically advanced culture. Numerous copper tools, weapons and ornamental plates accompanied the burials of members of Etowah's elite class. Where proximity to copper protected the fibers from degeneration, archaeologists also found brightly colored cloth with ornate patterns. These were the remnants of the clothing of social elites. Numerous stone and clay figurines have been found through the years in the vicinity of Etowah. Many are paired statues, which portray a man sitting cross-legged and a woman kneeling. Both figures are wearing turbans and ornate, patterned cloth. Individual statues of young women also show them kneeling and ornately clothed, but with a variety of hair styles. The bird-man, giant-eye, solar cross, and other symbols associated with the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex appear in the artifacts found at Etowah.

The Etowah River is a tributary of the Cossa and Alabama rivers, and forms the border between the southern edge of the Ridge and Valley Appalachians and the Piedmont Plateau. Trade and tribute brought whelk shells from the Gulf of Mexico, copper, mica and flint from the Cumberland Plateau, and "galena, graphite, and an array of ochers to provide pigment for painting buildings, bodies, and works of art; greenstone and marble to furnish raw material for tools, weapons and ritual objects" from the Piedmont.^[3] The loamy river-bed soil could be easily tilled with digging sticks and stone and shell hoes. Its fertility was annually renewed by the river's floods, and free of frost most of the year, it yielded rich harvests of corn, beans and squash.

Chestnut, walnut, hickory, and persimmon trees that grew in upland forests provided nuts and fruit for both the people of Etowah and the white-tailed deer, wild turkey, and smaller game they hunted. Other plants that were gathered include stinging nettle, paper mulberry, and a native holly whose leaves and stems were brewed into the Black drink imbibed in ritual purification ceremonies. River cane grew in dense thickets and was made into arrow shafts, thatching for roofs, splits for baskets, benches, and mats for walls and floors. River shoals abounded in freshwater mussels and turtles, and v-shaped rock weirs were built to pen and channel catfish, drum and gar, which were caught in split white-oak baskets. Remains of over a hundred rock weirs have been found along the Etowah river, and one has been repaired at the site.^[4]

Archaeological research on the subject is not conclusive, but the Etowah site may be the same as a village of a similar name visited by Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto in 1540. The chroniclers of the de Soto Expedition, however, make no mention of any large mounds in their record of visiting a town named Itaba. Itaba means "boundary" or trail crossing in the Alabama language. The origin of the English name for the mounds, Etowah, is an archaic Muskogee place name, Etalwa. Etalwa probably referred to the "solar cross" symbol originally, but in Modern Muskogee means a "mother town."

Stone effigies found at the Etowah Site

Until studies of the late 20th century, most Georgians believed Etowah to have been built by the Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee. In fact, the Cherokee did not arrive in this part of Georgia until the late 1700s, long after the mound's construction. Scholars have evaluated sufficient evidence to determine the mound complex was unquestionably built and occupied by peoples more closely related to the Muskogean-speaking Creek.

Both the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Oklahoma and Poarch Creeks consider Etalwa to be their most important ancestral town. Related to this, the official title of the Oklahoma Principal Chief is Etalwa Mikko, from this source (the Creek word for chief is miko). A new, large-scale model of Etalwa is on permanent display in the rotunda of the Muskogee (Creek) Capitol in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.

The Etowah Site

[edit] History of excavation and studies

Cyrus Thomas and John P. Rogan tested the site for the Smithsonian Institution in 1883. But, the first well-documented archaeological inquiry at the site did not begin until the winter of 1925, conducted by Warren K. Moorehead. His excavations into Mound C at the site revealed a rich array of Mississippian culture burial goods. These artifacts, along with the collections from Cahokia, Moundville, Lake Jackson (Florida), and Spiro Mounds, would comprise the majority of the materials which archeologists used to define the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC). The professional excavation of this enormous burial mound contributed major research impetus to the study of Mississippian artifacts and peoples. It greatly increased the understanding of pre-Contact Native Americans artwork.

The Etowah site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

The site's museum holds artifacts found at the site, including stone effigies, jewelry and other objects.

[edit] Gallery

Model of Etowah at its height

Statue of Etowah Chief, Georgia State Capitol, based on archaeological findings and the descriptions of early explorers

Ceremonial flint blades and chunkey stones

Rock weir on the Etowah river

[edit] See also

• Mississippian culture
• Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
• List of Mississippian sites
• List of burial mounds in the United States

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Etowah Indian Mounds

• Etowah Indian Mounds Historic Site - official site
• Etowah Mounds near Cartersville, Georgia
• LostWorlds.org | Etowah Mounds
• Mississippian culture in the New Georgia Encyclopedia
• Archaeology magazine article on remote sensing at Etowah

[edit] References

1. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2006-03-15. http://www.nr.nps.gov/. 
2. ^ "Etowah Mounds". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm?ResourceId=170&ResourceType=Site. Retrieved 2008-06-20. 
3. ^ George E. Stuart, 'Etowah: A Southeastern village in 1491,' National Geographic, Vol. 180 No. 4 October 1981
4. ^ Informational Guide, Etowah Indian Mounds State Park, Georgia Department of Natural Resources

• Warren King Moorehead, Ed. Explorations of the Etowah Site in Georgia: The Etowah Papers, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1932.

• Charles Hudson; Marvin Smith; David Hally; Richard Polhemus; Chester DePratter (1985), "Coosa: A Chiefdom in the Sixteenth-Century Southeastern United States", American Antiquity, Vol. 50, No. 4., pp. 723–737.

• Richard L. Thornton (2007), Ancient Roots I: The Indigenous People of the Southern Highlands. Morris, NC: AIA Lulu Publishing Co.

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