The Rowlandton Mound Site ( 15MCN3) is a

Mississippian culture The Mississippian culture was a Native Americans in the United States, Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern United States, Midwestern, Eastern United States, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from appr ...

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

located in

Paducah Paducah ( ) is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of McCracken County, Kentucky. The largest city in the Jackson Purchase region, it is located at the confluence of the Tennessee and the Ohio rivers, halfway between St. Louis, Missour ...

McCracken County, Kentucky McCracken County is a county located in the far western portion of U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 67,875. The county seat and only municipality is Paducah. McCracken County was the 78th county formed in the st ...

, on the edge of an old

oxbow lake An oxbow lake is a U-shaped lake or pool that forms when a wide meander of a river is cut off, creating a free-standing body of water. In South Texas, oxbows left by the Rio Grande are called '' resacas''. In Australia, oxbow lakes are call ...

a little south of the

Ohio River The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...

Site description

The site was occupied from about 1100 to about 1350 CE. The site has a large

platform mound Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system or ...

and an associated village area, being roughly similar in size to the

Wickliffe Mounds Wickliffe Mounds ( 15 BA 4) is a prehistoric, Mississippian culture archaeological site located in Ballard County, Kentucky, just outside the town of Wickliffe, about from the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Archaeological inve ...

Site in far western Kentucky. It was once thought that large civic sites in Western Kentucky such as Rowlandton Mound, the

Twin Mounds Site The Twin Mounds Site ( 15BA2 and 15BA14), also known as the Nolan Site, is a Mississippian culture archaeological site located near Barlow in Ballard County, Kentucky, just north of the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and directl ...

and the Tolu Site were expansions of the

Kincaid Mounds The Kincaid Mounds Historic Site ( 11MX2-11; 11PO2-10) , is a Mississippian culture archaeological site located at the southern tip of present-day U.S. state of Illinois, along the Ohio River. Kincaid Mounds has been notable for both its s ...

polity in nearby Southern Illinois in the 13th century, but archaeological excavations in 2006 by Dr. Kit Wesler of

Murray State University Murray State University (MSU) is a public university in Murray, Kentucky. In addition to the main campus in Calloway County in southwestern Kentucky, Murray State operates extended campuses offering upper level and graduate courses in Paducah, H ...

have shown that this was not the case. It is probable that these civic sites were established originally by local

Late Woodland In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BCE to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some archaeolog ...

peoples.

References

External links

Early shell tempering in far Western Kentucky
Middle Mississippian culture Mounds in Kentucky Archaeological sites in Kentucky Buildings and structures in Paducah, Kentucky {{US-archaeology-stub