MYSTERIOUS MOUNDS IN INDIANA

Anderson Mounds, Anderson, IN, just NW of Indianapolis

Just East of Anderson, IN is the Anderson Mounds complex, a burial and astronomical site built 250-160 BC. It was the Adena-Hopewell peoples who built this site where the archaeological evidence suggests human activity since 8000 BC.

The complex is made up of 10 earthworks with the Great Mound the largest. It served as the nexus for astronomical use.

Aldebaran, Rigel and Fomalhaut are all significantly bright stars that are dominant in the sky in different times of the year.

Alas, the Mounds complex is largely tree covered so one cannot visit and view events today unlike European sites such as Stonehenge.

Inside the Great Mound

The Adena-Hopewell civilizations inhabited a huge area in the US-from the Great Lakes South to the Gulf of Mexico and West of the Mississippi River. It was part of an extensive trade network. For example, burial sites in Indiana contained ornaments made of salt water seashells from hundreds of miles away. Hundreds of mounds have been found and excavated notably the Giant Serpent Mounds in South Central Ohio. Later, the Mississippian culture in the 11th and 12th Centuries AD built the Cahokia Mounds in Illinois just East across the Mississippi from St. Louis, the largest pre-Columbian complex North of Mexico.

The Adena-Hopewell period came at a time in human history where such building activity, often linked to astronomy was happening across the planet. A major shift from hunter/gatherer societies to agricultural communities meant that with food being grown nearby and groups of people forming a leadership hierarchy, such massive undertakings of creating these mounds (or stonework) could be done.