WLBT 3 - Jackson, MS: Winterville Indian Mounds

Winterville Indian Mounds

By Walt Grayson - bio | email

GREENVILLE, MS (WLBT) - Summertime is the time for summer archeology digs. Here in Mississippi, a couple of major undertakings were aimed at learning more about the mound builders who left our landscape dotted with what we know as Indian Mounds.

One digging crew went to a set of mounds I grew up playing on: the Winterville Mounds north of Greenville. All us kids my age growing up in Greenville had an awe about this set of Indian Mounds about 5 miles north of town.

We made up no end of lies about finding bones out there. Or of ghosts we'd seen at night. I don't really ever remember going there at night. But we did slide down them before the state Department of Archives and History posted rules that demanded more respect of us than to do stuff like that. But we've always felt like these were our mounds.

Dr. Ed Jackson of the University of Southern Mississippi says, "Well, you know, it's really interesting. All the people in Greenville really identify with that site. It's important to them. It's a part of their heritage. Even though they're newcomers, comparatively speaking."

We were newcomers alright. These mounds were completed about the year 1375 AD. It was a capitol city of a prehistoric chiefdom. And that's just part of what recent archaeological digs have uncovered about them.

And we found out more this year. Dr. Ed Jackson and his students spent their summer digging in one of the lesser mounds that we'd been told was a burial mound. Turns out, that wasn't correct.

Dr. Jackson explains, "We spent most of the time working on Mound C which we have been curious about because it's not shaped like a typical Mississippian Culture mound. It's got a fairly steep summit and it's oblong rather than square. So we were just curious what was going on with that mound and why it was built. And what we found was like the other mounds at Winterville, it was serving as a platform for buildings that were built at various stages of its construction. They would build a level, build a house on it. At some point decommission that house by burning it, and add a new level of dirt on top of that and build a new house. And we were able to hit several of these building episodes by putting a flanking trench into east side of the mound."

Originally there were 23 mounds here. 9 survive. Stone tools were made here. And quartz from Arkansas and stones from the Ohio Valley and beyond found here prove this was a sophisticated culture, well connected.

I just wish they could prove that the children of that culture ALSO slid down the sides of the mounds, and I wouldn't feel so disrespectful for having done so myself as a child.