Wickliffe Mounds ( 15 BA 4) is a prehistoric, Mississippian culture

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 a ...

located in Ballard County, Kentucky, just outside the town of Wickliffe, about from the confluence of the

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

and

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

rivers. Archaeological investigations have linked the site with others along the Ohio River in Illinois and Kentucky as part of the Angel phase of Mississippian culture. Wickliffe Mounds is controlled by the State Parks Service, which operates a museum at the site for interpretation of the ancient community. Listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

, it is also a Kentucky Archeological Landmark and State Historic Site.

Prehistoric community at Wickliffe Mounds

The town at Wickliffe Mounds is located on a bluff above the Ohio River, and was both a ceremonial and administrative center of an important

chiefdom A chiefdom is a form of hierarchical political organization in non-industrial societies usually based on kinship, and in which formal leadership is monopolized by the legitimate senior members of select families or 'houses'. These elites form a ...

in the Mississippian culture. At its peak it had a population probably reaching into the hundreds. The site is dominated by two 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 ...

s, with at least eight smaller

mound A mound is a heaped pile of earth, gravel, sand, rocks, or debris. Most commonly, mounds are earthen formations such as hills and mountains, particularly if they appear artificial. A mound may be any rounded area of topographically higher ...

s scattered around a central

plaza A town square (or square, plaza, public square, city square, urban square, or ''piazza'') is an open public space, commonly found in the heart of a traditional town but not necessarily a true geometric square, used for community gatherings. ...

area.

Agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people t ...

was based on the cultivation of

maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The ...

as a staple, which was stored and supported denser populations and stratification of society. The Mississippian culture peoples had trade with societies as far away as

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

, and the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...

. As in most other Mississippian

s, the community of Wickliffe had a

social hierarchy Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). As ...

ruled by a hereditary chief.

Chronology

The site was inhabited between 1000 CE and 1350 CE. When Wickliffe began to be abandoned around 1300, the population had been slowly relocating to the Twin Mounds Site, several miles to the northeast near the confluence of the

and Ohio Rivers.

Exploitation and excavation

Amateur and semi-professional excavations first began in the site around 1913 and continued sporadically for several decades. In 1932, Fain W. King, a lumberman, amateur archaeologist, and Indian artifact collector from

Paducah, Kentucky 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, Miss ...

, who was a member of the Board of Regents of the Alabama Museum of Natural History, Tuscaloosa requested and privately paid for the Alabama Museum archaeology staff to conduct the excavations of the center portions of three mounds (A, B, and C) at the Wickliffe site including the cemetery, Mound C. The excavations were done under the direction of Dr. Walter B, Jones, Alabama State Geologist, and David L. DeJarnette who was the crew chief. The first publicity flyer about the excavations was co-authored by TMN Lewis and Fain King and the first two separate journal articles about the excavations (Wisconsin Archaeologist and Tenn. Academy of Science) by each author said the work was undertaken as both a scientific and educational enterprise through which the public was enabled to examine a page of unwritten history. To defray the cost of operating the site a one dollar admission was charged for the one hour guided tour during the King era. In cooperation with his wife, Blanche Busey King, he opened the site for tourists under the name "Ancient Buried City". The Kings' venture was highly controversial because they used sensational and misleading advertising, altered the site to make it more visually appealing, and made dubious and exaggerated interpretations of the site. These actions put them directly in opposition to professional archaeologists who studied the site and did not want it disturbed. The Kings deeded the site to the Western Baptist Hospital in Paducah in 1946, that agreed to pay them a monthly stipend until both of their deaths. The hospital continued to operate the site as a tourism business until 1983 the year Mrs. King died. That year the hospital donated the site to Murray State University, to be used for research and training students. In 1984 the site's historic importance was recognized and it was added to the

. In 2004, the site became the 11th State Historical Site of

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

and entered the control of the

Kentucky State Parks Maintained by the Kentucky Department of Parks, Kentucky's system of 49 state parks has been referred to as "the nation's finest" and experiences more repeat business annually than those of any other U.S. state. The state's diverse geography provi ...

. In addition to the freestanding Mound A, the major ceremonial mound, the museum park encloses three excavated mounds with archaeological features, to aid in their interpretation for visitors. It displays the outstanding collection of pottery and artifacts excavated on site. A mural with a birds-eye view of the Mississippian village on the bluff shows how the entire complex would have looked.

Mound A

Ceremonial Mound is the largest of the mounds and was the location of ceremonial structures. This would have been political and religious center of the community. Originally excavated in 1932 and later in 1984–85, it has been determined that there are six phases of development.Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site; Kentucky State Parks, 2007

Mound B

The Architecture Building covered a mound that was residential. The Architecture Building has been removed and the excavation filled. This mound was built up over 200 years. Until 2016, visitors could look into the layers of this mound. It showed the evidence which archeologists used to identify this as a residential area, such as the layers of charred materials from cooking fires and the postholes for the poles that held the

wattle and daub Wattle and daub is a composite building method used for making walls and buildings, in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung a ...

siding.

Mound C

The Cemetery Building formerly covered the area used as the community's burial ground. Native American practices prohibit the display of the dead. The original remains were reinterred and artificial skeletons were placed to show the original burials. The exterior of the excavation has curtains with traditional designs to cover those remains that could not be removed. The burials are from the 13th century. They included many infants, as well as people with identifiable medical problems, including arthritis,

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...

(TB) and various injuries. All excavations have been filled and the interior can no longer be viewed.

Mound D

The Lifeways Building is the excavation of an early village/residential portion of the community. The early homes were replaced by an elongated mound. The excavation shows the arrangement of earlier structures, including numerous infant burials.

Kincaid focus

Mississippian sites on Lower Ohio Map HRoe 2010

In the lower Ohio River valley in

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

, Kentucky, and Indiana, the Mississippian-culture towns of Kincaid, Wickliffe, Tolu, and

Angel Mounds Angel Mounds State Historic Site ( 12 VG 1), an expression of the Mississippian culture, is an archaeological site managed by the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites that includes more than of land about southeast of present-day Evansville ...

have been more closely grouped together into a "Kincaid focus" archeological set, due to similarities in pottery assemblages and site plans. Most striking are the comparisons between the Kincaid and Angel sites, which include analogous site plans, stylistic similarities in artifacts, and geographic proximity. These connections have led some experts to hypothesize that the builders and residents were of the same society. Rare painted and incised sherds of

Mississippian culture pottery Mississippian culture pottery is the ceramic tradition of the Mississippian culture (800 to 1600 CE) found as artifacts in archaeological sites in the American Midwest and Southeast. It is often characterized by the adoption and use of riverine ( ...

have been found at all four sites, ranging from less than one percent near Kincaid to about three or four percent of the assemblage at Wickliffe. Some common pottery styles found in these sites include: Angel Negative Painted, Kincaid Negative Painted, and Matthews Incised. This pottery is shell-tempered and ranges from the smoothed surface and coarser temper of Mississippi Ware to the more polished surface and finer temper of Bell Ware.

References

External links

Wickliffe Mounds State Historic SiteWickliffe Mounds Information & Videos
- Chickasaw.TV {{authority control Middle Mississippian culture Mounds in Kentucky Native American museums in Kentucky Museums in Ballard County, Kentucky Natural history museums in Kentucky Archaeological museums in Kentucky Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Kentucky Kentucky State Historic Sites Protected areas established in 2004 Protected areas of Ballard County, Kentucky 2004 establishments in Kentucky 1913 archaeological discoveries National Register of Historic Places in Ballard County, Kentucky