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Archiver > TNHARDIN > 2003-10 > 1066099975


From: "Jerry W. Murphy" <>
Subject: [TNHARDIN] Shiloh Mounds
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 21:52:55 -0500


I found the below article in the Sunday edition of the Tennessean at
http://www.tennessean.com/nation-world/archives/03/10/40769722.shtml?Element_ID=40769722:


Jerry W. Murphy

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Shiloh mounds could shed light on regional culture
By MIKE TONER
Cox News Service

SHILOH, Tenn. - Shiloh, the scene of one of the bloodiest and most decisive
battles of the Civil War, is helping reshape the earliest history of the
United States.

To warring armies of the North and South, the strange, square-sided mounds
perched on a bluff above the Tennessee River were little more than landmarks
in the carnage that left 24,000 dead, wounded or missing.

That was 1862. Now, the same mounds, 1,000 years old when the great war
raged around them, are doing for prehistoric America what Gone With the Wind
did for cinema. They are revealing the true colors of a culture that has
previously been seen only through the monochromatic fog of forgotten
centuries.

After three years of excavations at Shiloh National Military Park - the
largest such project ever undertaken in the South by the National Park
Service - archaeologists have concluded that the United States a millennium
ago was a far brighter place than most people imagined.

''This mound - and perhaps other major mounds in the Southeast - were
definitely colored,'' said archaeologist David Anderson, at the base of a
partially excavated 22-foot earthen pyramid.

''As we've dug down, we have uncovered layer upon layer of colored soils
that were used in its construction,'' he said. ''There are layers of red,
orange, green, yellow, gray and white. We're calling this the tiger stripe
mound because of the bands of colored soils.''

Archaeologists have long known that the stone monuments and temples of
Mexico and Yucatan were awash in color - some with murals and friezes the
size of modern billboards. Despite signs of color in many North American
mounds, the region usually has been depicted as the drab stepchild of
meso-American civilizations.

''These people went to a lot of trouble to dig different-colored soils and
transport them here to make this a very colorful structure,'' said Anderson,
who is with the Park Service's Southeast Archaeological Center in
Tallahassee. ''I think in the future, many sites from this period will be
portrayed as much more complex and colorful than they are at present.''

Anderson said the excavation shows that the mounds were maintained as
rigorously as 20th-century streets and sidewalks - swept clean and
constantly refurbished to keep the color schemes.

'A huge undertaking'

Georgia's mounds were excavated by archaeologists in the early 1900s.

The secrets of Shiloh's colored main mound might have gone undiscovered,
too, had it not been for two unrelated developments.

In 1894, the federal government declared Shiloh a national military park, a
move that assured that Civil War era graves - and coincidentally the
mounds - would be protected from looters and development. In the battle's
aftermath, some soldiers were buried in the mounds.

Once protected, the mound might never have been excavated had it not been
for another accident of history. The construction of Kentucky Dam downstream
on the Tennessee River, and the resulting barge traffic, accelerated the
erosion of the 80-foot bluff occupied by the largest mound.

By 2000, Park Service archaeologists decided that if they didn't excavate
it, the mound was certain to slide into the river - and information in it
would be lost forever.

Like the pyramids of Egypt and the temples of Yucatan, Shiloh's largest
mound - a flat-topped 22-foot-high pyramid that stands atop a steep bluff on
the west bank of the Tennessee River - the earthen mounds of North America
took many years to build.

''This was a huge undertaking,'' Anderson said. ''It must have taken
millions of man-hours for people to find the colored soils they used and
carry it here in baskets. There were probably only a few hundred people
living in this particular location, so the work clearly enlisted people,
perhaps as many as 10,000, from communities up and down the river.''

Variety of functions

Archaeologists are scouting the area this fall to see where the
different-colored soils came from.

Anderson said the imposing size of Shiloh's main mound, the 40 acres of land
enclosed behind a protective wooden palisade and more than 100 individual
house sites found so far indicate that the site was clearly one of the
dominant chiefdoms of the region.

Mounds served different functions. Some may have provided a platform for
public buildings. But Anderson said the largest one in any complex probably
conferred special status on the chief who lived on it and fulfilled
ceremonial functions as well. At Shiloh, archaeologists have identified four
spurts of building - each with its own soil type and each probably
associated with some ''regime change'' in the chiefdom's rule.

Although excavation has been under way for three years, laboratory research
has barely begun. Before they finish, archaeologists will analyze pollen,
wood, ashes, stone chips, soil, and bone to learn from microscopic traces of
a vanished people who they were and how they lived.

In the woods around the site's seven major mounds, they have identified low
circular platforms that mark the outline of many houses, last inhabited
around 1400.

Because the house platforms are not threatened by erosion, archaeologists
have no plans to excavate them. They will leave that part of the site for
the future.


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